Before my wife and I got married, I had thought that three children seemed like a pretty idyllic number. I came from a family of three siblings; my wife came from a family of two. Having a repeat of my own family dynamic didn’t seem like a bad thing.
When we got married, my wife started on birth control pills – because that’s just the thing you did… No one had ever even exposed us to consider birth control in light of what God has to say about fruitfulness – not our parents; not the churches we grew up in, not the Christian schools we attended, etc. Everyone seemed to simply assume that sovereignty over the family size is something that belongs to parents. “How many children do you plan to have?” is about as far any discussions about children ever went.
A few months into our marriage, my wife had the whimsical compulsion to begin looking into how the pill actually works, and what it does. Her conscience was immediately horrified. When she brought it to my attention, I was equally shocked. It was immediately clear to us that we could not continue with the pill, and we were for the first time in our lives provoked to consider the matter of fruitfulness further.
Fast forward a few years. We’d had two miscarriages, and now three living children. Our oldest was three. We had a dual income – me working in tech support, and my wife doing in-home daycare. There had been a growing discontent in my heart up to that time, as the desires of the flesh to have time and money for my hobbies were directly conflicting with my duties as a husband and a father. We wrestled with the question, “Should we be done?” But the problem I found was that all of the arguments I could make in favor of “being done” came up short in my own reasoning and conscience. Examples:
“We can’t afford any more children,” wasn’t a true argument. What I couldn’t afford was more children plus all the funsies and time I wanted for myself.
“I want to be free to have time to minister in the church.” No you don’t. You’re trying to justify your selfishness by giving it a nice Christian veneer. God is not impressed.
“I want to make sure I am loving my wife well and care for her body.” That’s all well and good. Intimacy is part of loving your wife, and there’s nothing wrong with her body. She’s had three strong births, no C-sections, and cherishes the work of being a mother and a wife. Revisit this objection later, but you can’t invoke it now with any intellectual honesty, and you know it.
It became clear to me, through inward chastening, that I needed to repent of my idolatry of my hobbies, and embrace the good work of being a husband and a father. This was the life I was called to, and I saw that joyful submission to this good lot was really the only way forward if I was to be free of the constant conflict in my soul, the double-mindedness of loving the world and loving Christ. I also considered and gained pity for the fact that it was at this sort of junction that men are tempted with the wicked thought of abandoning their families.
Fast forward a bit more, and we conceived twins. When she was about six months pregnant with them, and feeling very uncomfortable, we sat down at the dinner table one night and decided that it was time for her to be done working in-home daycare and now focus on the care of our children. We weren’t entirely sure how that was going to work out financially, but God had blessed me in my job with promotions over the years, to such a point that we always seemed to make ends meet. So we simply resolved to believe that he would continue carrying us along.
We prayed at the table, beseeching the Lord with these texts in mind:
“I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.” - Psalm 37:25
" Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
and say, “Who is the LORD?”
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God." - Proverbs 30:7-9
We now have ten children, and he has not ceased to be kind and gracious to provide. My heart overflows with joy as often as I stop to consider his kindness.
Also, we homeschool, and tonight is pizza night. 