A few days ago, a blog commenter left a thoughtful comment on my post about 'Why i think having another baby is prolife'.
i hope it's ok if i post my response here - because it niggled and wiggled at my conscience for a few hours before i was able to put my finger on the part of her comment that gave me pause. i'll post that paragraph here verbatim, just so that i don't misquote:
I think it can be dangerous to encourage some couples to just keep having children. I have seen some mothers who, in my opinion, are barely mentally or physically able to handle the children they have. Yet they get caught up in some their friend's (who they admire) thinking that if they are following God's will, they must not control how many children they have.
i think i should probably clarify here that i didn't intend for my post to relay the message that if couples are following God's will, they must not control how many children they have. Perhaps i misworded something - or maybe she's reading into some of the other things i have posted on here and jumped to that conclusion - but it was certainly not my aim. But even that misunderstanding isn't what was bothering me...
It was the word dangerous.
i think the ideas that follow that word in that paragraph, are fairly mainstream thinking; that we need to be able to handle what we've got before we take on anymore. It's just that this type of thinking gets us measuring those around us - judging their capacity - in our own opinion, rather than trusting that God knows what He's doing when He breathes life. We often misjudge our own selves too... thinking we're unable when God has something much greater in mind. i'm sure this way of thinking would have excluded Rahab the harlot from the lineage of Christ - or a young unmarried teen from being the mother of Jesus... but in God's wisdom - there was no such exclusion.
The word dangerous reminds me of that time in history when Pharaoh was allowed to hold God's people in slavery - surely there are few times in history when it would have been more dangerous to have a baby... but God didn't withhold childbearing from His people to protect them from their inability to mentally or physically handle the children they had.
No.
He chose that time to bless them even *more*. The midwives who chose to disobey the Pharaoh's orders to kill the Hebrew boys? - He blessed them with more children of their own. One of the reasons the Israelites were so hated and feared by the Egyptians was because of their ever increasingly large numbers.
We live in a day & age where birth control is socially acceptable - both in and outside of the church walls - for any reason - or no reason at all...Really - the whispered encouragement to think about the gift of childbearing can barely be heard above the roar calling for planning our parenthood...
There's a big part of me that wonders if gently encouraging men and women - married couples - to rethink their preconceived notions about the perfect number of children doesn't go hand and hand with the job outlined for the older women in Titus 2. Because isn't making a baby an expression of love to your husband? Isn't an openness to the possibility of having another child showing that we have a capacity to love? The older women are to "...teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind..."
i hope this comes across as gently as i intend it to, because goodness knows i wish i had a lot more wisdom and clarity on this topic. But i felt like it was a word worth making note of - and deserving of it's own post in defence of encouragement.
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Carol - thank you for reading my blog & for posting your comment - even though i don't know you, you have encouraged me so many times. i hope you don't mind me disecting your comment a bit!
4 comments:
Yes, I believe I did get ideas from some of your other posts.
I have had an interest and have been a big supporter of couples who have chosen to homeschool, have large families, have home births etc. I have made some changes/decisions in my own life as they have influenced me with their counter cultural ideas. I'm thankful that you make the rest of us think!
I guess I was just trying to give my opinion that choosing to have many children may not be wise, or God's will for every Christian couple.
I haven't read the whole comment on the post but I think Carol meant "dangerous" as in situations like Andrea Yates. Perhaps their whole tragic story would not have happened, had they not had the last baby which sent her into psychosis/post partum depression. Or dangerous that the Mother might "lose it" and harm their child. Obviously those kind of situations are "rare" but I know (from experience) that when you are already walking on eggshells in a relationship or under alot of stress, a baby adds even more pressure to the cooker... I think those "dangerous" situations are the exception, however.
Of course I wish (at times) that I'd started having children earlier (prior to 37) but another part of me wonders (at 3 in the morning when a sick little one wants to be read Dora the Explorer stories) how on earth people with many small children manage to cope! It seems, quite honestly, to take all I have to raise the two I am in charge of. I still mourn my miscarriage in 2007 but sometimes I think maybe God knew that another little person to look after would have been too much.... I don't know, it's a BIG topic... I am still open to another, but it doesn't seem to be happening and I am coming to terms with that!
Just my take on it.
Saskatchewan Cousin
Thanks for those bits of scripture. encouraging. I had never looked at the blessing of the midwives in that light. Coming out of a ridiculously hard end of the year my heart is feeling some relief and I'm trusting more.
denise - yeh - it's hard trusting Him to give - but it's even harder learning to trust when He takes...
Carol - totally fair to take ideas from other posts - i'm obviously still learning & hopefully growing :)
lola - yeh - some seasons are easier to trust through eh? But He's there - & He loves us so... which is totally the point of these posts... *God loves people*.
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