As I write this Mom’s Corner I am celebrating my 40th birthday! Birthdays have a way of causing us to reflect on life, and my heart has been filled with joy for my family today. I can’t help but think about how few women, at the age of 40, have the privilege of nursing a baby and delighting in an adult son too.
Had God not changed Steve’s and my heart regarding children and family planning I would have held my last baby in my arms 13 years ago. Joseph, John, Anna, and Jesse would not have been given life, and my nest would quickly be emptying. As we evaluate these past seven years of our lives, Steve and I believe that there is nothing we could have invested our lives in that would have had any more value.
After we surgically cut off the possibility of having more children for seven years, God showed us, from His Word, that closing the womb or opening it was His domain and could be trusted to Him in faith. We knew there was a great probability, even with reversing the original procedure, that we might not have more children.
With the realization of how dependent Steve and I were on the Lord for His gift of children came very different feelings in our hearts about our children. With our first three, having children was the thing to do–taken for granted–the norm for a young married couple. But with the last four we have known it was not a matter of our will that they were conceived but God’s, and we have had the pleasure that comes to hearts that choose obedience to God’s will.
What about those seven empty years, the gap between older children and younger ones, in our family? Did God have children for us that we refused? We think about that question from time to time and for me it usually brings tears.
What did God use to change our hearts and thinking in this area? He used His Word. Scriptures like: “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD . . . Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. . .” (Psalms 127:3, 5), “And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren” (Genesis 29:31), “. . . but the LORD had shut up her womb” (1 Samuel 1:5), “. . . Be fruitful, and multiply. . .” (Genesis 1:28). Steve, home sick one day, got out his concordance and began a study on God’s view of children that both broke and changed his heart. Malachi 2:15 clearly sums up God’s purpose for marriage.
I share this part of our lives because my heart is so full of joy in my family. We wish someone had confronted us with this idea before we made our decision to cut off having children, challenging us to search the Bible for its truth in this area. We might not have liked what we found enough to consider obedience to it since my life was so full of three little children whom I was not dealing well with emotionally–but that is another Mom’s Corner. For now, let a forty-year-old mother who is nursing her eleven-month-old baby encourage you to evaluate where you stand in relation to having children, not in light of your present circumstances or difficulties, but in the light of Scripture.