Red Light, Green Light

I was cleaning up the back-end of my blog - checking posts and finishing or deleting unfinished drafts - and I found this post that I was working on right about this time last year (mid-August 2012), but never got around to posting. You see, this was a sensitive topic for Carey and me. We were working through a major decision for our family, and it was unsettling and extremely difficult. I took to my blog as I tried to work out the feelings and emotions that were swirling around us. But for some reason, I never hit that "publish" button...

So, I've mentioned before that Carey and I were discussing if we'd like to have any more kids. (As much as we can make that decision. Abby and Zach were two of God's wonderful surprises, so I get the feeling that if it is His plan for a third Baby Ng, nothing Carey or I say will really stop that...) Before Zach was born, we'd discussed having at least three, possibly four kids. With everything that our poor little man went through during his first month of life (read all about that here), we began to entertain the idea that, maybe, just maybe, two kids was enough for us. As we approached Zach's first birthday, we began discussing if we did indeed want another child.

I have to be honest: this is the hardest decision I have ever made. Marrying Carey: not a hard decision. Deciding that we wanted to have children together: not a hard decision. Deciding that we wanted to try for a second child, even after our miscarriage: not a hard decision. Perhaps it's been that all of these decisions have been moving us forward. They've been green-light decisions. They've been decisions to take us to another place in our relationship.

But what about the decision to stop? Have we really made any red-light decisions in our relationship? Not really... Yet here we sit, preparing to make a very big red-light decision. A decision that will affect how our family looks forever...

I was struck by the lines I'd written in the first paragraph about Abby and Zach being God's wonderful surprises and nothing we choose to do could possibly stop God's plan for our family. And it is true. We were not trying to get pregnant. As difficult as the decision was, we had pretty much decided that we were done having children. And yet, here I sit. With two babies asleep upstairs and a baby growing in my belly. I am surprised. I am thankful. And I am grateful for a God who is patient with "our plans" and wondrously generous with His blessings, even when we believe that we're at a red light.