Unexpected Gifts

My son is about to turn 16 years old.  This is a mind numbing reality and the only thing I can think about is what someone told me when he was a baby  - “The years go by so fast, but sometimes the days are really long.”  How true that has been.

Even though I believe children are a gift from God, I’ve struggled many times with this particular gift and wondered if it was returnable.

It’s an awesome responsibility raising a child.  How people raise more than one is beyond me.  We even have good odds in our household – two full time parents to one child – and it still feels impossible.

I was 41 years old and my husband, Kory, had just turned 55 and retired, when Kaleb was born.  He is our first and only child – an unexpected retirement gift.  I never planned to have children and Kory was told he wasn’t able to – so I couldn’t have been more unprepared for motherhood.  What we thought our retirement years were going to look like couldn’t have been more different.  All our retirement plans got put on hold while we have taken this detour to raise a child.

Even though our son has turned out to be the most unexpected blessing of our lives, at the time of his birth, I was totally clueless on what to do with this miraculous gift from God.    

Several years prior to Kaleb entering the picture, I tried to adopt a third dog from the Humane Society.  I had to fill out several forms and I was investigated to determine whether I was fit to take on such a responsibility.  In the end, I was denied the dog on a technicality – the city we lived in required a kennel license for that many pets. 

Yet, ironically, when I brought a baby home from the hospital, no one asked me a thing.  I didn’t have to prequalify; there were no forms to fill out, no background investigation, and certainly no one checking out whether I’d be a good parent or not. Even being so much older than most first time mothers, motherhood seemed an daunting task for which I’d received no training.  Praying daily for wisdom has been my number one survival tool.

This past weekend our home was full of teens hanging out with our boy and the teenage boy living upstairs.  It feels like we’ve entered yet another place of uncharted territory as the teens weren’t all boys. While the end of raising Kaleb may be in sight, I’m pretty sure there are still a few surprises and challenges left for us to experience before he’s off to college and we start our Retirement: Version 2 plans.

As I was in the midst of wrapping up gifts for Kaleb’s 16^th birthday, some things he asked for and some things he didn’t - I thought about him as a gift we certainly didn’t ask for, but usually the gifts you didn’t ask for turn out to be the greatest gifts of all.