That realization dawns in an instant.
Perhaps it is the time your childhood friend, still so young, posts a photo of her first grandchild on social media. Perhaps it is when the first grandchild is born to your sibling. Perhaps it is the first time you are invited to a baby shower for the yet-to-be-born grandchild of your best friend. Or perhaps the fact that you will never have grandchildren is one you face because you have children who won’t have children. As birth rates fall, the grandchildless grow in number.
New versions of the old wonderings begin all over again.
You realize you will never know what kind of grandparent you would have been, what kind of birthday parties you would have hosted, special outings you would have planned, spoiling you would have done and dreams you’d have helped fund. But you think you would have been a good one.
Facing this blank spot in your life’s story, you might feel sad or empty or even ashamed. But hopefully not.
You realize that history and the present are filled with people who had or have no children and therefore never had or will have grandchildren. Yet, these people bore good fruit in the world and have nurtured us all.
So you look to these: Julia Child. Cicely Saunders. Marguerite Henry. Flannery O’Connor. William Blake. Anne and Emily Bronte. Mary Cassatt. Emily Dickinson. Helen Keller. Hannah More and all of her sisters. Florence Nightingale. Jonathan Swift. Leonardo da Vinci. Queen Elizabeth I. Julian of Norwich. St. Paul. Perhaps, too, many of your own friends.
And Jesus.
You look to Jesus, the Son of Man, who instead of having children made us God’s children.
You look to Jesus, and you determine to be more like him.
You seek, by God’s grace, to have children of the faith who will then someday have their own children of the faith, for generation upon generation.
And that will be so grand.
This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
