It's been more of a hot topic in our conversations and on my mind a lot lately.
Babies. Children. How many? Birth control? Family Planning?
Rewind 10 years, and if you were to ask my almost husband and I how many kids we were going to have, we would both have answered "three".
I took the birth control pill (naively and a little ignorantly) for the first 3 years of our marriage. Then when we bought our first home we decided it was "time to start our family". (We had our life nicely figured out in 1, 5, 10 and 20 year increments.....I laugh at that now since we usually aren't planned a week in advance anymore - let alone a year!)
One month later we passed our first pregnancy test and thus started our crazy journey and my first taste of 'real' life.
Pregnancy was blissful.
Then our world shattered and so did the skull that protected my faithless, unmarred and in-the-box thinking.
Who is God? Who am I? What is life?
Fast forward 5 years.
We now have 4 pregnancies under our belt, and blessed with 3 healthy children. We are both open to another, but then there is a big pause. Is there a period after 4 or is there a comma? And are WE to decide that or is God? And an even bigger question is, what does decide mean?? A quick preventative surgery? Non-pill birth control? Planning, timing, charting...?
Culture (as well as my own selfishness) screams down my neck saying "you're crazy!"
But a thought that rocks me to the core is, how can we say "no" to another when we ache and long for one that was?
Why would we want to prevent a blessing? A financial burden, filled with more stress, more running around, more sleepless nights, more mess......but more blessing!?
I do know one thing.... that God has called me to wrestle with this, so wrestle I will.
(It was much easier to avoid this thought/topic when you have one or 2 babies at home and you feel like you've got all the time in the world and you can deal with it later.....well, later is approaching....little one is 6 months and we all know how my track record is for getting pregnant...)
3 comments:
For what it's worth, here's my two cents. :) We have been through this, too...not one of those cut and dry things (at least for us).
One of the purposes God has created us is to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28).
God has also commanded us "in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths" (Proverbs 3:6).
Also..."Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5)
Another passage to consider is Psalm 127..."blessed is the man who hath his quiver full of them".
All of this to say that I believe this requires trust in God to guide each individual couple to a decision regarding number of children, birth control, etc. God has given us tools (like chemotherapy for cancer)...not saying I agree with birth control...just throwing this out there. A quiver full is different to everyone, I believe. To us we believe our quiver is full with 5. To others, it's full with 2...or 12...
We came to this decision after much prayerful consideration and searching the Scriptures. I'll be praying for you guys!!
indeed, there are varying ideas surrounding the questions you've brought up. I agree with Becky that a full quiver is different for each. we always thought we'd have 3 kids...but after two, Alf felt that with his work shifts, he saw the kids so little each day that to add more kids would not allow him the quality time he wanted to have with each child. i totally understand and respect that. not saying that i was fighting to have more though ;) but we were both very peaceful with the decision to have 2 and have always acknowledged that if God wants to bless us with more, we'll receive that blessing, but we're not TRYING to have more. but no pills in this family...i took it at the beginning of our marriage too...now thinking about it, i'm not a fan of it telling your body what rhythms/cycle to have to prevent pregnancy. so we use a different method :)
ack! I know. It's tricky business. Both of us would love more. But we also are trying to consider Foster care and adoption into our choices. And we have no idea. I do have peace right now, though, with knowing that my body needs a longer break if we do decide to have another biological child next. Lewis's pregnancy was pretty good but this postpartum period has been rough on me (especially my thyroid) and I'm feeling a little ragged. I doubt we'll ever use surgical methods for birth control but we may decide to use natural family planning to space our children in order to best allow room for those we hope to add through adoption and/or foster care. I think I know what God wants for us somedays and other days I'm so confused. Let me know if you figure it all out :)
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