One of the more industrious things that my husband did in my absence this past weekend was tackle the landfill that’s our basement.
When he told me he’d been cleaning, I felt a mixture of gratitude and guilt—gratitude because Hello! I didn’t have to do it; and guilt because, well, I hadn’t done it.
Cryptically, my husband then asked me, “Do you mind if we tempt fate?”
“What do you mean?” I felt nervous. I thought maybe he had found my boxes of dusty dried roses and thoroughly rusty glue gun. Was he about to suggest that I quit my day job to seek employment with the local florist?
No, I was certain that wasn’t it.
“I’d like to give away the baby stuff,” he informed me. “You know, the high chair, the pack-n-play & whatnot.”
“Oh,” I replied, surprised yet not surprised. “Well, that’s fine.”
I understood his point because that stuff takes up a lot of space. Why not bless another few families since I am clearly not in the conceiving way? And I was fine with his decision…or so I thought.
When I ran downstairs to grab a pound of ground beef from the freezer, I saw the pile he’d made for the guys from Goodwill. Sure enough, there was the battered green pack-n-play that should probably just be tossed. There was the highchair, a potty seat, and a couple of big ol’ baby toys that were the “big ticket items” one Christmas.
And there was our baby backpack.
I stopped in my tracks and my breath caught in my throat. I loved that baby backpack. It was well made and had seen us through innumerable trips to national parks and the odd apple orchard or two. I have favorite photos of me with my kids on hikes—my face flushed but joyful while over my shoulder peeps a wide-eyed toddler.
Suddenly I was not okay with my husband’s decision, and I was not okay with the fact that we no longer have babies, or toddlers, or even a preschooler in diapers. (That’s right. Angela just up and trained herself two weeks ago.) Choking back tears, I fled the scene.
That’s why I haven’t cleaned, I thought. That’s how I pretend…and hope…that at 41 I might still be blessed.
I’m okay with God’s will but it can be hard to trust it.
Let’s do it. Let’s tempt fate.
Ad Jesum per Mariam,
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