Kelly is at 8cm, won’t be much longer now. She is doing great!
She won’t let me post a picture. ;o) lol…
~Kathy
(Envision very pregnant lady doing happy dance…well, in theory.)
After 19 days of being “overdue” by the doctor’s timetable…we are thrilled that the Lord has been pleased to begin to bring forth our baby in His time just hours before we were supposed to call the hospital to schedule an induction. “Thank you, Lord, for your sustaining grace and love.”
Updates will follow.
Since it doesn’t look like there’s a baby in my very near future and I’m largely restricted (no pun intended) to the couch these days, I thought I might as well bring up a controversial discussion 😉 Maybe it will make me go into labor.
I received this email from my inbox last week and it pierced my heart…
“Dear Kelly,
I wanted to write to encourage you to keep speaking on the hard topics–I wish someone had told me.
I went the typical routine–high school–“what are you going do now”–college–then pursuing my “good job” because that’s what you do and besides, you need to be able to take care of yourself.
I get married in my early twenties, we made good money and we spent it well: nice house, new furniture, two new cars, vacations, etc.
When my first baby came along, I was blown away by my love for her. And not once had I thought about (or been told) that given the lifestyle we had acquired, I would be forced to go back to work when she was just a few months old. It floored me.
But surprisingly, no one else seemed to think it odd that I was struggling. It’s what everyone did. Of course we were obligated to find best day care and that would make all the difference, and then I could carry on, guilt-free, fulfilling my duty as a wife who made half the income. But when I handed my tiny baby over into the hands of someone I barely new, I might as well have given her my heart too.
Here’s the one thing I can’t get past: if feminism is so “liberating”, why did I feel so enslaved, without a choice, (emphasis mine) bound to a decision I didn’t want to make? The choice was being a mother who could take care of and nurture this beautiful gift God had given me, or handing her over to a complete stranger and go back to my “liberating job”, because I’m a woman and I can do what I want to do.
What kind of choice is that? “You can have it all?” No you can’t. And it’s cruel to even suggest it.
I know not all women will feel this way, and from my experience, it’s because the whole movement itself was intended to callous a mother’s heart toward her children and family so she would be more aggressive in the man’s world. They knew unless she was brainwashed to think that motherhood was just a side job and anyone else could do as good as she could, women would never “roar and conquer” in the man’s world.
And I’ll go ahead and add that I think the whole idea was Satan’s in the first place…what a clever way to destroy families than to get Mom out of the home?
But some of us kept our tender love in tact and have lived to regret that not one woman cared enough to tell me that the pursuit of motherhood was worthy of my entire devotion.”
Heart-broken,
Leah
I’m only waiting for the blessed joy of holding a little one…the waiting is so hard, the questions and concerns of my mind so great…and yet, it’s such a small thing to wait for a joyous end that is sure to come.
Many of you wait in much deeper pain, with greater agony, with larger questions. Perhaps this poem I found comforting will bring comfort to you too.
Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried.
Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate,
And the Master so gently said, “Child, you must wait!”
“Wait?’, you say, wait!” my indignant relpy.
“Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By FAITH I have asked, and am claiming your word.”
“My future and all to which I can relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to WAIT?
I’m needing a ‘yes,’ a go-ahead sign,
Or even a ‘no’ to which I can resign.”
“And Lord, you promised that if we believe
Weneed but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord, I’ve been asking, and this is my cry:
I’m weary of asking! I need a reply!”
Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
As my Master replied once again, “You must wait.”
So, I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut
And grumbled to God, “So, I’m waiting. . . for what?”
He seemed then to kneel and His eyes wept with mine,
And he tenderly said, “I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead, and cause mountians to run.
All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be.
You would have what you want . . but, you wouldn’t know ME.”
“You’d not know the depth of my love for each saint;
You’d not know the power that I give to the faint;
You’d not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
You’d not learn to trust just by knowing I’m there;
You’d not know the joy of resting in me
When darkness and silence were all you could see.
