Biological Evangelism

I got a call from a telemarketer a few years ago.  She was fund-raising for a pro-life group.  She began her spiel by asking me if I considered myself pro-life or pro-choice.  I replied, “I’ll let you guess. We have fourteen children and we’re expecting one in July.”

     “Oh my,” she said, ”You must be pro-life.  Fifteen children!”  There was a long pause and then she said,” I’m not even going to ask you for money.” And hung up.

     Just the other week,  I found an old note dated 2006 where I asked God for another blessing, wrote it down and then stuck it in a book and forgot I wrote it.  God didn’t forget, however and several months later we discovered Stephen on the way.  God’s first commandment is “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).  He has never rescinded this that I can find in the Bible.

     Malachi 2: 15 says God desires a godly seed from our marriage union.  I am a strong proponent of biological evangelism. When God talks about blessing families with fruitfulness, he compares it to things that cannot be numbered, such as the sand on the beach or the stars in the sky.  The blessing over Rebecca in preparation for her marriage was “Be thou the mother of thousands of millions” (Gen. 24:60)

  I have been challenged to see Motherhood as an eternal career. When a new baby is conceived, I have eternity in my womb.  I will bring forth a life that will last forever and ever. What an awesome thought. We  need to let God be sovereign.  I have often wondered why it is more acceptable to die on the mission field serving Christ but if one was to die in childbirth, giving life to another, it is considered irresponsible. So what’s the bottom line?  It’s not a matter of deciding how many children we should have or not have, but having a vision to bring forth a godly seed for God’s glory.

     I had a new thought last week:  God has chosen to build His kingdom through the birth of more people.  I don’t mean just Christians, The only way any one can come into the kingdom of God requires a physical birth first, or at least conception.  Satan has been murdering millions of children though abortion, and Christians protest this but he is just as active in Christian churches and homes tricking us into believing that we have the right and power to prevent conception. In doing this Satan is limiting the army of God and we are not even aware of it. Think about this, if the Christians in the last several generations hadn’t made the choice to limit their families, how much more powerful God’s army would be today.  The numbers of babies who were not even conceived because of some of our practices is probably much greater than the number of babies aborted and yet birth control is a perfectly acceptable practice in the Church.  I wonder if this makes the enemy laugh.

     As I get older, I am becoming more and more convinced that life is a gift and I do not want to be guilty of despising it.    For all the abundance of scientific technology, only God gives life and only women have been ordained to bring forth that life.  I am a life-giver. What an awesome thought.  No president or king can compare with that and yet we have been tricked into believing that it is a curse and something only designed to tie us to our kitchen sinks.

It is an honor to bring a soul into the world that will live forever and then I have been given the opportunity to help disciple that new life with the vision of adding another soul to Christ’s kingdom.

Motherhood is a career that extends to eternity.  All other things will be left behind. I do not want to be empty of that which I could have taken into eternity – the redeemed souls of my children. Mark had a vision once about walking our family through a wall of fire.  Everything we had attained in life was burned away except our children and that is what we came to God with. The enemy knows the power of life. Every person that comes into the world has the potential to glorify God with his life and to help destroy the works of the enemy.  No wonder Satan is trying to destroy our desire to bear children and why he tries so hard to make us believe the sacrifice is too great.     

     When I was 45 years old, I was pretty sure my child bearing years were over.  After all, fifteen children were probably enough for any woman. Imagine my surprise when, on my 46 birthday I woke up to a strange nauseating feeling.  I told myself I must have a touch of the local stomach bug but when my husband took me out for supper, I couldn’t eat my favorite foods and began to feel a little suspicious.  After several days, I finally confirmed my suspicions.  Sure enough we were anticipating another arrival in the fall.

     I believe life is a gift and meant to be celebrated and so even though my head told me that I was old and hadn’t been pregnant for almost four years, and the baby clothes were probably all given away, not to mention maternity clothes, my heart said “Life is a gift from God” and I decided to do my best to embrace this experience wholeheartedly.

     It is easy to celebrate life in our house.  Just let fifteen children into the secret and a party begins.  My oldest son was engaged and soon to be married.  His response was “That’s cool, mom, you’ll be pregnant at my wedding” (So much for a flattering mother-of the groom dress)

     Emmanuel, who was almost four, had a slightly different perspective: “Mom, you could have two babies, a boy for me and a girl for Jerusha to play with.”

