Stepping By Choice

My journey to motherhood has not been an easy one and I promise if one tried to map that journey they would get lost and give up. Twist, turns, 180's and 360's this journey has been a roller coaster ride gone off the track.  I quit mapping and I won’t give up.  Being in my 20’s and telling people that I have four children 15, 11, 5 and 3 I am usually met with “But they’re not all yours are they?!” accompanied by a look of shock mixed with some disgust. Over the years my reactions have varied, in the beginning I used to get angry by others reactions.  I felt as though they were demeaning my family and trying to make me feel like less of a mother.  Now-a-days I like to gently put people in their place for rushing to such a quick judgment with a line such as- “Well, I was 11 when I had my oldest, but we have bounced back and I think I turned out well…. The jury is still out on the kid though…”  

For those who know me, NO I did not have a child at 11. At the young ages of 10 and 6 my oldest two became mine when they moved into my home, moved into my family and moved into my heart.

Did I give birth to them? No.

Am I trying to replace their mother? Nope, we are very different people.

Do I love them any less? No.  My love for them is different yet unconditional. 

When most women give birth they feel an instant feeling of love for their helpless little combination of chromosomes.  While other emotions change with that growing child, that instant feeling of love remains without choice and without alteration.  I am blessed enough to tell you that yes, I have felt this twice!  But there is another little less known type of motherly love; it is the love of choice.    I met these souls while dating their father and when I married their father I made the choice to love these children.   This is a choice I make every day. Raising children is not easy by any means.  Raising children that occasionally hold you accountable for everything they see wrong in their lives- beyond challenging.  As cliché as it is I tell myself every day “One day, they will thank me” (thank you to those who echo this sentiment daily!). One instant I swear up and down that they hate me and are out to get me and then in one split second, I see one of my mannerisms become theirs and it hits me “YOU ARE IMPACTING THEIR LIVES!!!” Good thing I work well under pressure!

  

I by no means get it right every day, but every day I try. They have taught me so much about how to live by example and what kind of parent I need to be.  As much as I want to teach them; they teach me.

I choose to ignore the social expectations of a family.

I choose to be present in their lives

I choose to ignore it when they don’t want me.

I choose to know them better than they think I do.

I choose to protect them, even when they don’t want me to.

I choose to make them responsible future citizens.

I choose to encourage them.

I choose to prepare them for the real world.

I choose to provide for them.

I choose to never give up on them.

I could not choose to give birth to them. But I choose to love them. 

Every single day, I choose to love them.