Children

Mark 9:37 "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me."

I had a plan.  3-4 children... mostly boys probably but two girls and two boys would be great.  Maybe adopted (because I was told it would be hard for me to get pregnant) but at least one biologically would be nice.  Then I met Jay.  He wanted alot of children, like 6 or 7, maybe more if God gave us more.  We settled on simply that we would like to have children.  I, of course, still thought 3-4.... you get the idea.

We thought it would be nice to be married at least a year before our first child was born but also had no plans of really "waiting to have children".  We also thought 18mo to 2 years would be a good age gap between each child. You can see I had a lot of plans for our children.  So when decided we were ready to be pregnant,  it happened.  I mean really in 3 months we were pregnant, only two cycles went by without getting pregnant.  This was a wonderful moment in my life... the fear of never being able to be pregnant was gone.  It ends up that I seemly have absolutely no problems getting pregnant.... don't worry about tomorrow.  I had spent my whole life thinking I was infertile and not trusting God for his promises.  After our first child was born, we had a set of twins 18 months later (perfect time frame) and a mere 16 months after the twins, we had another girl.

Wow!  So here we are.  4 children in 3 years... and I'm tired but extremely blessed.  And now it's time for evaluation.  Do we want more children?  I don't know.  I really think so.  Somedays I want to be pregnant now and somedays I never want to be pregnant again.  Somedays I want to adopt children and sometimes I think of the struggles that can bring too but sometimes I dwell on the blessings it would bring.  I want children to have a home.  A loving family and to be taken care of and be able to hear about Jesus.  I want all child rearing to be to the glory of God and I fail so often.  I need to continually surrender my selfishness.

There is also the longing and potential to be part of our church youth group.  To mentor and love other children, who have a home but maybe just need someone else to speak truth into them, to just be there if they need help.  I want this too.  Could these be the next children I am supposed to welcome into our family.   I don't know.  I am at a crossroad and not sure where to turn.  This is the life situation I am dwelling on in my devotion times or in my mind most of the time.  I am trying to not think about how hard my days are right now but to think about how the ultimate goal is to make children's lives count for Christ.  I have so many failures everyday but really want my life to count for the glory of God in children's lives.

So I want to receive all children.... but I am struggling with what that means in my life.  I have given up on all plans and have no current expectations.

I hope this makes sense to someone but it might be just a whole bunch of random thoughts and statements.