An old acquaintance from high school posted rant on Facebook this morning about how she's sick of people asking when she and her husband are going to have a baby. She went on to explain how they want to wait until they are "ready". They want to get out of debt, have a house, good jobs, Master's degrees, etc. Basically they are waiting for their lives to be perfect. So here's my unsolicited two cents (and personal experience); Having a baby makes your life perfect.
Logan and I had a plan when we got married. He'd finish college (1 year), then we'd move to St. George where I would finish college (3 years) while he worked. Then we'd move and I'd teach for 3 years while he got his Masters degree. Then I'd quit my job, we'd move back and we'd have a baby. Any of you who know us very well at all know that very little of this plan actually happened.
Logan graduated, we moved to St. George, but Logan was "demoted" very shortly thereafter. I finished college but it took an extra semester because not all of my credits transferred from SUU to Dixie, and for some reason, teachers graduating in December are at a major disadvantage. I also graduated at a time when there were literally hundreds of teachers applying for a dozen jobs, and I didn't get one. I had a hard time finding a job at all. Places like Kmart and Deseret Book don't exactly hire college graduates. I ended up back at the dry cleaner before finally getting an aid job working 30 hours a week, but only being paid for 25 at $8/hour.
That's when we decided that we weren't getting any younger, took a leap of faith, and got pregnant nearly 5 years after we were married. Then life started falling into place. I feel like we had spent years trying so hard to jam the puzzle pieces of life together and getting no where. We were trying to force life to go the way we wanted it to.
I won't say I regret waiting necessarily. I'm grateful for the years we had to build a solid marital foundation. I'm grateful for all the adventures we had and for all the memories, but having babies is when life finally turned our way.
In the years and months before we had Chapter, Logan's work environment had deteriorated rapidly. He was trapped in a position with no room for advancement under an arrogant and egotistical manager, and none of the upper management offered any assistance. We were both stuck in jobs we didn't even need a degree for. We'd been applying for jobs everywhere for months, we were more than willing to move out of state, but Engineering jobs usually require 3 years of experience, and teaching jobs were few and far between, especially in cities large enough to have engineering jobs available. We didn't even dare buy this house (we rented it) because we didn't really see a way for us to stay here.
Then literally within a month of Chapter's birth, Logan got a call that would change our lives. Logan was offered a job by Quality Excavation to be an estimator (Miracle #1). Still not the job he went to school for, but it was a job he liked, working for a company that was owned by a truly wonderful family, and they treated him well. Then 6 months later, Logan passed the Professional Engineering Exam on his first try (Miracle #2), then he was hired by this same family to work for their engineering firm Development Solutions (Miracle #3). And you know what? We never missed my tiny salary through any of this.
Having kids changed our lives for the better, in completely unexpected and unforeseen ways. Our life puzzle just wouldn't fit together without them and I'm grateful everyday that we abandoned OUR view of how our life SHOULD be for HIS view of what our lives COULD be. Sometimes it's hard to admit that Heavenly Father knows more about what is best for us than we do, but He is always right.
