For Her Own Sake

Part of how I knew my parents’ love for me was by their love for my siblings. They welcomed 8 more children into our family after me. I remember the elation we all had at each announcement of a new baby on the way. The first time I encountered an outside negative reaction was with baby #6. Yes, it did take that long for me to realize there was something different about our family size! Big families were common in our Baptist community. But when I went to Sunday evening service with the happy news, my friend scrunched up her face and asked why my parents were having another baby. This question truly puzzled me. I didn’t see babies as a decision. Babies were simply what happened in families - they were occasions for celebration - unquestioned blessings.

I came to understand what my friend meant as time went on and I heard couples say things like “our family is complete,” “we’re done trying for a boy,” or “we have our three.” I realized that many people chose how many children they wanted ahead of time, or stopped having children once they achieved a boy/girl set. In my own imaginative world, I planned my future family too. I picked names for my sons and daughters to be and even made them little chore charts and school schedules. But I ended up having a list of names so long that I had to found an orphanage too! There was no limit to the new lives I imagined. In my world, children were not pieces to complete a family collection. They were individual people with their own names, stories, duties, and personalities, and they were each celebrated just for the sake of existing as themselves.

My parents’ openness to life soaked into my own understanding of who I was and why my siblings and I were alive. Very simply, we existed because it was good to be alive. I remember a stranger freely commenting to my mother, “You must be crazy!” as she was walking around with the crowd of us at our county fair. She smiled and responded that we were all gifts from God. I knew I had been received as a precious treasure just like each of my little brothers and sisters. We weren’t the derailed result of an attempted plan, we weren’t “oopsies,” and we weren’t the successful outcome of any personal project either. We were just there, and we were loved for it. 

In every stage of life, this outlook has grounded me. In the years when I wished for a family, but didn’t have a partner to share it with, I remembered that a husband and a baby weren’t a given. They WERE given! I could hope for them as for a bonus and not mourn the loss of something that hadn’t ever been guaranteed. And I could look at all the people around me, already bonuses in my life, and be grateful. After marriage, months went by without a pregnancy. I admitted that, as much as I would like to control the process, if I were in control, a child would no longer be a gift. Now that we are expecting our daughter, we delight in the gift and remember that we’re still not the ones in control of her little life. We receive her as a blessing, and love her for her own sake.