How many do you want?

Reflections from a mama in the thick of things

Yesterday as I was scrambling to clean the house, I was thinking about how the Lord comforts us all differently, giving us different benefits, unique portions. Andrew and I just celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary. We were living with my parents in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and I hadn’t washed my hair in many days. I whined about it, and I could see Andrew start to fix the problem in his head. We mock at men for doing this, always fixing and not just listening, but that’s because our problems as women are usually petty. If we had a real problem, like a tree (or a dozen) on top of our houses and in our roads, we would see this as a super-power. 

So he washed my hair that day. He heated water. I hung my head off a hammock and he soaked and scrubbed and rinsed my hair. At the time I was exhausted and emotional, but looking back, it is a precious memory. It’s funny how that happens— how we can manufacture something, like a fancy dinner date or vacation— and it can disappoint or even hurt in our memory, and then God will go and give you a beautiful moment in the worst time, or simply heal your memory in a way that makes you look back on a hard day and say, “I’ll never forget the way that person loved me.”

As for our portion, God has given us just around five years of knowing each other, four years of marriage and three children. I was talking to a friend the other day who had been married twelve years and is expecting her first baby. She was telling me how she and her husband grew up together, married soon after high-school, traveled together and made money together, and how wonderful this had been for them. This made me think a lot about young love and marriage, and how sweet it would be to have that story. But then I thought of our story, and how wonderful it is, how incredibly surprised and thankful we are at the end of every day when we find ourselves together and we realize we have a house full of children. It feels like God just picked us up and placed us in a land full of wells we didn’t dig and vineyards we didn’t plant. Instead of preparing us together for these days, he prepared us separately and then gave us to one another full grown, like Adam and Eve. Both stories are good. It’s an incredible thought to consider all the many stories he can tell beautifully. 

I always wanted children, not a specific amount but in the plural. This is a dangerous position, turns out. To be simply available. Anything can happen. Take me, for instance.

Becoming a mother has changed me in many ways. I’ve started to see life from the perspective of my children—not all the time, but I do have glimpses— and I can literally feel my heart growing, like the Grinch. 

To illustrate, this summer we attended a wedding in which the bride was one of ten children. I had known her fairly well throughout the years and she was a normal sister, sometimes complaining about her siblings, not always extremely close to them, and yet I was blown away and in tears the whole reception at the incredible love and support they gave her. There was a time when I would have compared myself to her and felt less-than and sad, but instead I was happy crying, thinking of sibling love, the futures of my own children, the love they already have for each other and how precious it is. My heart had expanded to no longer see myself as the bride, but as the mother of brides, the mother of grooms, of children who will grow and leave us and love and be loved and forgive, who will always be connected and deeply touched by their siblings. Longer than they will have me, they will have one another. 

Although I had wonderful friends, it was my sister who stood and spoke for me at our wedding. This duty falls naturally to our siblings. She wanted to do it, and would’ve been hurt if I hadn’t let her.  If I had had five sisters, there would have been more of that kind of confident comforting love, with plenty to say. They might have fussed about it, who knows, there could have been more drama, for sure, but doubtless more love and an outpouring of more affection. 

What God gave me, one wonderful sister, was perfect for me: it was my portion. But God has opened up my heart to consider the question of “how many do you want?” not merely from my own perspective, but from the perspective of my children. I am so often myopic, stuck in my own world and especially in a tiny window of time. I honestly feel in this (full-term uncomfortable) moment a great reluctance to have a fourth baby. But recently I heard Katy Faust say in an interview (I paraphrase) that almost all of the decisions we make around marriage and family center around the adults— their longings, their loses, their desires, their identity, their feelings— and the problem is when you elevate adults, kids will have to sacrifice for them, when it should be the other way around. 

With that wedding still fresh in my mind, God gave me another view recently in the week-long visit from my dear friend Sarah, who spoke often of her five brothers. Her eyes welled up more than once while telling me about them, specifically of how, as a grown woman, it is such a comfort to know she has five men who would do anything for her. As she was talking, I thought about how it could have been for her, as the eldest, if her mother had stopped at just two children. That oldest brother is married with children. He loves Sarah, but there is a great chance he might be busy or unaware if she needed anything. His plate is full. But she has five brothers, any one able and willing to respond to her needs. There is no shame in this— we all have needs. We all have real or metaphorical moments of trees on our houses, and women need men, plain and simple, just as men need women. There have been and will be so many moments where she is the Giver, where she helps them open up and talk, to soften and see the world differently, to care for their children and be a friend to the women they love, as she taught them from the cradle to love women simply in her presence. 

I’m not saying it’s always good to have more children, or that large families are always better than small ones, of course not. What I am saying is that children are a blessing from the Lord, it’s true—and not just to their parents and the world— but also and greatly to one another. And this is something to consider.

I used to be a place person, or so I thought. All I wanted was to be cozy on my bit of earth, with my book and cup of tea. But as I have grown and faced the frailty and suffering and even the possibility of death to those I love more than myself, I have changed. I am a people person now. From sun-up to sun-down. God makes every mother into a people person. Some of us fight it more than others, but eventually we will be changed and our hearts softened to the incomparable blessing of people.