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 My
husband and I have ten children. Ten so far, anyway.
With large families being so rare these days, I'm
often asked why we would want to have so many. My
answer is not quite the same as many of the other
"large family" testimonies I have heard. You
see, we didn't always want a lot of children. Neither
did we come to any particular conviction that in order
to be obedient to God we must have many children. No,
we didn't arrive where we are by that route. Instead,
our hearts were changed over a period of time by the
influence of experience and the godly advice of
others.
Before I married, I never cared too much for babies,
or small children, or even older children. Not up
close anyway. I never played with dolls as a child, I
rarely babysat, and I was really rather uncomfortable
around children. I was afraid of them. I didn't know
what to do with them or how to handle them, so I
avoided them whenever possible.
Sure, I had enjoyed my own five siblings, so in a
vague sort of way I pictured the ideal family as
large, but that was it. I didn't really have much of a
picture after that. Things were similar for my husband
when he was a young man, so when we married we decided
on a nice neat two children. Considering my lack of
nature child related talents, maybe we'd wait until
they were both in school before considering two more.
I really didn't think I could handle all four home at
once, or any more than that.
Then our first-born came into the world and we both
fell immediately in love. He was so perfect. Those
tiny toes, that cute little baby mouth, those
beautiful blueberry blue eyes--he stole our hearts
instantly. Number two was just as wonderful. Beautiful
and sweet and good. A little girl this time. I had
visions of smocked dresses and little fingers playing
the violin someday. Well, after another couple of
years, we weren't so sure about our plans to wait
until these first two were in school before having
more. By this time we were starting to think maybe
children weren't all that bad (at least our own
weren't) and maybe we should just go ahead and have
our total of four all in a row, then quit. So we
changed plans and welcomed a third, then started
hoping for a fourth.
But alas, as our children grew past the baby stage, a
few problems cropped up. As much as I loved my
children, I found parenting pre-schoolers difficult
and frustrating. I read all the books, I prayed, I
took parenting classes, I did everything a good mother
was supposed to do, yet I was still confused and
discouraged. I was amazed at how challenging they
could be. I felt as though I was constantly on the
verge of being driven crazy by all those annoying
little things that small children do all day long.
Despite all the books and experts, I really still had
no idea what I could or could not discipline them for,
or how to discipline them if I should attempt to. I
thought I was just supposed to ignore and endure all
their little misbehaviors, and I wasn't doing very
good at that.
I also started worrying about the salvation of my
children. I didn't seem to have much control over
their behavior, so how was I going to influence their
hearts? I was terrified of the thought that some or
all of my children might grow up to be unbelievers. I
didn't know how I could live with that. We'd thought
about having more children, but we didn't want more
if they were going to ultimately rebel. We felt we'd
already taken a chance by having the ones we had, and
we weren't sure we wanted to tempt fate further. We
didn't think it was enough to just say we were
"doing our best and trusting God with the
rest." We'd heard that from too many Christians
whose children had ended up on drugs, or committing
fornication, or just hating their parents, and God as
well. We didn't want that to happen in our family.
Then two things happened. First, we discovered
homeschooling. That gave me great hope. I loved the
knowledge that I wouldn't have to shove my children
out into the big, cold, dangerous world away from my
guidance and protection at age five. Maybe we could
keep them from peer pressure and negative influences
for at least a little longer, and maybe that would
allow us to stay "close" to them for a while
longer too. I really, really wanted to stay
close to my children. I remember a neighbor casually
commenting to me one day, "Oh, you lose them when
they go to school." WHAT?! I did not want to lose
my beloved children. Homeschooling gave me hope that
this might not have to happen. Maybe if I could keep
them with me a while longer, I could also keep their
hearts close to mine, and maybe I'd have a better
chance to influence them toward God.
Secondly, we started fellowshipping with a slightly
older couple who knew how to train in a godly way that
worked! Their children had grown from babyhood through
the toddler stage, past early childhood, and into,
through, and out of the teen years, with no temper
tantrums, no terrible twos, no teenaged rebellion, no
raging hormones, no drug problems, no promiscuity, no
anything awful. How could that be? They had even
managed to maintain a close and loving relationship
their parents. And they all loved God and had chosen
to serve Him with their whole hearts.
As we began to ask for and follow this couple's
parenting advice, (which I will share with you here),
we very quickly began to have hope that we really
could raise godly children who would not go astray.
There is great peace in realizing that God gives us a
plan for doing so; we don't have to just roll the
dice. With the help of these godly friends, we gained
hope and confidence for the future. We began, for the
first time, to trust in God's words found in Proverbs
22:6 (NAS): "Train up a child in the way he
should go, even when he is old he will not depart from
it.
At this point are began to notice for the first time,
the enormous wealth of information the Bible contains
about childrearing. Guess what? The entire Bible is
about children and families! God loves children. The
Bible is written to His children. We are His children.
His promises are to His children. His wisdom and
guidance is all there for His children to live by. He
valued his children enough to die for them. Anyway, I
won't go on about that at the moment, but all these
things opened our eyes to wanting more children.
Knowing how to discipline, train, nurture, and love
our children, gave us the confidence that we could
have and enjoy many of them.
So I guess we didn't have ten children (so far) out of
obedience, but rather out of God given desire, after
discovering the knowledge we needed to successfully
raise that many. We now enjoy our children daily, as
the very special blessings that God says they are. Who
wouldn't want another blessing? "Behold,
children are a gift of the LORD; the fruit of the womb
is a reward." - Psalm 127:3 (NAS) |
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