Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Good With Three

Our youngest daughter, Ruth, was born in 2008.  At that time and for nearly a year, Jeremy and I felt blessed by the three wonderful children that God gave us.  We were very content with three and felt like it was a good fit for our family.  Many of you may be laughing because you heard us say this rather adamantly, yet we joked that He may decide to bring more little surprises to our family.  In 2010, God really started moving on our hearts, separately, to begin growing our family again.

For myself, it was a steady conviction by the Holy Spirit as I read the Word and interacted with people who really made family a priority.  I felt like most of my reasons for not having any more children were pretty selfish.  He reminded me over and over again that children are a blessing from Him and that He is the Creator. 

As Jeremy interacted with one of our partner churches, he met families who had opened their homes to more children, whether biologically, by adoption, or foster care.  This interaction fostered a desire in him to have another child, which grew as we began praying about this together.

To be honest, we weighed this decision heavily for months and really asked the Lord to search our hearts and know our thoughts.  We were afraid on many different levels of the impact another child could have on our family.  In our human frailty, we considered money, lifestyle, the possibility of a child with special needs, among other things.  In the end, it came down to FAITH.  We want to live our lives fully abandoned to Him and it was wrong to hold back this area of our family life, so we opened up ourselves to His desires if He should choose to grow our family.