Living without a child: learning to cry

I have covered this topic before but it is a hole in my heart that never seems like it will never be filled. Please forgive me and skip this blog if you want but sometimes I need to use this space to work things out, for me.

Before anyone calls me ungrateful, I am not.  I have a beautiful step-daughter who loves me and who I love and who is my friend but she has a mom and I am her friend and bonus parent.  I missed the baby years and the little kid years and now I have the Tweens and Teens to look forward to and I have embraced it and her. I will be there for her.

What annoys me is when I hear from people how I don't know what it is like to raise a child because I am childless.   How I don't know how hard a baby is to take care of day in and day out.   What people don't understand is that my mother and I were there with my brother when the triplets were born.  We were there helping take care of them all the time.  I gave up my life for almost two years for those girls.  I had no weekends. You think it's hard to raise one baby? Try three.  Have you ever bottle fed three at once because I have.  Have you ever had to calm three crying newborns all by yourself because I have. Have you taken care of babies on respirators, because I have.  Yet, somehow, still I don't qualify for knowing what it takes to be a parent. The kids don't need me now so I don't see them everyday. Well of course not, they are almost eleven. They have a life. I have a life.  They aren't my kids. 

I don't have kids and I never will. I don't need people to remind me of that. I missed my chance because I didn't marry the wrong person young and have a child with them.  For reasons that I can't go in to, it looks like adoption isn't available to me either.  So I cry.  I mourn the kids I wanted. I have a big hole in my heart, a child size hole that will never be filled and a lot of regrets. That's my truth. That's my life. That wasn't my choice.  What I do not need is anyone telling me I am wrong to want a child because I am too old. What I do not need is anyone telling me how much a child costs and how unrealistic I am.  

Maybe I am stupid.  I just always thought love would find a way.  I guess I was wrong in that too. Maybe I want to see God's plan where it isn't.  God isn't asking me to open my heart and my life.  Maybe I just wish He was.  Maybe I am naive to think a child that needs a home and a home that is availabe to a child is a good fit but maybe that isn't always the case.  Maybe I made a mistake.