That is the question that I get often…or how many will it take for you to stop? I get asked this question multiple times a week about babies. Let me just say one word – annoying. I think if you know us somewhat then you know that it is our conviction to allow the Lord to determine the size of our family. But let’s back up first and go through our journey because it’s been amazing and life changing.
If you had asked us early on in our marriage how many kids we would have, we would have said two…maybe three. and that’s a big maybe. Shortly after we were married I was heavily convicted to go off the pill. We were just in the beginning stages of being groomed, shaped and molded for the Lord for ministry. I would get up each day, take my pill and I would hear Him ask me if I trusted Him so much, why was I taking the pill. I would hear Him ask me how I could encouage others to trust Him but here was an aspect of my very own life that I was not. That penetrated me deeply. I began to pray and seek out the motivations of my own heart for taking the pill. I talked to Ryan about going off and naturally he’s a man – a young man who just got married and he really didn’t want anything to do with it. However, I will say that instead of his response being no…he was mature enough to say Hey, that’s not my conviction but that doesn’t mean I’m right and you’re wrong. Let’s pray about it. Let’s seek the Lord and see what happens. He did not ask me to remain on the pill. He said that the Lord speaks not to just him but to me as well and that by denying my conviction he realized that he would be asking me to choose between him and the Lord. He would be asking me to go against what God was doing in me and he did not want to be apart of that. That decision right then and there changed us, it changed our marriage and it changed our walk with the Lord in ways that I would never have imagined. For the first time, I can honestly say that I trusted him. Like really trusted him in the way that submission called me to. It wasn’t hard – it was easy because I knew from that moment on that he truly had my best in mind. Not his, not his desires, but me. So we went off the pill and shortly after I had to have some cancerous cells removed off of my cervix. After that procedure the dr’s told me, two different ones that I had to go back on birth control and that we couldn’t go off for 6 months. So we were at an impasse. Do we trust the dr’s or do we trust the Lord? See, even when we went off the birth control we never really looked at it as trying to have a baby. We really looked at it as an act of obdience and if a baby came from that then ok. So, we decided to trust the Lord. And what would you know – we got pregnant the very month the dr’s said that my body would be ready. That trial of ours was a huge stepping stone for us. It changed everything. We had Morgan and then I went back on the pill – for just a few days. The conviction was right back. We had been hoping the conviction was initially placed on us for Morgan – but we soon learned that wasn’t the case. Then we had Levi and we did not go back on the pill after him. We were however still working through our feelings on having children. It was a long process – we spent years praying for release of the conviction and until finally during Matthew we embraced it. We have come to realize that God truly does know what is best. And by giving that up – it’s made all the other steps of faith for us really easy. I mean, we have to be 110% unselfish to have children the way that we do. Ryan calls it our sacrifice. But it’s such a rewarding sacrifice. We have grown in leaps and bounds. We know that when God asks us to do crazy things like Ryan quitting his Bank of America job and me quitting my job at the same time, losing 75% of our salary that God’s ways are higher than ours. The crazy thing is that we have truly gotten to watch the Lord provide for us. I can tell you today that we are sitting better almost 4 kids later and me not working than we were a year ago let alone 4 years ago. Not only has the Lord given us back my salary but Ryan actually makes more than we both did together working at B of A and me working. God gave us a bigger home that a year ago we could not have afforded and we got it at a great deal and up until the closing the Lord was moving -saving us thousands of dollars. But its not about money you see – we say that as excuses right, we can’t afford a baby. Or we’re not “ready”. That’s what we said. I cannot speak for everyone, I can only speak for myself and Ryan but for us, we had to really look at our hearts. We had to see why it was we were on the pill and we had to ask ourselves some really hard questions – like, I would say if the Lord really wanted me to have a baby pill or not, He would. And I still believe that to be true, but then I had to ask myself if I really believed that God created life or did Ryan and I? I had to ask myself if I truly trusted God’s ways and that if we ended up with 10 kids was I truly ok with His will. Because that’s what I realized – I pray “Lord your will be done” but deep down here was an area that I didn’t mean it. So I was a liar. I really wanted my will to be done but I hid under the guise of seeking the Lord. I wasn’t seeking Him, I was seeking Him to do my will. I was seeking Him to give His stamp of approval on what I had determined was best.
I now sit, 9 years later after my conversion a changed woman. My life looks nothing as it did before Him and it looks nothing of what I had hoped for after I met Him. I now have no plans for this life. My only hope is that when the Lord calls, I will go. My only plan is that His will truly be done in my life. Whatever that looks like. While it is annoying for me that people ask me about how many kids we are going to have, it’s also a humble reminder that His ways look foolish to the world.
***disclaimer, I just want to add that we do not think bad or anything of people on birth control. We truly don’t. we are all on a journey here with the Lord. We can only testify to what He has done in our lives and in our hearts. If what I wrote offended you, then the only thing I can tell you is to really search and pray what was so offensive. Remember – the bible is offensive.
