Someday... it's complicated.

I'm going to answer a question that I have been getting since my wedding day. "So, when are you guys going to have kids?" In short, I dunno. But, I'll explain why. When this subject has come up, I have learned a lot about the way other people feel about it. Most people in this area think kids should happen right after marriage and they should keep coming. That's fine for those people. It's when they start telling me the way I'm supposed to do it that I start to feel upset.
I've been called selfish, and you know what, maybe it is. But, I never wanted the Mormon dream of a big family. I came from that and we did a fine job pretending on the outside, but we were not a happy family. Still aren't, really. We've just learned how to deal with it. My siblings are all extremely different from one another.
My parents have never gotten along well; they get along better now than ever before, but there are still days that are more difficult. I dated a lot of guys that treated me like crap and after a while I didn't want to get married at all. But, Johnny changed that. He taught me a lot about people and a lot about myself. I couldn't help loving him. I got married to be with him. I'm happy. I can decide things for myself, I can be who I want, I can accomplish things. And I am terrified of changing that, I'll admit. John's family life was no picnic either and, in our worlds, families aren't happy. Both of us feel a little unqualified to try to make the kind of family we want.
I've been learning to let the little things that make me mad go, and notice the little things that make me happy. I'm not that good at it, yet, but I'm trying.
The thing is, we want to have kids so badly. But, life dealt us a bad hand, I gotta tell you. We both were laid off from our jobs a month before we got married. We've been working low-paying, undesirable jobs for the majority of our marriage. I taught kids piano that got higher allowance than I got paid from their parents in a month. John delivered packages at least 12 hours a day, the best driver they had. His reward was no sick days, no vacation days, and cut salary right after we moved into an apartment we could barely afford. We don't have connections. Neither of us can get a job from family. Sure, I could try begging my extended relatives, but we find it more honorable to earn our own bread. And we've earned everything we have.
My parents have been helping me with school and it is a sacrifice for them. I've had a lot of pressure to do well; every test I take I feel like if I don't do well then I let down my present family and my future family. We have always been struggling. We have tried to get a sturdy footing beneath us, but every time it feels like we have, a foot breaks through. Everyone tells me there's never a right time to have kids. But, there is a wrong time and it's been the wrong time for us and we don't know when it will change. I want to be past the hardest time of our life when our kids are here. I don't want to explain to them they can't play an instrument or they can't play soccer because of money. I just want to give our kids chances - not the chances we didn't have, their chances. I don't want to be rich, I just want enough to make it and to take care of them. Well, we haven't been making it.
I know God. I talk to him a lot and lately I get answers. He agrees that it's not our time for kids. He has been helping us despite all the things we "should" be doing that we haven't been. He still takes care of us because he's about so much more. And when we're ready, we'll have some beautiful kids and I am going to love them from somewhere I haven't even found yet and I'll keep loving them, even when they hate me. I'll love them and try to help them be good people in their own ways. So that's the extremely long answer to "why" that I kinda doubt anyone had the tenacity to read. (Good job if you did!) But, I feel so much better, because seriously the last couple of years have just snapped me into pieces and I've needed to just tell someone how much I want those things that I can't have yet.
So, yes. We'll have kids someday. With birthday parties and Halloween costumes and backpacks and science projects and math homework. And we'll do our best to have a good family, whatever that ends up meaning for us.