Family size

When I became a Christian in early 2006 it was after many, many years of turmoil about the decision.  Would I be ridiculed by my family?  Would I lose friends?  Would the religion part of my life take over until any traces of ‘pre-Christian Amy’ were gone?  Five years later I don’t particularly worry about these things.  Not because they aren’t, in their way, still issues (I do have problems relating to my non-Christian friends and family on occasion, for example) but because being a Christian has overshadowed thinking about being a Christian.  I find that sometimes what God wants me to do is so all-encompassing in my life that I can’t think about anything else; not what people think of me or what I appear like to non-believers.  And these questions about what exactly my role should be in whatever situation I’m facing at the moment are often cleared up after a few days of dwelling and some serious conversations with trusted advisors.    Except that sometimes they aren’t.  Sometimes the questions keep replaying over and over in my mind and I can’t seem to get a grip on what exactly it is that God wants from me in that area of my life.

That’s where I am right now in the area of children.  I have wondered since before David and I married what our stance on welcoming children into our family would be.  We have discussed, without resolution (or maybe I should say with lots of resolutions that change frequently!) the issue from every conceivable side.  What about money?  What about space?  What about careers?  What about our families’ opinions?  What about…

I’ve gone to the books and read everything I could get my hands on:  Table For Eight, The Sane Woman’s Guide To Raising A Large Family, Multiple Blessings, 18 Kids and Counting, you name it.  I’ve watched shows about having multiple babies, I’ve read blogs about mothers who have a child every year and I’ve checked out the price of bunk beds.  Every time I read something or research some new aspect of this ongoing debate I sit down with David and we re-hash the whole thing.  What about education?  What about siblings?  What about…

I assumed, when we had Samuel, that the situation would have been resolved by the time he was old enough for me to conceive again.  Essentially, I assumed we would have left the small town where we live and moved back to the big city where we were both born and raised, at which point having a second child would not be an issue for us.  Except that we have not moved, and what’s more we will not be moving for another eleven months at the earliest, when David finishes his schooling.  Samuel will be almost two by that point, plenty old enough for me to find myself expecting again.

We know what the Bible says about children.  They are a blessing.  They are a reward.  And having had my son I agree with that.  When I start to think about the idea of having more children, once I work past the rising panic, I find that I’m very content with that thought.  I don’t particularly like other people’s children, for the most part, but I love my child and nothing has happened to make me believe that I wouldn’t love his hypothetical brother or sister just as much.  I have prayed for guidance on this issue; how God wants us to handle it, but I seem to come up empty.  Yet every time I decide, once and for all, that I’ll have a second child when I’m good and ready, a nagging thought comes through and I find myself online again, reading, reading…

I know that I’m using all of this research and writing of pro/con lists as an avoidance technique.  If I don’t stop looking up information then I can’t be expected to make an informed decision, right?  Because ultimately I think that we both know that this decision is not about whether or not to add another child to our family, it’s about whether we are going to be in charge of our family size, or if God is.