An Open Letter To The Child I Never Had

You would be about 8 years old or maybe even older if God would have willed us to have children naturally. You may have even had a sibling by now. I had names picked out for you. Emmalyn Grace, if you were a girl and John Paul or Samuel Dean if you were a boy. I imagined you with your dad's dominant traits of brown hair and brown eyes, but with my pudgy nose which seems to be inherited pretty easily. We tried very hard to have you, but was told the only child we could have wouldn’t be you, he or she would be part me and part a stranger. Because of my obedience to my Catholic faith, I knew then that you would never be born, unless God willed it naturally one day. As much as we grieved this loss of never having you, and still do, we are thankful in a lot of ways. You see we met this red headed, 3-day old baby boy who was placed in foster care. And through him, God let us see what it was like to truly love a child. God is amazing that way, to let us see and feel how much we would have loved you. Although this child looks nothing like what I imagined you would look like, his love for us and for life is everything I hoped you would possess. He does not live with us all the time, but I can still feel his presence when he is gone, like when I step on one of his Legos. I also find his laundry mixed in with ours, and it reminds me that he has a place here, in our home and in our hearts forever. We still grieve you, the child we never had, but God sends us little blessings of hope, and the realization that a life without children gives us many opportunities to help others and to strengthen our marriage. We have plenty of time for ourselves and for each other. I titled this letter, "An Open Letter to the Child I Never Had," instead of "An Open Letter to the Child I Will Never Have," because despite all the heart break of being out of fertility options and losing foster children, I still believe in miracles from God. God can send us a child at any time (just ask Abraham and Sarah), and if he does, we will rejoice, and if he doesn't we will rejoice. Because God's Will is perfect. Children are a gift, not something we are entitled to. Whenever I get down and out about what I don’t have, I just remember 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10, "My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong."