Did We Plan on Having a Large Family?

A lot of people have asked me in the past whether we had started out wanting a large family. Absolutely not. In fact, before marriage, I wasn't even sure I wanted children at all. I didn't even think I liked children. But as I have come full circle, I realize that I have always liked children, I just didn't like them when they were rude, disobedient and down right awful which seems to be a prevailing and increasing problem with a lot of little ones today. Anyway, I digress. I was also scared to have a child. I wasn't raised in the most loving home, and at times, it was even violent. Unfortunately, I felt I would grow up to be violent with any children I might have......I just remember how mean I was to my dog and that convinced me I was not fit to ever have children if I couldn't treat a dog well. Again, I have realized the dog probably had ADHD and an IQ of -20. This alone would have probably made the best of us want to go postal. Plus I was only ten when I reached this conclusion....a mere child myself. Nevermind that I had a zoo of other pets that I took care of well. The memory of me hating my dog stuck with me as a warning. Another factor was that my Mom left at the very early age of four. So, if I wasn't afraid I was going to be a violent parent, surely I feared I would leave my children much like my Mother chose to do. In short, I was afraid I would not be a good parent if I didn't like children and could harm them in anyway. I just wasn't one of these preschool-like teacher types that flocked toward children like gravity to the ground. I wasn't like that at all. I was self centered, emotionally injured and short sighted.

After I became a believer and a lover of Jesus Christ something was healed in me and freed. I began to change. I softened. I met Steve and I loved him like there was no tomorrow. He is such a healing salve to me. For the first time in my life, I wanted a child. I believed God would make this all work. Although we had agreed to have one or two children, we never agreed to when would be a good time. I had decided that I would wait at least two years before I would even mention the topic of starting a family. Two years came and went and Steve never mentioned once about wanting to start a family. And when I brought it up, I could tell it wasn't something he felt comfortable with. This broke my heart and eventually became an issue. I was 27 and he was 32. Financially, we were set. We had our own home and we both had very good jobs. What were we waiting for? I just didn't get it. Did he even want to have a baby with me? My impatience and immaturity led me to do something I will rue the rest of my life. Secretly, I went off my birth control to get pregnant. After two weeks, I couldn't keep it from Steve and I confessed and asked profusely for his forgiveness. This affected the trust between us for a long time. There have been times even in the recent past that he has brought up how much this hurt him and our marriage. Finally, when I turned 28 he agreed we could try for a baby. On the first time we conceived. During the pregnancy, Steve made several attempts to say he only wanted one child. I agreed, because at the time I was spending about 50% of my time with my head in the toilet with no end in sight. I was miserable. I just didn't know if I could go through it again. But by the 6th month, all was well and I had a wonderful pregnancy that ended in the birth of an incredible baby boy named Sam. I held him for the first time and it was magical. He was our son. He was a gift and I just can not even begin to explain the strength of emotion for fear of cheapening it. All I knew was that I was not done and that I would hang my head in a toilet for a thousand years if it meant it would bring life to our family. But poor Steve was pretty hooked on the one kid thing and I was no where near him in thought on this.

By the time Sam was seven months old and many, many conversations later, Steve again agreed that we could try for our last child and that was going to be it. We tried again, and on the first try, we were pregnant again. After finding out our baby would be a girl, I gave away all of Sam's baby boy clothes knowing that we were done since we now had the perfect American family, a boy and a girl. Once our daughter Mollie was born, I expected to feel done. But even on the hospital bed after delivering her, the ache in my heart, to let more children come to our family, told me that we were not done..... even though that was the agreement between Steve and I. This is when I started to question whether I was mentally sane. What was it with me and wanting more children? Why was the ache almost unbearable? Was this from the Lord or did I have some psychological problem? Why wouldn't this desire let me go? How was it that other women knew, with out a doubt, when they were done? Would I ever feel done? The thought of not letting more children enter our family felt as if I were leaving a family I loved dearly behind, names I would never get to say, hearts and souls I'd never get to know, little warm bodies I'd never get to rock, foreheads and cheeks I'd never get to touch with my maternally hungry lips. I knew these were my children, but I felt as if I would never ever get the chance to love them. Steve did not feel the same way.

