Family Planning | Do I Believe It?
Nearly six months after my husband released the documentary, The Baby War: Defenders and Defectors, I found myself choking back the tears and whispering to my good friend, "Part of me wishes I had never got married and had children." Our family has been through a specific sickness with one of our children that had shaken me to my very core. The guilt of the possibility of having passed on "faulty genes" crushed me in my already depressed state.
I sat with my kind and merciful husband and confessed my fears and struggles to find pleasure in being a mother, which had previously come so naturally to me. I shared with him the irony that I saw in my feelings compared with the truth revealed in God's Word and also the message of the film, The Baby War: Defenders and Defectors. God's Word says that children are a blessing, even if they bring us pain or they go through pain. I asked him to pray for me that God would bring back my joy of having our children.
For three months, during the worst of our child's sickness, I woke up a bundle of fears and stayed a bundle of fears. During those three months my husband's father died unexpectedly and a friend lost her three year old daughter to cancer. Death, sickness, and decay were everywhere and my daughter did not get any better.
A year later, our daughter is better, but not well. However, I have learned what a blessing she is, even sick, maybe particularly through this sickness. Somehow she has become more thoughtful of others and more thankful. I have become gentler. She has also learned how committed her family is to her, as we have served and waited on her through this illness. Even our three year old, seen at the end of the DVD, encourages her and loves on her.
Her humor and drive are intact (especially on her good days and even sometimes on her hard days). The Lord has returned to me the joy of my salvation. Last Thanksgiving I was most thankful for being able to be thankful! The Lord did that for me. I am no longer afraid when I wake up in the mornings. What seemed unbearable is bearable in the Lord. The trouble with trusting our feelings is that they have no eternal perspective. I am learning how to say, "I don't all of the answers, but I trust God."
When my husband released this film I did not know we were headed for a trial that would make me (emotionally, at least) agree with some of the eugenicists featured in the film. That was not on my radar. I can say now that I have more compassion for those who hold those sorts of views, but what of my own? During the dark times my little daughters would often skip around the house singing "Standing on the Promises of God," and I would ask myself, "What are God's promises? Have any of God's promises been broken in our circumstances?" No, His promises are still good. Romans 8:18-39 continually comforts me.
The other day someone said to me, "So, you have nine children?" I grinned at him and said, "Yep, I am so thankful for them and I wouldn't give one of them back," and I meant it. Children are a blessing! That doesn't only apply to bright, healthy, beautiful children (they are all beautiful anyway); it doesn't only apply to middle class, "wanted" children. Children are a precious blessing in God's eyes, period.
Do I believe it? Yes I do!
JENETTE CLAY
Walnut Grove, Missouri, USA
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