children are a blessing - part 1 :)

Well, I've been pondering how to write about this subject for months now and know that I have to write about it before I forget certain details of how God has moved dramatically in our hearts concerning children. I'm scared to death to write these thoughts down because it is not my intention at all to offend anyone or cause anybody to feel judged, etc. So please know that if you're reading this and start to feel condemned, etc., that is the enemy and NOT me! That is not my goal. However, I've also been thinking about how my life would have different if someone had shared these thoughts with me fifteen years ago. Who knows! I know that God's timing is perfect and I've loved seeing how He got us to where we are now. You also need to know that I'm not near as eloquent or witty as my beloved husband and this is going to be very long, so you might want to take a raincheck! ha!

Let's start with my childhood (I told you this was going to be long). As most of you know, I am an only child and had a pretty easy life growing up. I babysat occassionally and while I loved the idea of babies, the truth is that I wasn't very good with them, and I was EXTREMELY insecure about babysitting. Okay, I hated it. I always dreamed of having lots of children when I was dating this hot hunk of a boy in high school (that would be Randy Brown), but truthfully, I think that was just some funky fantasy world created by all those soap operas to which I was so painfully addicted (praise God for deliverance from that world)!! When we got married, we did what all good, responsible couples do - we got on birth control and planned on waiting the assigned 3-5 years before getting pregnant. In fact, when I started getting baby fever too early, we decided to get a dog instead. When we did decide to get pregnant, I honestly never really counted the cost or pondered what my goals/vision for parenting might be (I'm sure most of us don't). I just got pregnant. The following two pregnancies were much the same - I decided when and where I wanted to get pregnant and I was. I was in complete control (or so I thought - how arrogant). I was humbled quite a bit when it took me 8 months to get pregnant with Moriah. Looking back, this was the mercy of God at a very difficult time in our lives, but at the time, I was so annoyed that this whole deal wasn't working quite as easily as it had before. I was in control, right?! And it was in my perfect plan to have 4 children and be done! I feared that maybe God wasn't going to cooperate with me. Obviously, God had His own plan and our sweet Moriah was born at the beginning of 2004.
In the meantime, I was miserable. I was, on a certain level, pretty proud of myself for having four kids - the perfect number, too, two of each - but I really disliked motherhood in general. I went around kind of feeling sorry for myself because I had it so hard and no one could really expect me to do anything but survive because I had four young children! I guess I had always thought that I wouldn't struggle a lot with parenting because my kids would just kind of do what I wanted them to do....:) In reality, I didn't have a clue what I was doing or where I was going and I truly felt like they were "cramping my style" (I'm with you when you ask "What style?" It's not like I was on some great career path when I started having kids! ha!). My plans kind of centered around what I could do without my children - I started trying to figure out when I could get them into Mother's Day Out as soon as they were out of the womb. I stuck Moriah in one as soon as I could get her there. After all, I needed time to MYSELF in order to be a good mom to all these people. She was really just a baby when I did that.
I guess this journey sort of began with the mother's day out issue. After Isaac was born and we moved to Como, it became more of a pain to drive back and forth and interrupt schedules and so I took Moriah out in December of 2006. It was inconvenient to my schedule to keep her in, but this growing desire to be with her during this precious time had also begun to creep into my heart. I really have never regretted the decision to take her out. You always hear about how critical those first 4-5 years are to your children's development, etc. I guess I just realized that I didn't want to give that job to someone else, even if it was only for 10 hours a week. My affection for my babies was beginning to grow (it wasn't that I NEVER liked my children, don't get me wrong; but I would say that I felt irritated and inconvenienced MORE than I felt blessed the majority of the time).
But now we need to back up because I said we were done after Moriah and we now have 6 kids! :) I will never forget the morning I found out we were pregnant with our precious little Isaac. It was Easter a.m. 2005 and my friend, Tiffany, had mentioned to me the night before that maybe I was pregnant when I realized that I was late. I said she was crazy, but then began to get a little worried that maybe she wasn't. That morning in April, it started snowing. After dropping McKenna off early at church for a performance practice, I ran by Walgreens on my way home and grabbed a test. My family was loading up in the car for church as I quickly took the test and saw that it was positive. I was shaking like a leaf and no one but me and God knew about this little Easter surprise until we got to church. I wrote my husband a note during praise time and he did nothing but grin the rest of the a.m. I just remember saying to one of my dear mentors in my faith, "I can't have 5 kids!" And she responded, "I guess you can!" The thought of having five was overwhelming, but it was at this point that I began to believe that maybe a huge part of my role in life was to be a mom (I know it sounds CRAZY that I was just beginning to believe that, but it's true)! Up until this point, I think I still saw myself as an incompetent, insecure "babysitter" and not a real "grown up" who had been chosen as the mother of these sweet children. This view didn't change overnight and has only recently almost disappeared. So anyway, the move to Como was postponed (that's another big long story) and we happily awaited the birth of Isaac. Oh, one more thing about that. During my pregnancy with him, I was mostly embarrassed and defensive about being pregnant again. I almost always made sure that people knew that this hadn't been "planned". And if people said "Oh bless your heart" upon finding out I had so many children, I would wholeheartedly agree with them and encourage them to bless my poor pitiful self. I have no doubt that during this season of life, my children heard the message loud and clear that I was barely making it and they were the cause. (This makes me so sad to see this in writing now it makes me want to cry - but God's grace and mercy are HUGE!)
Life with 5 kids was crazy and I remember frequently asking God why He picked me to have so many children - I was just going to screw them up! I rarely, if ever, had days in which I felt I had done a good job. And I didn't enjoy my "job."

...to be continued sometime soon (it's bedtime)...