“You’d never experience that fulness of love
As the peace of my Spirit descendslike a dove;
You’d know that I give and I save . . . (for a start),
But you’d not know the depth of the beat of my heart.”
“The glow of my comfort late into the night.
The faith that I give when you walk without sight,
The depth that’s beyond getting just what you asked
Of an infinite God, who makes what you have LAST.”
“You’d never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’
Yes, your dreams for your loves ones overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss! If I lost what I’m doing in you!”
“So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
THAT THE GREATEST OF GIFTS IS TO GET TO KNOW ME,
And though oft may my answers is still but to WAIT.”
“And though oft’ My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still, “Wait.”
~Russell Kelfer~
The following is an excerpt from the book Mother, by Kathleen Norris, one of the sweetest and most profound books about motherhood I’ve ever read.
Here is Margaret’s epiphany of her mother’s life-work–positively beautiful…Margaret, who had traveled abroad, found employment and witnessed a more “dainty life” than that of her mother who daily toiled, though joyfully, under the “burden and stress” of raising seven children, of which Margaret was one, finally realized what true living was:
“How happy we all were!” Margaret said; “and how she worked for us!” And suddenly theories and speculation ended, and she knew. She knew that faithful, self-forgetting service, and the love that spends itself over and over, only to be renewed again and again, are the secret of happiness. For another world, perhaps, leisure and beauty and luxury–but in this one, “Who loses his life shall gain it.” Margaret knew now that her mother was not only the truest, the finest, the most generous woman she had ever known, but the happiest as well…
All her old castles in the air seemed cheap and tinselled to-night, beside these tender dreams that had their roots in the real truths of life. Travel and position, gowns and motor-cars, yachts and country houses, these things were to be bought in all their perfection by the highest bidder, and always would be. But love and character and service, home and the wonderful charge of little lives,–the “pure religion breathing household laws” that guided and perfected the whole,–these were not to be bought, they were only to be prayed for, worked for, bravely won.
“God has been very good to me,” Margaret said to herself…From now on, she thought, with a fervor…she would be a very different woman. If joy came, she would share it as far as she could; if sorrow, she would show her mother that her daughter was not all unworthy of her….
Margaret had a sudden tender memory of the days when Theodore and Duncan and Rob were all babies in turn. Her mother would gather the little daily supply of fresh clothes from bureau and chest every morning, and carry the little bath-tub into the sunny nursery window, and sit there with only a bobbing downy head and waving pink angers visible from the great warm bundle of bath apron….
And she had sometimes wished, or half formed the wish, that she and Bruce bad been the only ones–! Yes, came the sudden thought, but it wouldn’t have been Bruce and Margaret, after all, it would have been Bruce and Charlie.
Good God! That was what women did, then, when they denied the right of life to the distant, unwanted, possible little person! Calmly, constantly, in all placid philosophy and self-justification, they kept from the world–not only the troublesome new baby, with his tears and his illnesses, his merciless exactions, his endless claim on mind and body and spirit–but perhaps the glowing beauty of a Rebecca, the buoyant indomitable spirit of a Ted, the sturdy charm of a small Robert, whose grip on life, whose energy and ambition were as strong as Margaret’s own!
Margaret stirred uneasily, frowned in the dark. It seemed perfectly incredible, it seemed perfectly impossible that if Mother had had only the two–and how many thousands of women didn’t have that!–she, Margaret, a pronounced and separate entity, travelled, ambitious, and to be the wife of one of the world’s great men, might not have been lying here in the summer night, rich in love and youth and beauty and her dreams!
It was all puzzling, all too big for her to understand. But she could do what Mother did, just take the nearest duty and fulfil it, and sleep well, and rise joyfully to fresh effort.”
My official “due date” was last Wednesday, the 16th. I am still pregnant, though 😉
In all honesty, this has been one of my greatest struggles with a pregnancy yet. Part of me knows that the truth is a “due date” is only an average between 4 weeks of what is considered normal delivery time. So technically, I’m not overdue yet, though I feel that way.
