Life Queston #24

Jacob longed for a wife. Rachel longed for children. What do you want more than anything else?

I find myself in Jacob and in Rachel on this one but what I want more than anything else is not just one thing…it can all be grouped in to a phrase that I hate more than most people know…oh man this is going to be a tough one to write, I can already feel the tears coming.

I want to be NORMAL.
Now I know that I have always said “”Normal is what is normal for you”", but the truth is I want to be considered Normal by society too.

I am a 29-year-old female with Cerebral Palsy and that does mean that I am in a walk er or wheelchair pretty much at all times (unless one of my pals decides to just be cute and carry me all over the place). I am also on my fourth, yes I said fourth attempt at a college degree. I have never been in a relationship and have never known what it is like to live life without needing help. Before you ask, yes it sucks…at times. I live with a foot in two worlds, one where all of those around me are in their late teens and early twenties and another world where people are in their late twenties or early to mid-thirties…I want things that I see in each world but I am not sure if I will ever have them.

Yes, the most obvious of things that I want is to be able to walk. Yup I said it, I admit it…I wish that I could walk and run around just as easy as all the friends that I try so hard to keep up with. I hate living a life that I describe as being in slow motion. That 10 minute shower you take is a 45 minute task for me…and that is only after I really get in that rhythm where I just know how to set it all up perfectly and stay as warm as possible. It takes you 5 minutes to dress and another 5 or 10 to do makeup, it takes me 20 to dress and I am just now learning makeup…it takes me about 20 minutes to feel as though I have done it right. Getting anywhere on campus that should be a five minute walk takes me at least 15 minutes…lets not even talk about the joke that is doing laundry…I want just one day of my life to be easy, one day where my body doesn’t fight me.

I watch as my younger set of friends begin to experience the freedoms of living away at college and to be honest I am experiencing some of these freedoms right alongside them, but I also watch as many of them fall in love for the first time. When I see this happen two things happen in me, one is that I begin to truly long for that experience in my life and the other is that I find myself becoming very possessive and protective of my friend. I’ll be the first to admit that it is very rare that I think some girl/guy is good enough for one of my friends and I am not too shy to let you know it.

For the record, nomatter which age range of friends I am talking about, I can think of only one relationship right off the top of my head that I was 100% comfortable with / in favor of from the very start. Some relationships that my friends get into I warm up to rather quickly, others take a little longer and there are still others that I am fairly sure that I will never really be okay with.

Yes I really do want to fall in love some day and find a great guy that I can be in a wonderful, meaningful, blessed, lasting relationship with…but right now I pretty much know I am not ready…that I cannot give a godly relationship the attention and care that it deserves. As crazy as it may sound that is one of the reasons that I set this challenge for myself, so that I would write my answers down and really have to think about what it is that I think and feel…not to sugarcoat it but to be honest with myself and with my God and I have no doubt that when I am ready God will bring the best man for me into my life and will make our marriage the strongest and most godly that it can be.

The other world that I am in is that of individuals in their late twenties and/or early to mid-thirties all of my friends in this world are engaged or married. If they are married odds are they have one child and if they do not have a second child, they are expecting or planning for it. I want the type of relationships that I see among these friends more than anything…and I want to be a mom. I am not sure that I could ever be a mother because of my Cerebral Palsy but I know the motherly instincts are there at least to a degree…I may not feel the need or desire to be with a small child for hours at a time but I do remember how I loved holding my cousin Wesley when he was born and will still sit up with Wes and his brother Cam when we are all visiting our grandparents at the lake…its supposed to be one movie but I will let it turn into two or three, and when they were small enough I would rock them to sleep. Wes is now 12 and is taller than me but he, along with his brother Cam is one of the 9 kids that I consider “”mine”"…nope I have no intentions of ever gaining custody of any of them, but I can be the cool cousin or pseudo aunt that will spoil them rotten and have all kinds of fun with them. When I am away at school, nothing puts a smile on my face faster than making the rounds to their blogs and finding new pictures, opening my email and finding a note from them or their parents with some tidbit about their week, talking to them on the phone, or even just hearing them fuss in the background. And if you want to see me melt, just let one of them hug my neck.

I want my own children but I am fairly certain I could never properly care for them without either having my husband be a stay at home dad or making enough money to hire a live in nanny….(not sure about letting my mom move in with us…but, you never know). I know that if I am meant to be a mother, it will happen and I am well aware that adoption is an option if I can’t or shouldn’t have one or more of my own.

So, yes, what I want more than anything is to be NORMAL.