JILL FARRIS writes:

My husband and I are Protestants. Twenty years ago, we were the proud parents of two children; a girl and a boy. Our family was “complete.” We were against abortion, involved in Right to Life and volunteering at pregnancy centers. Then we were loaned a book called The Way Home by Mary Pride, whose hard-hitting writing educated us in the history of birth control and “planned barrenhood.” To our dismay (and discomfort), we learned that the Catholic church had not stood alone against birth control for centuries. No, indeed, both Protestant and Roman Catholics had wisely understood that choosing to control the timing of pregnancy was a dangerous (and ungodly) choice and would quickly lead to the widespread acceptance of abortion.

After much heated discussion,we humbly (and, admittedly, with fear and trembling) repented of our use of birth control and told God we were willing to raise up many children if He chose to send them to us. We were blessed with six more children.

How can I describe or explain the awe and wonder we have experienced as we look at the children we could have missed? Make no mistake about it, we encountered ridicule and rejection from strangers at the mall and our own parents. It is hard to experience rejection but to have our own children rejected is much harder. Still, we soldiered on, often in ignorance and immaturity and  weakness. Pregnancy and birth can be difficult but that is because a soul is being brought into the world! It is a miracle.

Corinthians II 12:9 says, “For He has said to me, “My grace is made perfect in weakness” most gladly, therefore, I would rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ might dwell in me.” The job of raising up many children was (and is) much too big for us and it has thrown us onto the mercy and grace of God.

There were years of many young ones and little money; years when it might have looked like we were “failures” because our children didn’t have the toys and gadgets of the American dream. Yet, those years matured my husband and developed his work ethic (btw, studies have shown that fathers of large families earn a much higher percentage of income than do fathers of small families. There is nothing like lots of little ones depending on you to motivate you to succeed!).

I know without a shadow of a doubt that God has increased our faith, joy, generosity, and love through the gift of our babies. He stretched us and expanded our tent pegs far greater than anything we could have imagined back when we thought we were done. We had to let go so He could work…and He did.

What a different world we would live in now if Christians had willingly accepted children as blessings from God for the past four generations. Oh, what an army of righteousness we would have to fight the evil that is being unleashed in this country!

The story about our family is not finished yet but I stand amazed at my children who are much stronger in their faith than I have ever been. I have daughters teaching the Bible in clubs in the public school as a ministry. I have a daughter who manages a maternity home for women in crisis. Another son works with troubled boys in a rigorous outdoor program and all my children are the first to reach out their arms for someone’s child; to hold and to love.

Our children give us gifts and thank us for raising them. If they thought we wanted to go to Paris, I have no doubt they would pool their hard-earned funds and send us there.We are so blessed.

I’d like to clear up a common misconception many people have about birth control. It is not true that permanently messing up your body with a tubal ligation or a vasectomy makes physical intimacy better because you feel “free.” No indeed. What can be sexier than a married man who joyfully wants children with his wife and thanks her for being willing to bear them? What can be a greater aphrodisiac to a man than to know that physical intimacy with his wife may, possibly, bring forth a new little person who will call him daddy? You want great sex? Don’t live like everyone else.

The rest of you can take that trip to Paris. Some of us are having too much fun being the center of our own little universe called the family.

                                                                                 —- Comments —

Susan Fischer writes:

Jill Farris’s story reminds me of this from GK Chesterton:

When men no longer feel that he is so, they have lost the appreciation of primary things, and therefore all sense of proportion about the world. People who prefer the mechanical pleasures, to such a miracle, are jaded and enslaved. They are preferring the very dregs of life to the first fountains of life. They are preferring the last, crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated and exhausted things of our dying Capitalist civilisation, to the reality which is the only rejuvenation of all civilisation. It is they who are hugging the chains of their old slavery; it is the child who is ready for the new world.”

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