I am physically pretty miserable but it’s much harder emotionally waking up *still pregnant* day after day. (I guess in the back of my mind I’m always hopeful that after this many children I’ll actually go a few days before my due date.) I periodically just break down sobbing, then pull myself together and start again. I went “over” two weeks with my first two, but this is the longest past my due date I’ve gone since those.
In addition, Ellia has the stomach virus. This is her “love the baby” position. She raised my top and fell asleep on my belly after a rough night for both of us. (I hope this picture isn’t offensive; if it is, tell me, and I’ll remove it. It seemed so sweet to me.)
I am learning that I am certainly not in control and that all one can do is be at peace with God’s time table. Easy to say, harder to live.
It feels like life has been on hold for weeks.
But despite the irrational notion that sweeps over me periodically where I fear I might be pregnant indefinitely, I know little one will come soon.
Also, God has revealed Himself in such a mighty way through all the comforting words, prayers and flood of love and care through friends from the blog world down to my closest ones.
In addition to friends who have already brought meals to us, a very special young lady begged us to come and stay until the baby is born so she could help out. She has been here over a week already, (she’s staying until we return from the hospital). She LOVES to cook (I call her a “food artist”) and delights in the meal preparations each day, entertains the children so I can rest, does what needs to be done, and just generally brings joy and a huge helping hand.
Bria works alongside her, of course…I can’t fail to give her due credit. Bria has been such a constant encouragement to me, full of joy and tenderness and service. But Olivia’s presence here takes so much of the load off and makes it more fun for Bria. (They are like a well-oiled machine together, and then they retreat in the afternoons, giggling with their cups of tea and favorite book or movie, to a quiet place to refresh.)
What a blessing to see the vision these two have! To be happiest when they are serving! (I can’t even *make* Olivia go home for a break.) And what a beautiful thing as I watch them, along with my children, playing, laughing and eagerly serving our family, finding absolute joy in it, where so many would scoff that “it’s unfair”, or that a mother of many shouldn’t *have* to have help.
Beloved, this is what the body of Christ looks like in motion.
Until you’ve seen it, it’s hard to understand. They’ve had more fun these few weeks, making special meals, baking cupcakes, having mud fights and sunny picnics and “soapy trampoline” time, anticipating with all the energy of children, the arrival of their baby brother. It’s not the heavy drudgery some might imagine.
I just have to say “Kudos” to all my children and husband (please don’t think me bragging…I am just so humbly grateful) for their patience, their eagerness to do whatever they can to make me more comfortable, their hearts of gratitude, their infectious joy and smiles and all the wonder they bring to my life. I feel ashamed, when I reflect on these blessings, to complain for one minute about this anxiety I’m feeling.
God has been so good to us!
By the way, unless something unforeseen happens, I will likely have time to post an “I’m in labor!” for you 😉
“We are childless by choice”, an old acquaintance–a believer–told me. “We just love our lives. We travel a lot and enjoy going out and we’ve never really wanted children”.
I replayed the conversation. I’m not supposed to even think anything of it. Children are now in the category of “option without stigma”. That is, it is politically incorrect to even suggest that parents *should* want children. After all, we all have the choice. Choice is King.
But something nags me…
And I realized what it was.
Before the socially acceptable option of choosing life, children were in a category of “spiritual, supernatural, miraculous”.
And rightly so. The Bible calls them a “heritage from the Lord”. A heritage is an immaterial, intangible gift passed down. It’s an inheritance the GIVER chooses and over which the GIVER has control.
But now that we are in control of this once supernatural gift, children have moved to a category of “possession”–things that can be acquired or not. And not just that, but possessions often seen as liabilities.
A possession is altogether different from a heritage.
A possession is temporal and usually measured by its immediate value. Decisions about acquiring possessions are mostly based on short-sighted variables and measured according to their benefit to the possessor.
A heritage can only be received, at the benevolence of the one giving. It is thought of in far-sighted terms. Long-term vision causes us to covet a heritage, even if we must share our resources to maintain it in the present.
Our children, though plenty valuable even in the present (if only we could see it through all our distractions), are gifts only properly understood with a far-sightedness–inheritances that gain value over time.