     Ever since I passed the two children mark, well-meaning people have been making the comment “You must love being pregnant.”  Somehow they have confused the fact that being miserable for nine months has turned mysteriously into an enjoyable experience.  How silly, but the truth is, the reward is worth the misery.  How many people who panned for gold and actually found it said they wished they had never spent those days and nights shivering in Alaska looking.  No, their reward was worth it.

     Whatever you may believe about women and childbearing, the truth is still the truth.  God designed us to have children     So, did this make the next eight months a bed of roses? Absolutely not.  My brain hears the whispered thought “baby on the way” and I instantly gain ten pounds without even eating an extra bite. Then as this new one grows my legs ache, my back hurts, my husband tells me I’m sexier while I’m looking in the mirror saying “Yeah right,  those watermelon seeds I swallowed have finally grown” and then there is labor.  Contrary to popular belief, labor does not get easier each time you have another baby, especially since each time you are also older, but I focus on the reward at the end.

     I have to continually ask myself:  what is the big picture? Just as God has a plan for each of my children; He has a plan for my marriage and what it is producing.

I found that plan in the book of Malachi where God says marriage is for the purpose of producing a godly offspring (Malachi 2:15).

     Every now and then I wonder why I didn’t make it to the mission field or do some other great thing and then God reminds me that I am doing something great even though I will never see the end result.  I am a builder.  He has entrusted Mark and I with all these children.  How better to make disciples than with those who someone lives with day after day after day.   This is the best opportunity God will ever give me to pass on my firm conviction that God has a plan for each of us   I want to be extravagant for Jesus and leave a legacy of 100’s of people who have the same vision of passing on the baton of faith so each generation after us (if Christ tarries) will increase the kingdom of God.

     Mark and I have sixteen children.  If God gives them each ten children, the next generation will have 160 children, but if the vision is passed along, my great grandchildren could number 1600 and the last generation I might live to see could number160, 000.  Imagine what an impact 160,000 more people could have in this world if they were all on fire for Christ.  I hope I live to be 100.

Falling off the pedestal

     As often as I warn people not to put me on a pedestal,  they do anyway.  Perhaps just the fact that we have so many children is grounds for this, so every now and then I must just tell some tales to prove them wrong.

 

     One year when we had eight children, I took all the ones who were too small to actually attend school to see their big brothers in a Christmas play.  I was quite particular to dress everyone up in their best. I had all the girls in cute matching Christmas dresses and had even made myself a matching maternity dress for I was expecting again.  I was also rather proud of the fact that I had finally potty trained Naomi. She was sitting on my lap in her cute little frilly underwear that I let her wear and we were all engrossed in the play when suddenly, my lap was flooded.  As my face turned red, I realized I was trapped.  Mark hadn’t come along so if I got up and left with Naomi, all the other little children would reveal their true behavior patterns while I was out changing her and then too, I was soaked and didn’t bring a spare dress along in my diaper bag.  Finally I just sat stiffly through the rest of the program with Naomi on my lap and didn’t visit with anyone on our way out the door.  I was hoping someone might think my water had  broken instead  of suspecting that I was soaked with urine but once again I had to just forget my pride and realize perhaps my potty training methods weren’t fool proof.  We all made it home and I may be the only one who even remembers that night unless there are acquaintances of mine out there somewhere still wondering why I was so unfriendly one winter evening.

     Publicity comes our way every now and then.  One year we had a call from a local newspaper asking if they could do a story on our family. At first we turned them down, but on further reflection we decided to go ahead and let the paper run a story.  They sent a photographer and a very nice young lady out to interview us.  She asked everyone questions and spent a good part of the day with us.  The story ran on the front cover of our local paper on Mother’s Day and the headline proclaimed in big bold letters “I’m Never Tired and I’m Never Bored”.

     I got more response from that headline that I ever dreamed possible especially since it was a misquote and I actually said,” I’m never lonely and I’m never bored” 

    I sent a copy of the article to my mother without explanation and she called up and accused me of being in denial.  While the reporter called me up to apologize for the mistake, she never printed a correction and, now that almost nine years have passed, every now and then I’ll run into someone who says

      “Oh, are you that lady in the paper who is never tired?”