When Mollie was still three to four months old, I tread carefully and approached Steve about having more children. He was shocked and angered and claimed that I was breaking our agreement to only have two. I realize Mollie was still such a small infant, and it may have gone better had I waited. But there was an urgency I could not explain. Crushed by his response, I went for a long walk out in the winter cold. I wailed out to the Lord and begged him to take this desire for a larger family from me if it wasn't from Him. I wanted to be done with and free of the painful yearning and the feelings of loss I was going to inevitably incur with Steve's stance. I prayed that if my desire was not from Him, to please take it away and give me a sense of contentment and peace...but that if my desire was from Him, to change Steve's heart. And this is what my heart heard...,"Child of mine, do you not know you will be the Mother of many? Trust me...wait upon me." The chills I felt were not from the cold but from the very fact that these words were not mine....they couldn't be because I didn't believe it. My husband wouldn't even consider a third and was angrily adamant about this. Regardless, I walked on with sense of warmth and peace....but not patience.

Several months later, I began volunteering at a Crisis Pregnancy Center as a counselor. I was amazed at what I had been allowed and privileged to do with these newly pregnant and / or scared women who the Lord led to me. Lives were at stake and the Lord used me to help some of these women avoid aborting their precious children. Many times between appointments, I would go to the library the center made available to the women, and I would peruse the titles. One caught my eye and the title was "Letting God Plan Your Family" by Sam Owen. This intrigued me so I sat down for a good read. On this day, the Lord relieved me of my self-loathing and self-condemnation for wanting more children. It spoke to my heart and I realized I was not mentally unstable or crazy. What I realized also was that it wasn't that I wanted a butt load of kids.....I wanted the Lord to be in control of this whole area in my marriage with Steve. If it meant a butt load of kids.....that's what I wanted. If it meant no more kids....that's what I wanted. I just wanted it to be what the Lord wanted. It all made sense. I felt giddy and couldn't wait to share my new insights with Steve. I don't think there was ever anything I felt more sure of in my life. I knew the Lord just wanted us to trust Him. Every cell of my body knew this was right and I knew that Steve would easily agree because this was from the Lord. The truth was so obvious. Scripture backed it up how could he argue against scripture?

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I told him excitedly of my new insights and about the book I was reading. And as I continued to talk, his eyes got real big like. I think he really wanted, and was ready, to wrap me up in a tight, restrictive blanket and transport me to the nearest mental facility. He honestly thought I had totally lost it. I begged him to read the book to which he agreed. I knew that after he read it, that would be it. We would be on the same page.

Nope.

There was no way he was going to "risk" having an endless amount of children. To him, this was irresponsibility at its worst. We were miles apart on this issue and would remain so through several more children. But after each child, he grew closer to letting the Lord take control as he realized that each child didn't kill him and that he actually ended up enjoying them. But he still struggled. He was not open to getting a vasectomy due to the physical ramifications (www.dontfixit.org) and I was not open to doing anything to prevent pregnancy. This issue was a thorn in our marriage. It was not smooth sailing by any means. My impatience and attitude were unGodly at best. I just never seemed to understand what Steve's issue was with letting the Lord control this part of our lives. It seemed so simply right to me. It was a no-brainer. Steve would continue to go back and forth on this issue many times. There were times we would go to a Christian counselor just to get their opinion on it. Most of them would just stare at us really not knowing how to handle the situation at all because they had never looked into it scripturally. The times Steve did feel a peace about it, we would have a child. The times he wouldn't, well.......we would have yet another child. Every time we would have a baby, Steve would proclaim that this would be our last child. I would grieve and prepare my spirit to not have more children and then the time would eventually come where we would have to talk about it because I was once again fertile. Each time, I would tell Steve that I would agree to anything he wanted to do if he would promise me one thing. He had to promise me that whatever decision he made that it would be made prayerfully and not be a decision based on fear because fear is never from the Lord. If he truly felt the Lord was leading him to do something permanent, then I would follow him.....full well knowing the Lord would never ask Steve to do anything of the sort.

