“You were such a wanted child.”
Gathered around by a few, soft lights with some of our closest friends, we wished little Cooper a happy 8th birthday by speaking a short blessing over his upcoming year. It was a sweet time, and I left with his mother’s words echoing in my heart….
“You were such a wanted child.”
Cooper is the third born, and the first child Robin and Scott had after their vasectomy reversal.
A wanted child.
The words keep ringing. Have I spoken this to all my children? Do they know they are wanted? Do I live with them like they are wanted? Do those who spend any time with our family see that my children are wanted?
In an age where birth control makes it so simple, no, mandatory that we “control” the children born to us, is it any wonder why it’s so easy to arrive unwanted? In a controlled environment, any variable that changes unexpectedly is deemed “unwanted”. It’s a mistake, a plan gone awry.
We don’t even know we do this to our own children. How many times I’ve heard a child described as “an accident”. An immortal soul–a living miracle of God–an accident?
We should shudder at our evolved thinking toward life. We should read the Bible again as little children…
“It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.” Psalm 100:3
And now, I look at my children…“you are such wanted children”. Let me say it with my life.
A few snuggles before we go….
18 comments
How blessed that couple was to be able to conceive and have a child after that vasectomy reversal.
Oh Kelly, this post is so precious and refreshing! I pray my sweet little blessings will know how wanted they were/are. We are so blessed!!
Thank you Kelly for posting this! Our family is so blessed to have you and Aaron a part of our lives and our kids lives.
This was a great birthday for Cooper and thank you for sharing in our miracle!
love ya,
Robin
Wow that is awesome. We’ve been trying for nearly 2 years now and still going strong with trying. 🙂
Wow…this really got to me. I had to check my heart and pray for an attitude that shows my children how precious they are and how much they were/are wanted!
HI Kelly!! How are you? I loved this post. We tell our children all the time how much they were/are wanted. Over the holidays it was so obvious the difference in how other people think about their children, what a pain or a bother. My children were kind of shocked. It is just so foreign to them that children would be anything but “wanted” and as many as God would give to boot. I just cherish the priviledge to change the way at least these nine people think about children, to line up with the word of God!
Jessica: just prayed the the Lord would open your womb and grant you the desire of your heart!! Keep trying . . . oh, and have fun 😉
What a blessing to share. Thank you. My reversal babe is almost one year old now. God is so good.The value of all my children(in my eyes) changed the day we realized what we had done post vasectomy.I am so gratful for second chances.
oh kelly! you made me cry… at my desk… at work! i’ve always been told by my mother that i was an accident.. a ‘whoops’ and occasionally even a mistake…i can’t even begin to say what these ‘jokes’ did to my self esteem growing up! i’m going to remember these words myself, and i will do everything i can someday to make sure my children know just how wanted they are!
I’ll never forget the day (I was in grade school) I overheard a friend’s mother complain to another woman that, with summer vacation coming up, she didn’t know what she was going to do with all the kids at home. It was the first time I ever realized that some mothers didn’t really like being with their kids! (That’s how I interpreted what she said, because of her tone, I think.)
I was really shocked! My dear mother worked because she had to in order to support us, but I always knew that she would have preferred to be home with us. That’s quite a tribute to her, I’d say, and she did a wonderful job of raising us on her own, instilling in us true values and a sense of worth. God bless her!
Love this. My oldest was a very early preemie and as a result is disabled. I always call him my half-million dollar baby affectionately , because that was what we paid out after insurance capped. We have pics displayed of him in NICU and he has also seen video, so he can see that we very much wanted him. After that I had a miscarriage and then a period of infertility, then we had our second son, and he too knows how we tried hard for him. I think it is so important to let your children know this. Of course they will get on your nerves sometimes,and you will get on theirs! But for them to know without doubt that you wanted them is so important.
Love reversal stories probably because they hit so close to home. We just had (Dec. 3rd) our 6th child after our reversal – nine total!! God is so good!! I just praise Him for opening our eyes to see the great blessing in children.
How beautiful!
So beautiful. What a blessing for that little boy to hear! And all the rest of you. 🙂
I remember so clearly, when I was pregnant with my first, a woman saying to me “I should have stopped with one, more than that is just too much”. She said that with her *three* little children clinging to her Sunday-best skirt, in the hallway of a church teeming with children. 🙁 My own mother is the third child of 4 and I heard again and again my grandmother tell her and anybody who would listen that more than one is “too many” and when we announced the birth of our second child, her response was “How nice. I hope you don’t have another one for at least 5 years, or ever”. 🙁 Do people not even think before they open their mouths???
My grandmother is the only person I know to go to her deathbed wishing she’d had fewer children. Ironically, it was her third child, one of the unwanted ones, who was the only one to take care of that bitter, unhappy woman for the last decade of her life, and the only one at her bedside when she died. Her two older sons never showed up (but did call to ask when their inheritance was coming), and the youngest child arrived late to the funeral because he was busy shopping with his own children.
I wish that someone had told my mother that she was a wanted and dearly valued child. She still suffers to this day because of the ugly heart attitude of her mother. 🙁
I know that I have already commented, but I just can’t get away from this post. Shanie, I too always heard that I was the “oops” baby, the “accident”. And I always believed it wholeheartedly…growing up in such an abusive home. I just can’t understand why someone wouldn’t want their children. It takes my breath to look at my three sweet little blessings and think that if we would’ve been “using precaution” that they would not be here! I just don’t understand what anyone would rather have than children! My mother-in-law said to me recently that we will never have anything if we don’t stop having babies. I know that we would rather have the babies than the “anything”!!!
I was a “mistake” or “accident” – child number 5 (number 4 was an accident too). To be fair, my mother never spelt it out to me quite like that – but she has said numerous times to me “Never have 5 children”, which, being number 5, was quite difficult to hear. I’ve got past it now, as I know that she really does love me, but my teenage years were difficult.
We tell our youngest (born when I was 43) that she was a “wonderful surprise blessing.” DH and I had decided when we found out we were expecting never to use the term “oops baby” or “accident.” I never want her to feel she was any less “wanted” than her 2 older brothers, even if she wasn’t a planned pregnancy (and aren’t all babies planned by God anyway?). Both DH and I were conceived out of wedlock and while not directly told we weren’t wanted, it was clear we were not planned and threw a wrench in our respective parents’ life plans.
Beautiful post! Your friend and her family sound like amazing people.
Tricia, that’s interesting… I don’t think it ever occurred to me as a child that my parents DIDN’T like to spend time with me (though they did have a lot of problems, I knew they cared a lot)… but I always wanted them out of the house. I was thrilled every time I was left on my own.