Quivers

“Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

⁴ Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,

So are the children of one’s youth.

⁵ How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;

They will not be ashamed

When they speak with their enemies in the gate.”

Most of us in this community love our children. We see them as blessings. Yet, the Bible presents us with several examples of epic parenting fails to serve as cautionary tales. Cain resented and eventually murdered his brother. Ham mocked his father. Jacob had many sons, but Jacob’s sins turned most of them into jerks. Lot, the son of Haran, attempted to pimp out his daughters. Essentially, their children grew up and shamed them.

Most of us are called to have children, but we are also called to train them (Prov 13:24, 22:6, Heb 12:5-11, 1 Cor 11:32, etc).  Since we each have been blessed with unique gifts, what we are called to bring to table (so to speak) will be different (1st Corinthians 12:4-6). Raising Godly children is just one way to glorify God and there is no Biblical specifications on quantity. Family planning should be approached with caution, faith and humility. Godly children are a blessing, but ungodly children are dangerous. Ungodly children are a curse to themselves, a curse their parents and a curse to those around them. The consequences of raising ungodly children are severe. How many children we choose to have (even when we don’t make a formal decision, we have made a choice) is serious business, but this business is a private matter. How many children each couple should have is between them and God. How well a child “turns out” rests squarely on each child’s parents and God’s grace to us all.

On attitudes: We should also be mindful not to assume that just because a couple only has one child that they are any less spiritual then the couple that has 10. Too often we see mothers of 1-2 children belittled because of inexperience.*  Too often mothers of 5+ children receive rude comments about their decision to have what is culturally considered as “many” children. Even within small church communities, when we see a mother who doesn’t have sons or doesn’t have daughters, we assume she has no words of wisdom to offer those of us who do have sons and/or daughters. We should not be making assumptions like that. “Through the grace which was given to me, I have to say to each one of you: don’t think of yourselves more highly then you ought to think. Rather, think soberly, in line with faith, the true standard which God has marked out for each of you.” (Romans 12:3)  We should be humbling ourselves, “All who push themselves forward, you see, will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be honored.” (Luke 14:11)

When rudeness is offered or offense taken, when we become upset or bitter over other people’s sins, arrogant folly is usually being demonstrated. We live in an imperfect world. People are often unkind. We should not get offended and ruffled when someone makes an assumption about us. When we do this, we are being equally foolish. We can’t use someone else’s bad manners to excuse our own (1 Peter 3:9). I know it’s difficult. Training ourselves not to take offense is much easier said then done. Practically speaking, sometimes overcoming our own foolishness is as simple as catching it and telling ourselves “no”. My personality especially responds well to this technique. When I feel myself starting to get offended or worked up,  I’m trying to cultivate a habit of telling myself no. This is often how I handle frustration, depression, laziness and unkindness in myself. ****Rabbit trail: Until I became a mother, I didn’t know how to handle basic sin in my life. I felt like sin had a hold on me. It was like I was caught in a rapidly moving river and the water was my sin that kept tossing me around and all I had to save myself was a single water wing. It was exhausting and overwhelming. Eventually, in adulthood I became a mother, thereby becoming responsible for the sins of my children. My sin times 4! One water wing just wasn’t going to cut it anymore! My plan became to balance lots of love and laughter with simple guidelines, which means, I had to start saying no. When child X becomes angry with child Y and desires to hit them, the answer is no. When child Y wants to gorge themselves on excessive amounts of sugar, the answer is no. When child X is throwing a tantrum, the answer is no. When I wake up crabby, the answer to myself is no. There are reasons why the answer is no, and those should be explored at an age appropriate level, but the immediate answer is still no. Of course, this should all be used in accordance with overwhelming your children in love and finding your own self-worth in Christ.  My approach is simplistic, and perhaps I am a simplistic person, but this response to sin in my own life keeps me out of a lot of trouble. End of rabbit trail.**** If we are so busy allowing other people’s problems to get in our way, we don’t have time to do what we are here to do (that is, glorifying God). It helps to remember that if a person has no legitimate authority over you (and most people don’t), you are the one who chooses what kind of impact their words have on you. When someone is rude or ungracious to you, how you respond should be the most important thing to you. You aren’t responsible before God for the other guy’s sins, you are responsible for the sins of you and yours. Prioritize. Don’t contribute to the problem by not having learned to laugh the insults off. So what if someone  thinks your family planning decision is wrong? If you have proceeded in faith and wisdom, your confidence is in Christ. Your confidence is untouchable. No need to retaliate. Vengeance is God’s and He is good at it.  Diminish and returns. What goes around comes around. Sometimes, the best response to an ungracious comment is a well humored quip. Not one at the expense of anyone but yourself. For example, the majority of my children have fall/winter birthdays. Once someone asked why I had so many winter babies, and my response was that North Idaho springs are long and cold and it was more fun then turning on the heater. Silly? Yes. True? Partially. Rude? Nope.

On management: I know a lot of birth control methods aren’t good options for both moral and physical reasons. If you’re like me, even the mildest of hormone contraceptives didn’t work for one reason or another. However, the lack of ideal options doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up in the air and sing Que Sera, Sera. We live in a fallen world. Natural is not always better. Our carnal nature is, after all, natural.  I am the 3rd of 6 children. My parents quit using birth control when they got pregnant with me at a time when they were attempting to prevent a pregnancy. As much as I love my siblings and my parents, I come from a broken home, so as you can imagine, the result wasn’t as joyful as we all hoped. There is a lot of pain and a lot of hurt in my family. Things could have been different, but God allows us to screw up all the time. When we do things without wisdom, we are asking for painful consequences.

Some parents are called by God to have 15 children and they do it well and are blessed 15x over. Some parents God allows to have 15 children and they are cursed 15x over. The difference between faith and stupidity is wisdom. We must exercise wisdom. We are to make plans without clinging to them. We should not be cavalier about reproducing for the sake of reproducing. God will do whatever He wants (I am proof of that), but last time I checked, we still buckle up our babies when we drive them somewhere to help keep them safe and we still clean their wounds and bandage them to avoid infections. God feeds the birds of the air, and He loves us more than them (Matthew 6:26), but we still find jobs and buy food and shelter.  We don’t see faith as a substitute for reason and understanding. The point of this whole post is, especially when it comes to family planning, proceed in faith with wisdom and judge not unless you want to be judged yourself.

*This is not to say that wisdom cannot be born from experience. Often, mothers who have more children have more wisdom or insight to offer mother’s who haven’t changed as many dirty diapers, dealt with more infant personalities and tendencies, or spent as many late nights seeking God’s direction when baby just won’t stop crying. But wisdom is as wisdom does. We make what we will from our experiences. Wisdom has less to do with how much experience a person has and more to do with what they have done with the experiences they’ve been given.