A Heritage From the Lord part 1

The first time anyone asked my husband and I how many children we wanted, we weren't even married yet. We were going to premarital counseling and the workbook we were dutifully filling out asked us all manner of questions about how we would like to plan out lives out. I suppose it was the author's intent to be sure the bride and groom could agree on such important things as: when to buy a house, how much a hammer should cost (yes, it was in there) and of course, how many children we wanted.

Being new to the body of Christ, we never questioned the supposition that it was even up to us how many children we would have. So we settled on the nice, round number of three. I think we wanted to try for at least one girl and one boy, so you know, it might take more that two tries.

Well, as it turned out, it didn't. We had a girl, then 20 months later, we had a boy. Then we used birth control like we thought all responsible people do. But God circumvented that and sent a third, another boy.

I loved motherhood. But only weeks after our third was born I had begun to feel panicked and sorrowful. It had been five years since we had hastily answered the question in the workbook, and we had never spoke of it again. But I was becoming aware of a vow we had unknowingly committed to one another. I would hold my baby in my arms and begin to cry at the thought of him being our last. But I was afraid to tell my husband.

Conventional wisdom already condemned us for having a third child in the first place. After all, we already had our boy and our girl, and we were sharing a mobile home with my mother. I had more than one person say to me, "You're done now, right?"

But the Lord had been planting seeds along the way, opening my eyes to the blessing of children, to His sovereignty, and the many things He wanted us to trust Him with.

More to come...