When I was a young child, maybe six or seven years old, I announced to my family one day that I was never going to get married or have kids. I was just going to have a roommate. I don’t remember what my family was talking about at the time I made this announcement and I don’t remember why I made the announcement. As far as I can remember, I never had an aversion to marriage or kids – especially at that age – and I don’t know why I was so smitten with the idea of a roommate. Although I don’t remember any of the surrounding information, I have this distinct memory of making the announcement to my family. I remember I was sitting on the floor playing with dolls and I made the declaration. Over the years I’ve wondered if this was a prediction or a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I guess you could say I fell into my career of working in the nonprofit sector. My undergraduate degree is in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing. As I was getting close to graduation, my mother, fearful I wouldn’t have a job after graduating, began calling people she knew to see if they would hire me. My mother was a registered nurse, so many of the people she knew were either in the medical field or social services. I began volunteering at the local housing authority in the Resident Initiatives Department and they hired me right after graduation. Working with families that desperately needed assistance and resources was unknowingly a great fit for my personality. I often tell people that working for nonprofits in low-income communities is challenging and addictive. The challenge is in working with someone who may be at the lowest point in their life and it’s up to you and your team to provide resources to help lift them up – figuratively and literally. It’s addictive because once you’ve helped that one family, mother, or child, you are on a high and you begin believing you can help everyone – that you can save them all. And you work tirelessly, because you know, if you can just provide everything for this one, they will be okay, and you can move on to the next one. Except, it’s never just one more thing. And even if you’ve done everything humanly possible, sometimes the person reverts back to old behaviors and you have to start all over again. And you become obsessed with saving the next one, ensuring that no one else falls through the cracks. And it becomes a cycle on repeat – over and over again.
Until one day, you look up and you wonder where the time went. You’re suddenly noticing that all of your friends are getting married and having children. I wasn’t concerned that I didn’t have children until my thirtieth birthday. I began feeling like I was running behind – my friends were married and beginning to have their first and second children, and due to my complete focus on work, a long-term relationship or children had not crossed my mind. My mother began pressuring me in a joking way, always letting me know that she was the oldest person she knew with no grandchildren. I repeatedly told her to tell her other children and leave me alone. But I secretly began thinking about having children. I briefly considered adoption and even artificial insemination. However, growing up without a father, I knew how hard it was for me, and I didn’t want to knowingly put another child through that if I could help it. However, I decided to share with my mother my thoughts and she soon began giving me articles about artificial insemination and friends began urging me to adopt, telling me there were so many children who needed loving families and that one parent was better than none. But the more I thought about children, the more I began to think that I just wanted to be pregnant – I wanted to experience the miracle, but I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted the child. And I felt horrible. Who doesn’t want a child? And what kind of person – woman – does that make me?
My mother loved children. She had a huge heart and was always helping children. She would “semi-adopt” children with whom she came into contact. She was a school nurse later in life, so there were plenty of children to help. She created chores around her house for them to do in order to have a reason to give them money or take them to the store to purchase groceries, clothes, or shoes. Children she “adopted” would go on vacation with us or she would take them to Disneyland (she believed every child should experience Disneyland at least once in a lifetime). She was so happy to be able to create those opportunities for them.
And I love children too. In my work with nonprofits over the years, I worked mostly with children. I soon became unrelenting in my pursuit to change the inequities children living in poverty have as it relates to education and opportunities. And it wasn’t as if I woke up one day and decided I didn’t want children; it was more of a gradual, subconscious act that I wasn’t doing anything to make it happen. I would see kids playing, or babysitting for friends and family members, thinking how beautiful they were, and wondering what it would be like if I had my own. I even thought of names that I liked if I had a boy or a girl. But I never went that extra step. It was never an overwhelming need I had. It became easy to tell myself that I was too busy with work or I hadn’t found the right partner than to openly admit that I wasn’t sure I even wanted children. It suddenly turned into this secret that I kept hidden inside because everyone around me was basking in the glow of motherhood, believing I should experience it too, and because I hadn’t, then I must not be fulfilled having missed out on life’s greatest purpose. I’ve been told many times that motherhood is the greatest miracle and job on earth. And I agree. There is no job harder or more fulfilling than bringing another life into this world and helping him/her become a kind, generous, and loving human being. But maybe that was not my purpose.
Purpose. A simple word yet filled with such deep meaning. We spend our lives trying to figure out why we are here on earth; what purpose God gave us to fulfill during our lifetime. Pastor Rick Warren even wrote a bestselling book about it, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? The book assists the reader in discovering the life we were meant to live. Although this is an older book, it has been one of my favorites as I believe all of us were designed to fulfill a purpose during our time on earth. Some of us know early on in our lives our purpose. My sister always wanted to be a teacher – she spoke about her purpose when she was in the third grade. However, for many of us, it has taken longer to figure out.
Someone I admire once said that we all start off on a journey and somewhere along the way we lose it. We begin to wonder if we are in the right job, relationship, etc. And we begin to question why we are doing what we are doing. Why are we engaging? And I know I have been in that place – that I’m still in that place many days. I have wondered so many times if I bypassed the blessing of motherhood that was meant for me. Did my uncertainty, selfishness, or lack of initiative keep me from that special gift that would have changed my life? The answer is, I don’t know. Maybe. But maybe it just wasn’t meant to be either. Maybe the reason I am here is to love children in another way; to serve my fellow brothers and sisters in other ways. What I now realize is not having children shaped me, but it hasn’t defined me. I still look at children and wonder what mine would look like, what college would they have attended, and what career would they have chosen. But I also think of all the children and families I have loved and supported in my life and career. Maybe they are my why. All of us have a purpose, something that shapes us and makes our hearts overflow. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering and it doesn’t have to save the world. Thinking that in order to have purpose we have to do something grandiose or something that others think is worthy, is a quick trip down a spiraling rabbit hole. Instead, reconnect with the spark of your why. Remember YOUR why.