Children and God's Timing

Sometimes people ask me if I have any children, and I don't know how to answer them. Strictly speaking, no, I have no children, just a dog and three cats and a husband who sometimes acts like he's a five year old. But then I think that I'm not being quite fair, at least not to my daughter. Lilly was born very premature (at only a little over 5 months), and we knew that there was not a chance at all that she would make it out of the hospital, no matter how hard we prayed or how bad we wanted it. I gave birth, I named my child, but I never held her...to this day I don't even know what she looked like. I was the only one in the maternity ward to leave empty-handed (but for a teddy bear that a kind nurse gave me so that I had something to hold at night).
I thought at the time that God must have been punishing me; I still don't know if he wasn't. I thought that it was the perfect time for children. My closest friends had all moved away (so no more late nights out drinking, those days were over), my dh and I bought a house, we finally got rid of all the roommates so we had room for a nursery, and I got a great part-time job where I would have summers and all holidays off. I didn't get into the graduate program that I wanted to attend, but when I looked at the positive pregnancy test (and later heard my Lilly's heartbeat) I thought that it was God's will that everything fall into place like that. My pregnancy was uneventful, even healthy, until the night before my water broke. As we drove to the hospital that morning, I knew that it was all over. But I had to ask, wasn't this part of God's plan? Everything else had fallen into place so perfectly, why would he take it all away now?
I will never know the answer to that question, besides that God wanted it that way for some reason. At first I was hurt, then angry, and I still often go back and forth between the two. But God has a plan, and it took me a while to realize that I don't know what it is. It was presumptuous and just plain silly of me to think that I had figured it all out. No one can figure everything out, because His plan is a mystery.
This month dh and I decided to "try" again, as both of us are anxious to finally hold a child in our arms. We were once so close that it feels like it should be happening soon, that I might still be due next month, and sometimes I'm still shocked when I wake up and see my (kind of) flat belly. Both of us want to much to be parents, but now there is no rush. God has shown us that I can get pregnant, and that with proper care I can have a child. But it is up to him to show us when. I'm not on my own schedule anymore (not that I ever really was, I just thought that I was), I'm now operating on his time. I'm leaving my life in his hands, not only because I have no choice-no one really has a choice-but because that is my choice.
When people ask whether or not I have children, I still avoid the question since the wound is so fresh that I can't maintain a conversation about it. But what I want to say is that I did, and I do, and God-willing, I will, some day soon.