There is something quietly sacred about the beginning of a marriage — the way two people stand at the edge of a shared life and leap, hand in hand, into the unknown. We were young when we made that leap. Full of laughter, full of dreams, and perhaps a little wonderfully naive about everything that lay ahead.
In December 2008, Joel and I said I do with hearts wide open. I remember standing beside him, looking into his eyes, and thinking, Whatever comes — we’ll walk through it together. Neither of us knew then how deeply those words would one day be tested.
The early years of our marriage were alive with movement. Joel’s work carried him across continents — time zones became a language we both learned to speak fluently. I had my own life blooming in England, a career that kept me grounded even as we stretched across the miles between us. Those years were a beautiful, sometimes chaotic school.
We were learning everything — how to argue and forgive before the sun went down, how to make decisions that honored both of our voices, how to build something solid out of two very different people. There were ordinary Tuesday evenings that felt like discoveries, and long-haul flights that felt like love letters written in jet lag.
“Marriage is not a destination,” a wise woman once told me. “It’s a country you explore together — and sometimes you get wonderfully lost.”
We got wonderfully lost, in the best possible way. We traveled when we could — cobblestone streets in Europe, sunsets we couldn’t name, photographs we still pull out on quiet evenings and smile over. Those days were a gift, and we knew it even as we were living them.
I have always loved children. Even as a little girl, there was something in me that drew me toward them — their honesty, their wonder, the way they trust you so completely. Long before I understood what motherhood truly meant, I was already practicing it in small ways. Neighbors trusted me with their little ones. Relatives handed me babies before I was old enough to drive. And I held them, every single one, like they were something holy.
That longing never left me. It didn’t shout — it simply stayed, like a candle left burning in a quiet room, steady and sure, waiting for its moment.
Joel and I talked about it often, in that easy, unhurried way couples do when the future still feels spacious and unrushed.
“One day,” Joel would say, reaching for my hand across a restaurant table somewhere in the world, “we’re going to have a house full of noise and tiny shoes.”
I’d laugh. “Tiny shoes everywhere.”
“The most beautiful chaos,” he’d grin.
But we were young — younger than we perhaps realized — and we made a quiet, intentional choice: we would wait. We wanted to settle into each other first, to fill our marriage with memories that belonged only to us, before we opened its doors to new life. It felt wise. It felt right.
So we chose to wait.
The Question That Lingers
It started gently enough.
“So — when are you two having children?”
The first time someone asked, I smiled easily and said, “Oh, soon enough. We’re still enjoying being newlyweds.” A light answer for a light moment. No weight to it yet.
But the question has a way of returning. At family dinners. At church gatherings. From well-meaning friends who tilted their heads and studied us with kind, curious eyes.
“You’ve been married a few years now — are you thinking about starting a family?”
“You’d make such wonderful parents.”
“Don’t wait too long, you know.”
We smiled each time. We answered politely. But the question would linger in the car on the drive home, sitting quietly between us like an uninvited passenger.
Physically, everything was fine. We were healthy, young, and by every outward measure, perfectly prepared. The doctors had no concerns. There was no alarm to be sounded. And yet the timing had simply not come. We had chosen to wait, and we were still waiting — not with dread, but with a quiet trust that felt both peaceful and, in unguarded moments, a little fragile.
I remember one evening, sitting by the window with a cup of tea growing cold in my hands, watching rain trace lines down the glass. Joel came and sat beside me.
“You okay?” he asked.
I was quiet for a moment. “Do you ever wonder,” I said slowly, “if we’ll know when the time is right? Like — really know?”
He was quiet too. Then: “I think we’ll trust our way into it.”
It wasn’t a perfect answer. But it was an honest one. And somehow, it was enough.
We had married young with open hearts, and we had waited with open hands. We believed — genuinely believed — that God’s timing was not our timing, and that the right season for children would come in its own perfect way. We had no reason to doubt. We had every reason to hope.
And so we held that hope gently, the way you hold something precious — not clutching it so tightly it bruises, but carefully, faithfully, like a promise you have not yet finished reading.
The story was still being written. We just didn’t know yet which chapter we were in.
To be continued.
