More than Two to a Marriage

Smockmomma posts on her experience with foolish people commenting on her fifth child, who is still in the womb.

The story of the cashier especially gets to me. When I was a cashier, and I came across obviously large families, I always made it a point to say how much I admired the parents, and I always talked to the kids, and told them how lucky and blessed they were to belong to a large family. I told them about all my friends who had come from large families as well, and that I sometimes wished I had more brothers and sisters. One of the remarkable things I noticed was how well behaved the children of larger families were compared to those parents with only one or two kids.

I digress.

Smockmomma asks, "What's wrong with these people?" and honestly, I only have one answer. They're selfish. I think it has less to do with children, and more to do with the prevalent mindset that has been in this country for a very long time. The idea that you don't have to have children, or must only have a small number of children to achieve whatever your goals are in life. I've seen this happen with one of my friends. When I was at college at UNT, there was this absolutely gorgeous girl whom everyone of my friends, including myself wanted to date. However, I was never in any of her classes, and I never was able to have anything more than a couple of lunches with her. After I left for UNT, she got married. I once mentioned when she expected to have children, and she told me that she pretty much never planned on children in the marriage. Now, I wasn't rude, but perhaps I should have been, because the obvious question that came to me was, "Why did you get married in the first place?". Maybe I should have asked that question, but I didn't.

When it comes to cases like that, especially with seemingly good christians, I have to wonder if they're only getting married to have sex. Sure, they're not having sex out of wedlock, but they're totally missing the point of marriage, which is to perpetuate the family of God. What is the point of getting married if you're not going to let that love grow through children? It's utterly selfish.

As far as that cashier goes, if I had been the smockmomma, I would have probably reached across the counter and slapped the taste out of that cashier's mouth for saying something so stupid. Children are not simply black holes in which we throw our money. This is simply, again, a selfish viewpoint that says that children get in the way of our wants. Sacrifice never goes unrewarded. And any mother and father who is keeping themselves open to God's will when it comes to children in their lives, then the reward of good children is merely a glimpse of the good to come to them in the next life.