You Can't Always Get What You Want

I prepared myself for my dreaded annual check up. Probably not for the obvious reasons, but simply because they are a great reminder to me of how my body has let me down.

So, I rolled my shoulders back and told myself I would NOT say a word about infertility to my doctor who has walked this very long road with me. She knows me so well that she greets me with a hug every year and discusses options of treatments and scratches her head with me as to why my body has done this when there is no reasonable explanation. She is a believer and I can be honest with her when I don't feel God is leading us in one direction or another.  

In this recent visit it came up that Rogan wants a little brother or sister, I told her that I had come to peace with one child until he started asking for me to grow him a baby in my tummy. The words no sooner left my mouth and I was thinking, "this is what you said you weren't going to do"!! I was sure I had opened the door (accidentally) to a problem solving meeting on how to get me knocked up. I held my breath and looked across the room at her as she was quietly sitting there waiting for me to finish my sentence. I was shocked at her response...

She said, "You know, we don't always need to give our kids everything they want."

This coming from a lady who just put her youngest in college and I would assume sitting pretty well financially. Which is a total assumption on my part about the money, but I imagine a doctor/surgeon makes a bit more than our little family. (It is easy to get caught up in the lie that if money were no issue then we could give our kids whatever they need.) So here she is further down the road and giving me this insight that she has learned to be true...

"We don't need to give our kids everything they want. And that's okay" 

Not what I was expecting to hear from someone who helps couples conceive for a living.

I think there is this great pressure and parent guilt that we all unknowingly put on each other. That we need to give our kids every opportunity and encourage and do everything in our power so they don't feel deprived. My 20 year old self would have said something much different than how I feel today. Something along the lines of, "my kids will be involved in any and every sport they want and will never have a need or a want unmet." It's easy to have strong opinions about how your'e going to raise kids before you have that little responsibility and your'e faced with actually raising a nice human rather than a monster.

I didn't get everything I wanted growing up, I was disappointed and maybe even missed out on opportunities. I don't mean that as a slam on my parents either. 

That's just life. And I believe the disappointments I faced as a kid prepared me for what my grown up life has handed me.

My parents did a good job at not coddling us or rushing around to every sport and activity to keep up with the Jones. 

And again, my 20 yr old self would have said that getting my kid involved in everything was the most important. I do think giving him options and opportunities is good, hearing his hearts desires, yet what I think is more important is being okay with telling him no. 

Or, this is not a god decision for our family.  

Or, I don't understand why this happened, but together we'll get through it. 

I don't have to have all the answers and I certainly don't have to make everything work out smooth in his little life. 

Why would I want to start teaching him now that every thing we want or desire in life comes to pass. That is simply not true. There are disappointments in life and we don't always get what we want. And while it is our job to nurture and care for our kids giving them food and shelter and all that really important stuff, I don't think our job is to be their Genie in a bottle. 

The topics of sports or providing them with siblings are much different but I believe the point is the same. Without realizing it we begin to bend over backwards letting those sweet little voices steer our decisions of what they want rather than what we feel is best for them or our family. (Obviously not all of those decisions are in our control, yet I want to choose to be at peace with those that are not.)

I will be doing him much more harm when he is all grown up and gets disappointed, turned down or told no for the first time by this big mean world. I would much rather walk through the disappointment with him now while he's still little and honestly much more resilient than me. 

Because, we all know how tough life can be and we don't always get what we want. 

And that's ok!

(OK, I will get off my soapbox now. Thanks for reading!)