Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! (Luke 1:42)

Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled. (Luke 1:45)

Growing up, I wanted to live a big, adventurous life and see the world. As a teen, I told my mother, a homemaker and mother of fifteen children, “You know, Mom, I’m going to be more than just a mother.” Lucky for me, I was her fifteenth teenager, so she just laughed.  

The Lord did have me all over the world working for a couple of decades. When my husband and I were engaged, we dreamed of having at least five children, maybe more. I told him we had until I was forty. I had some preconceived notions about the limits I would put on my fertility, and I’d heard that having babies after the age of forty was perhaps inadvisable. And I liked deadlines; let’s get it done, people. By the time I was forty and very old, we had four beautiful children here on earth, and four babies in heaven. 

Throughout these years of working professionally and mothering, joyfully welcoming babies in my arms, sorrowfully saying goodbye to a few little ones, God worked on my heart. The audacity of Mary’s “yes” to God, the strength and goodness that she embodied in welcoming our Savior in the midst of trial and difficulty – these mysteries were written more deeply into me. It became clearer to me that the call to be just a mother was in itself a great adventure, a big life. 

And so I found myself at a crossroads. I stood with my colleague on the top floor of a brand new skyscraper overlooking Shenzhen, a modern and fast-growing city in China. As I overlooked the sprawling expanse, its sheer immensity took my breath away. At that moment, it hit me anew that each soul possesses within it a much greater immensity and depth than the most fascinating places on earth.

It was on that rooftop in China that my heart broke open. I would lay down my life, lay down my ideas about having babies as a very old woman. I would lay down whatever the Lord asked, and I prayed that he would give me the strength of Mary, who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled. Maybe forty wasn’t that old? Maybe we could be a little flexible with that deadline? 

And so, I now find myself just a mother, at the incredibly elderly age of forty-seven, having welcomed two more babies here on earth, and one more who is awaiting me in heaven. My husband now jokes that our six children are my “six start-ups.” I can roll with that, and while I am no longer globetrotting, I see the immensity of their irreplaceable souls, and I’m so grateful for this big, new adventure.