The Check List LIfe

I love check lists.  I love the feeling of checking something off a list.  It gives me just an added bit of satisfaction that whatever I needed to get done, is in fact, finished.  Not to mention that with my tendency to forget things and put them off until the very last minute, check lists help me make sure things get done when they are supposed to.

Now, work with me here on this analogy.  I think that sometimes people can fall into a sort of "Check List Life"

Get your bachelors degree (check)
Get your Masters degree (check)
Get married to the man of your dreams (check)
Get a "big girl" job (check)
Buy a house (check)
Get a dog (check)
Have a baby (no check...yet)

As much as I love check lists...I want so much more for my life, my marriage, my family than for it to just be something to "check" off a list.  A few different things come to mind for me when thinking about combating this "check list" mentality.

First, I can remember a conversation I had with a good friend of mine back when Chris and I were still just getting to know each other.  I was confiding in this friend that I was worried about our differing life styles, namely, where we were in our faith journeys.  I was born and raise Catholic and stayed true to my faith my whole life.  Chris was born and raised Catholic but fell away from the church during his college years and never really went back.  When we first started talking he stated that he was "agnostic."  Well now, dating an "agnostic" was just not on my check list!  My friend Erica challenged me on this.  She talked about how often girls make a mental check list about what they want the "man of their dreams" to be like.  They need to be tall, handsome, virtuous, faithful, a man of faith, smart, funny...we might as well throw in there that they be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (yes, that is a Superman reference).  I realized, I don't want my "dream" man, I want the man God has for me.  What is that saying?  "If you want to make God laugh, show him your checklist?"  No?  Not it?  Close enough, right?

My friend pointed out that I was not allowing any room for grace.  Yes Chris may be an agnostic now, but was he willing to grown with me in faith?  The answer to that was yes, he was.  And has.  We grow together everyday in our faith, we talk about the role of our faith in raising our family.  If I had not allowed this room for grace, acknowledging that God knows best, ignored that tug on my heart, I would not be here with him as happy as I am.

Now, granted, I do believe that women should have standards.  It is good to know what might be your "deal breakers."  But I am just saying that I wonder whether sometimes God puts these "deal breakers" in our paths to show us that HE is still in control of our lives, not us.

And then I think back to a conversation I had with my sister years ago.  My sister is my hero.  She suffered with infertility for 11 years before conceiving, naturally, my sweet niece (for those who read my Who Am I? post, that is why we call her our miracle baby).  My sister's story is a powerful one, and hopefully she'll write a guest post for me one day.  Anywho, there was one evening I was with her and we were talking about women having babies and how sometimes women have children just so they can "check it off their list."  I agree.  I think that people can postpone pregnancy for wrong, selfish reasons - saving for that new Camero, maybe - and I am wondering if people can have a baby for the wrong reasons too.  I am grateful to these women for giving their children life of course, but as a counselor, I wonder about their quality of life.  If all these sweet, innocent children are is something checked off a life list I hope they will still be given the love, time, and attention that they deserve.

One of my guilty pleasures is the TV show One Tree Hill...certainly not a model of morality, but it has it's entertaining moments.  As I'm talking about this check list baby mentality, Brooke's mother comes to mind...if you've seen the show,  you'll get the reference! :-)

I learned my lesson though in the past, and I am going to leave this open to grace.  Grace for these mother's to change their view of their child from a commodity to be had, an item to check of their list; to viewing their children as gifts from God.

All of this is just a random thought I had the other day and it would be super interesting to get some other perspectives as I have not fully fleshed this idea out and may be taking a super narrow view.

Happy Wednesday!