A Different Kind of Maternal

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine from the foster community the other day and we were talking about the differences we share. She was talking about never having that uterus twitch, and we were talking about seasons in our life when neither of us were even sure that we wanted children...
The uncertainty makes you question if that means you won't be a good mother. You ask yourself: "Am I nurturing?" You wonder if you are missing out, you wonder if you are depriving your husband of some experience, and you wonder if these are flaws.
Before I started fostering, I asked all these questions. Then, on a trip to Chicago, I was holding my friend's baby. A baby in a loving home who had had everything she needed before and since birth. And her mother said something about me being maternal. I laughed inside. I didn't feel maternal and it got me thinking and wondering about that. What if I'm not maternal? Then I thought about it some more. I thought about kids. I have been around a lot of them because of my job. The kids that I am drawn to, the kids I want to take home, are the kids whose parents forget to pick them up. The kids you can tell are starved for structure and attention. The kids who are one step from fostercare.
That is where my maternal instinct lies.
God made me this way. Made me to love the underdog. Made me to understand that behavior is communication. Made me to love Cabbage Patch Kids with their adoption certificate and the movie Annie as a child. Made me as a teen and young adult to dream not about my wedding day, or being pregnant, or graduating college; but standing in front of a judge, with a child who looks nothing like me, declaring them mine. God made me to be who I am so Isaiah (and the other children who I parent for a time or forever) can be who they are to be. When we walk out our God-given identity, our destiny, and that of the people around us, is ushered in.
"...on Earth, as it is in Heaven..."