         About two weeks after that, I was out in the car and got pulled over by a policeman.  I was pretty sure I hadn’t been  speeding but as he scolded me for having my car out of inspection,  I was envisioning a new headline  Mother of 13 Cited For Improperly Securing two year old in Car Seat.  That would make me sound like the Mother of the Year.  Mark had our van so I had 5 preschoolers in a car designed for 4 passengers and according to the car seat law; some of them were illegally buckled in.  I wouldn’t have even gone out, but David and Noah’s first grade class was having a Mother’s Lunch which all good mothers must attend.  So, while doing my duty I was “forced’ to violate the law.    Well, such is life.  I suppose most mothers don’t have 5 preschoolers to take with them to a first grade luncheon.

    The point is, I’m as normal as everyone else, I just cook in bigger pots. Our life is full of teenage drama and sibling rivalry just like the rest of the world.  Every morning I get up and ask God for the grace to make it through the day with my sanity intact and He has been faithful.  I wouldn’t trade one tiny humbling moment that my children have put me through all unintentionally and I am looking forward to a few more before the house falls quiet at last.

    

good intentions

My good blogging intentions have been falling by the wayside.  I stopped this morning to regroup, scrape them up and try again.
After all, writers are supposed to write, right?
So, how have I digressed off the writing path? Let me count the ways...

1. the laundry needs done
2. someone has to balance the checkbook
3.  I am the book keeper for Mark's Electric
4. My children need me(some, constantly)
5. the puppies need baths
6.  I haven't figured out what's for supper yet
7. sometimes I feel guilty when I take time to write even though no one minds that I do so

This list could go on for quite some time yet. but I am trying to finish the rough draft of my next novel by the end of the year so I remind myself again, writer's need to write and some things can wait.

So, what keeps you from your good intentions?

WOW!

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;

    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their voice  goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.   PSM 19 1-4NIV


How can I read that and not be amazed that God cares about me.  All I have to do is go outside at night and look at the stars and see God's work.  Why is it so easy to forget His presence in my life?

Some thoughts on entropy

   Whenever life begins going along smoothly, there will be a bump in the road just to remind us that we are dependent on God, not ourselves and force us to turn again to Him.

There is also the fact that nothing ever stays the same.  It is constantly wearing down or breaking or descending into chaos. 

    Last winter I was pretty sure entropy was overtaking us.  It started with the dishwasher.  We were renovating a house and in the course of working on the kitchen at the new house, a new dishwasher came my way as well.  The old one had been subject to random fits of leakage so this seemed a good time to replace it.  This appeared to be an easy task but when Mark pulled out the old dishwasher, we discovered that it had been leaking for quite a while through the floor and into the basement, just not out in front where we could see it.  The floor underneath was rotten.  Obviously this would be a bigger project than we anticipated at first.

     While this project was still in process, our water in the house began shutting off.  We have our own well and I am used to running quite a few things in my attempts to multitask.  I can have someone in the shower, run two washing machines, the kitchen sink and the dishwasher all at one time without too much  distress for the person in the shower.  Suddenly I could only use one item at a time and it wasn’t going to be the dishwasher.   The only way to deal with this problem was run to the basement, shut off the washing machines, turn off the pump, wait a few minutes, reset the pressure switch, run back upstairs and remember to start everything up again.

     We were all still fairly cheerful about these things and then the house got cold and then colder.  It was January and I don’t tolerate cold very well. Since Mark was going out to get plumbing parts, he decided he might as well get some furnace parts too.  Then, to take the cake, our old furnace down in the basement sprang an oil leak.  Now my husband can fix anything but everything in one week was a little much.  Still, one can either laugh or cry.  We decided to have a good laugh and then work at fixing one thing at a time.  The furnace has been removed, the circulator fixed, the water tank has a new pressure switch and I have a new list of things that need repaired this winter.

