I’m Already Ready Already

(Let’s just be clear here, you in this piece is me. Feel free to group yourself in if you’re so inclined.) 

Early marriage, before you’re ready to have kids, you “try not to” have kids. You go, enjoy, be married.

Then, when you might be ready for a child, you stop “trying not to” and see what happens. You claim you’ll wait patiently and that it will happen when it happens.

I know for me, when we got to the stop trying not to stage, it turned into the “are we pregnant yet?” stage. It’s like once you cross the line from not ready to maybe ready, you’re actually ready. You might stop short of charting cycles and taking temperatures, but you’re definitely on your game when it comes time to take a test and know when you could maaaaaaybbbeeee get that positive.

I have found very quickly that I have a similar mentality while waiting to adopt. I went from not quite ready to mostly ready, but I somehow burned right through the mostly ready stage into the “why didn’t we get a call yesterday?” stage. OK, it’s not quite that bad, but it’s quickly jumped to the front of most of my thoughts and conversations. I went from completely content as a family of three, to knowing for sure that we were missing our fourth.

Because it is so different than carrying a biological child and feeling a tiny bit of physical control, it is interesting to talk and dream through it with Mr. Gray. We each have ideas of what it might look like–what adoption process, what age range, what time frame. Ultimately, though, we know He has the perfect child for us and that we were called to wait. He planted the seeds and asked us to wait, and that is what we will do. I will attempt to do it with as much grace and poise as possible, because there is always so much power in the wait. I don’t want to waste the wait at all. I want to use it to spend time as a family of three, to cherish the relationship Baby Gray and I have, to be on-the-go with him and being able to be a “yes” parent while he is still the only one. (I know not all of that will change when another child is part of our family, but I want to be intentional about it now.)

The waiting is the part I used to loathe; I didn’t want to wait, I wanted instant gratification. Now, though, I love knowing when we are in a waiting season so I can take advantage of what is while I wait on what is to come.  

Do you remember the commercial with the line “it’s already ready already” from the 1990s? I have always remembered the slogan, but I never knew what it was from. I looked it up in case any one (my husband) missed the reference in the title. Too bad it wasn’t for something better than frozen daiquiris.