We have lost our long-term vision. And we have stopped seeing children as part of that vision.
I don’t think God ever meant for us to think of His heritage so flippantly, to refuse, altogether, the eternal gifts He would give in exchange for more vacations and a richer lifestyle.
He desires godly offspring. He longs to give us a full, rich inheritance. Let’s not allow our short-sighted ability to control rob us of our heritage.
I’m no scholar; but the common sense within me keeps asking,”Where has the common sense of the masses gone?” It’s not rocket science.
“Oh, let’s give no heed to tomorrow, let’s live for today and enjoy our lives. Birth control rocks.” “Oops…seems we’ve made a bad decision…a population decline that likely cannot be reversed. That means a fallen civilization. Hmmm…that’s really bad news.”
But wait, more irrationality will ensue:
“Here she goes again…writing another post about birth control to defend her choices. Why can’t she just live her life and let everyone else live theirs?”
Really? So it couldn’t have anything to do with real, widely publicized concerns about how our “personal” choices aren’t so personal, and so greatly affect our nation–the one in which my children and grandchildren will grow up? If I ever got a tattoo, I think it would say, “because your choices affect me…a lot.” I “meddle” for bigger reasons than myself…and you should too.
“Depopulation is, thus, a truly genuine and notable crisis of disastrous proportions whose ultimate magnitude is still not completely known; the massive birth dearth is, therefore, quite undoubtedly real, not an extravagant exaggeration of supposedly overworked imaginations.”
The so evident destruction of society, culture, and civilization can be, however, prevented if the true cause for such pandemic devastation is plainly made better known. World Population Implosion is Real
Overpopulation? Where do they get this stuff? And why? And why do we believe it? Can we not do simple math? Or does believing a lie just make it convenient to live for ourselves?
“Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay.”
“In the USA, where nearly one-fifth of Baby Boomers never had children, the hardship of vanishing retirement savings will be compounded by the strains on both formal and informal care-giving networks caused by the spread of childlessness. A pet will keep you company in old age, but it is unlikely to be of use in helping you navigate the health care system or in keeping predatory reverse mortgage brokers at bay. Philip Longman, secular liberal The Global Baby Bust
Deuteronomy 30:5 says, “The LORD your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.” Notice the language of Scripture contradicts ours. The words “prosper” and “multiply” usually aren’t found in the same sentence in our vocabulary.
“Longman says we should all be asking ourselves why nations would choose decline and death. You could understand why people in the poorest countries would forego large families, but why is it that, in the richest societies the world has ever known, the birthrate decline is the most severe?”
Read more: Population Decline: The Fall of Nations
These statistics reveal an overall concern for our civilization, acknowledged even by the liberal media with no religious, “ulterior motive”. Apply it to the impact (or lack thereof) of Christianity for a completely different debate.
“The putrid pursuit of materialism unbounded leads to nihilism accepted and the proposition of death required by its own integral and Nietzschean logic; deliberate sterility is a prerequisite for, ironically, that joyless joy.” World Population Implosion…
Longman also wrote a book called, The Empty Cradle–linked here is a succinct article about it.
Waiting is good.
But we’re Americans and waiting is not something to which we are accustomed.
Want fries? Three minutes.
Want popcorn? Four minutes.
Want to see the earthquake in Japan? One minute.
Want a tan? Thirty minutes.
We are in control. We want things and we want them fast.
So as I wait for a baby to come, the Lord gently reminds me that I am NOT in control. He calls forth the young and I can’t flip it, press it, microwave it or order it.
I can only wait. And the waiting reveals how impatient I am, how frustrated we can become when we are given all we want upon demand.
Photo courtesy of Olivia, taken at my baby shower.
So while I wait, I ponder. And I praise Him for this little lesson where He delights to show me who is really in control. I turn my face upwards, smile, and exhale...”In your time, Lord.”
Even the secular culture is noticing it: a generation of perpetual boys: men who refuse to grow up.