     Entropy hits us in other areas also. For example, I have a dishwasher, a regular sized kitchen sink and a large 3 bay restaurant size sink and I still cannot keep up with the demand for clean dishes. Over the years I have become convinced that that at least in our house, dirty dishes breed in the sink at night.  No matter how empty the sink is at night, there are more dishes there in the morning.  One year I interviewed some of the children to see if anyone knew the answer.  Benjamin was seventeen at the time, and he offered the first plausible theory.

     “I believe dishes are like Hattifatteners.  The multiply especially fast during thunderstorms.  Outlets by the sink increase this disposition still more”

     This didn’t entirely explain my dish problem, so I asked Naomi.  She put forward her theory eagerly.  “Dishes are relatives to amoebas and they divide asexually at night while no one is looking.”

    Ephraim and Jedidiah simply said “Mom, eating food makes more dishes.” 

     They wondered why was this was so hard for me to understand.  They also added they sincerely hoped I wasn’t planning to ask them to help whip the dishes into submission.

     The more I think about housework and dishes, the more I become convinced that it is a simple mathematical equation. The degree of cleanliness of your house is a directly proportional ratio of mess created by toddlers and ability and numbers available to clean.  In other words, if you have mostly older children, your house will be cleaner than if you have a higher ratio of preschoolers.

     On the other hand, no matter how many preschoolers or almost adult children you have, entropy is always out there lurking just beyond the door, waiting to force its way in.  My husband is not so romantic about it.  He just says,  “ Everything is either being cleaned up or messed up. There is no in- between”

     He is right of course. There is nothing really lurking and conspiring to trash my house.  Life is messy and I have come to grips with that.  I refuse to give up and let it overtake me but neither shall I let it rule my life.  When everything breaks down, it’s time to gird up my loins and go to work so that when we are done, we’ll have another memory in our cache of stories to tell when we are old.

Why I like cows

Today is bill paying day.  Not only is it a Monday but I  get to sit in my little office and instead of  writing about cream cheese I get to add up all the bills for the month and make sure they get paid on time.

Surprisingly,  I enjoy this job.  When I was little, we learned a song which I can still call to mind today ."He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth in every mine...."  I don't know who wrote it, and  at at the time I learned it, I'm sure I thought it was just a catchy tune but now that I am approaching adulthood I think of it every single month.

My God owns everything around me.  He knows every bill I owe and that milk costs more than I want to pay for all these kids to drink.  So I have a system.
I add the bills, I sing my Sunday school song and when the total overwhelms me, I thank God that He has reminded me of his provision once again.

Yesterday the milk cow was sick.  When a cow won't get up, its a very bad sign and no one was quite sure if she had eaten something bad or slipped on ice and broken her back.  We decided that before we put her down, we would all pray for her.

  After our prayer meeting, the cow was eating and then by morning she stood up.  What a faith builder for my little children.  I know God does not always answer our prayers the way we think would be best but hearing my 5 year old pray for Clover and then taking him outside to see Clover feeling much  better was a reminder once again: MY God cares for me. He cares about cows and puppy dogs and even sparrows so why should I be anxious just because I'm adding up bills.

I can hardly wait to see how He supplies this month.

resolutions

Yesterday I planned to write about my birthday resolutions, but I got busy.  All the kids came home for the day, from VA, from Lebanon, from Berrysburg.  The house was full of young people and little kids.  We had lasagna and cheesecake and even birthday presents.

This morning I rose early, as a godly woman should, went into the kitchen and surveyed the heap of dirty dishes, you know the kind, lasagna stuck to cheese, stuck to dried noodles, all on 24 plates. Then I noticed all the lights that burnt all night because I got tired and went to bed before the 14 and older crowd.

I have to say my attitude was less than godly as I roamed through the rooms noticing all the things that hadn't been done "right". I preheated the oven, stuck the sticky buns in, and started washing dishes, feeling grumbly all the while.  God always finds me among the dirty dishes.  Little thoughts began wafting through my mind- wisps of verses about doing my work cheerfully.  I had to give in, to laugh my miserable attitude off,  and try on a new one.

Yesterday, my resolutions were going to be: run more, write more, drink less coffee.  Nothing wrong with those but I am going to aim higher.  Here's my new one: Ask God to give me the grace to serve my family with joy.  My father has a poster that says "Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."

I am going to turnoff my computer and go back to my messy kitchen and clean it up and enjoy the process.