Finally, after our eighth child, I was becoming fertile once again....and again the discussions ensued about what was to be done. I was so tired of this, and half of me just wanted him to just go get broken (I will never call it "fixed"). After our eight, I was more ready than I had ever been to close my womb. Not because I was tired of having children, but I was just weary of going back and forth with Steve all the time. I wanted to be on the same page as him and wanted him to be happy. I wanted peace. But when the fertility conversation came up, I could not leave my stance. Even if I was ready to stop having children, I was not ready to stop trusting the Lord. And I felt that doing something permanent, or anything at all for that matter, to prevent a child of God....was compromising my faith in HIM and I just couldn't do it. Steve was frustrated with me and I with him. Finally, one early morning, Steve approached me and finally stated that he knew I had been right all along about trusting God in this area. This was the area that scared him the most and he realized that his faith would not deepen if he couldn't trust the Lord with this particular fear. There were several things that brought him to this point. No, it wasn't my skillful arguments at all....that probably hurt more than it helped. It was watching a family very close to us decide that they wanted to be more faithful to the Lord. And the way they wanted to show this was the have the husband's vasectomy reversed. Where the wife, my precious friend, did not want more children, she and her husband now are hopefully awaiting the time when a new life will be woven in her womb. Steve was amazed and moved by their faith as he respected this family immensely. The other influence that changed Steve's heart was the ministry of Voddie Baucham @ www.voddiebaucham.org This man is amazing and is also responsible for Steve's eagerness to have a ninth child and to possibly adopt in the future. I highly encourage you to listen to his wonderful sermons. You will not walk away empty. I also encourage the reading of "The Way Home" by Mary Pride. If it does not convince you to trust the Lord in the area of family size, spacing and rearing, it will at least challenge your perspective of Christian Womanhood.

Now, I realize this isn't the romantic version of how our large family came into being. We weren't the couple that just knew from the get go that family planning was meant to be in the Lord's domain. We both had pasts we had to fight with to overcome our fears. I will not lie, it was a struggle. But I believe that this was the path the Lord let us take to grow. And there are even times that Steve reverts back to his fear of "What am I doing?" I often wonder if Noah did not, every once in awhile, freak out while building the ark. I mean did he ever second guess God on why he was building this huge monstrosity in the middle of the desert??!!! Did it ever not make sense to him when he had never heard of rain? Did Noah ever wonder if he had just plain lost his marbles while people mocked him and questioned his reasons for following God? I think at times both Steve and I both feel this way as the Lord builds our family to a size that is just not seen these days....ark size. But we are snapped back quickly to the fact the we know it would have been a travesty to have limited our family to just the one or two Steve originally thought he wanted. He has now met, and is meeting, the family I thought I would never meet, and grieved over, when he would refuse to put our family planning in the Lord's hands. And now he understands the ache I felt because he can not imagine having lost out on the chance to say each and every one of our children's names, the hearts and souls he almost missed out on getting to know, the little warm bodies he almost never got to tickle and the foreheads and cheeks that would have never met his paternally loving lips. He truly gets it.

As I felt that Steve was lacking faith in being open to a large family......my biggest regret is that I lacked it too. My willfulness and lack of submission was caused by my lack of faith in what the Lord promised me on that cold, wintry night when I walked out of our home so upset and broken. His promise came true, but because I didn't have faith in His promise, I made things a lot harder than they had to be and injured our marriage in the process. I thank the Lord everyday that my lack of faith did not null and void God's promise to us that night. Our marriage is healing because it is supernatural and God is in control. I can't tell you the feelings I have when I see Steve well up with tears of pride and thankfulness that we have the family we do. I love to see him get protective when someone questions our reasons for having a large family. I pray the wake that we leave and the reasons we give are a testimony to God's provision, grace and mercy and that people are pulled into wanting to know more about trusting our Lord and Saviour. Where there was once fear there is strength, resolve and conviction. We are finally on the same page and I am loving it and know this is where the Lord wants us to be........with all our children and with complete faith in HIM. There is no doubt about it, we have been so blessed.