“…the culture of the boy-men today is less a life stage than a lifestyle…Permissive parenting made children less submissive, and the decline of deference coincided with the rise of consumer and media cultures celebrating the indefinite retention of the tastes and habits of childhood…”From Newsweek’s The Basement Boys, Gary Cross
I was reading an excerpt to the kids about Ben Franklin. And while I suppose he may be an exception among men, it struck me how young his virtue and ambition shined, contrasting him with most young men of today.
At a very young age his zeal for learning, reading, improving his mind and preparing for the future was unparalleled. He copied the writings of great authors and thinkers because he wanted to write and think like them. He would skip meals just to be able to have more time to read. And at the age of 15, he made three goals for himself: 1. Be frugal and do not go into debt 2. Speak ill of no man, even if it’s truth 3. Be honest in all things
I was subconsciously comparing his character with the typical 15-year-old boy of our day. Sadly, the contrast is just as stark when compared with many 25-year-olds. Where is the personal ambition, the drive, the zeal for what is noble and true and productive?
Instead, we have an epidemic of perpetual adolescence who spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games or just playing in general. They live with their parents longer, wait longer to choose a vocation, marry and have children. They live for today and almost disdain the suggestion of preparing for the future or aims at betterment. Worse yet, our society seems to encourage this limbo state of self-indulgence.
Contributing factors.
Why such a contrast in the young men of our day? What has contributed to this epidemic of man-boys?
1. At the top of the list among common theories are effects from the feminist movement.
Women now make up the greater part of the workforce and are more likely to hold college degrees, and therefore make more money. They “arrived” with their independence and now men don’t have to grow up or take responsibility. Prior to this era, men answered the innate call within them to “protect and provide”. But women have proven themselves without a need for provider and protector so men have gladly defaulted to a life of video games and adolescence.
“…the large-scale entry of women into the workforce made many men feel marginalized, especially when men were simultaneously bombarded by new parenting theories, which cast fathers as their children’s pals…My generation’s obsession with youth and its memories, stands out in the history of human vanity.” From Newsweek’s The Basement Boys, Gary Cross
2. A national (global?) effort to undermine traditional marriage and family.
“Today’s prime-time television,” the Parents Television Council concludes, “seems to be actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently painting it in a negative light.” From Newsweek’s Why I am Leaving Guyland
It’s not only en vogue to postpone marriage and family, (where once it was an early-sought goal), but those early to the alter are destined for scorn. Family demands responsibility so, which came first? The disdain for family to avoid responsibility, or the disdain for responsibility, thus avoiding family?
Besides that, “family” insinuates “Mom, Dad and children”. And well, you know, since this isn’t the norm for families anymore, we don’t want to offend, so we do away with the standard and create a new one. Only to do that successfully, we have to vilify the old one. If the traditional family is no longer something to aspire to, why bother?
3. Spoiling parents.
A post-depression era generation who had to work for what they had, which wasn’t much, determined to “give their children something better” ended up giving them something worse. A perpetual trend of parents doting on children, buying them all they needed to compete with their peers bred several generations of spoiled, “entitled” youth.
Prosperity breeds apathy. Do the math. Need I say more?
The phenomena are deep and varied. There isn’t one factor but many. But at the end of the day, we can trace them all back to a departure from the wisdom of God. That’s the one factor we can safely peg.
Our job.
We need men. And there’s hope…there is a new generation looking back to the wisdom of God, seeing their children as catalysts of change through the gospel of Christ. Ready and willing to do the hard work of raising not just mediocre humans who can survive life, but contenders for the faith, men of valor and virtue, men who have vision and embrace manhood.
This is the privilege we are given as parents to reconstruct our civilization. We don’t have to settle for what is; we can change it and glory in what will be!
“Men, you are to be creators and cultivators. God is a creator and a cultivator and you were made to image him. Create a family and cultivate your wife and children. Create a ministry and cultivate other people. Create a business and cultivate it. Be a giver, not a taker, a producer and not just a consumer.” From The Washington Post, Mark Driscoll “The World if Filled With Boys Who Can Shave“