"Not Ready Yet"

I used to think that “not ready yet” meant “not good enough yet.” As I thought about why God hadn’t allowed my husband and me to have a child, I sometimes concluded that it wasn’t the right time yet because I wasn’t ready yet. I see now that there are a variety of ways to make that statement, and my interpretation at the time was a decidedly negative one.

I thought that God was waiting for me to be “good enough,” so that He would let me be responsible for a child.

One glaring problem with this was that I looked around in my daily life and saw many people who had been granted children and who certainly did not look “good enough” by my standards.

At the same time, I got caught up in thinking the Lord was waiting for me to somehow “get my act together,” and then He would “reward” me with a child. This led me to believe that God wasn’t happy with me yet, and that I had to make myself better. So, really, it was a way to judge and evaluate myself and find that I always came up lacking. I wasn’t good enough at cooking; I wasn’t fast enough at getting basic chores out of the way. I didn’t act mature enough. I got upset too easily. How would I ever be “good enough” to merit such a serious reward?

Now, I think being ready—arriving at the right time—is a much more mysterious proposition. Yes, there is some element of arriving at the right place in my own development as a person. But that point isn’t some outwardly obvious status defined by a specific set of competencies. And it isn’t a moment that I can force myself to reach. The right moment in my life on earth to begin nurturing a child is known only to God. He knows me. He knows my husband. He knows our future children. There are so many mysteries in the workings of God in all of creation. How can I possibly fathom God’s plans for me, the way in which He has purposed to “work all things for good”?

So now, when I say that we aren’t ready yet, and that everything will happen at the right time, I don’t mean that God isn’t satisfied with me yet. I don’t mean that He’s waiting for me to “get better.” I mean that, in His infinite wisdom, He knows the exact right time and circumstances for creating another life to grow side by side with ours.