After our first child was born, a question came to our mind: when should we have our next baby? Sounds familiar? Before we could make up our mind, our second baby was already on her way when Tiffany was only 4 months old. Believe me, that was definitely a striking news to us. We wondered how things could ever work out. Surprisingly, things worked out fine with God’s grace, yet tough.
As we saw Tiffany and Odelia grew up side by side, we saw the beauty of having close siblings. And then we started to think, two kids might seem not quite enough. 4 seemed good. And so we had more. When our 4th kid was on her way, we came across the book “A Full Quiver” by Rick Hess. Then we figured, we don’t really have the wisdom to decide when and how many….we decided to let God handles the thinking instead.
God the almighty, is the “Alpha and Omega, the first and the last” (Revelation 1:11), creates lives and controls the wombs, obviously. We trust Him to make the best decision with His wisdom. Who are we to terminates an embryo or a fetus to grow? And how should we calculate the best gap between two siblings? And is there any formula to get the best family size?
Did you ever wonder why people used to say children are blessings and gifts from God? As time went on, we realized a big family size is actually good for both the parents and the children.
Children are sent from God to provide training for their parents. Usually, the more children you have, the more training you get. We have many opportunities to face different challenges. We get to know we need to learn how to love and how to be patient. Learning how to walk with God everyday becomes a very relevant issue. Otherwise, it’s not hard for you to get crazy instead of seeing the blessings from God. We need to live a more disciplined life in order to help our children be disciplined. And we do live a more healthier life now as we have to pay more attention to what we are consuming for our children. Like, are the things good to our soul, mind, emotion and body? And yes, our budget is tight, that makes us to learn the meaning of the words ‘essentials’ and ‘efficiency’. And we learn to give thanks and have joy everyday. Most importantly, we see the meaning and beauty of life. We know a lot of people is always looking forward to get out of the baby stage of their kids. We did before, as it is at least easier to have your own washroom breaks if there are no babies and toddlers around. However, now we realize it is just sweet to have babies and toddlers at home from time to time, they just remind you of your admiration towards your elder kids when they were still so innocent, and that helps you to look at them sweetly even after they made a mess.
We believe a big family is good for our children too. They have a lot of fun. They enjoy playing together, teaching the toddler stuff, and “playing” the baby. Certainly, there are times of fighting and arguments, but that is the time they learn the important things of life. They have to learn to share, respect, and wait in order to have a good time. They have to learn to love, to make others happy. In other sense, they learn to be mature. For the babies, there are many stimulations around them. A lot is going on all the time. They don’t really need anything that blinks or having electrical music that hang over their heads to make them smart.
“Lo, children are a heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” (Psalm 127: 3-5, KJV)
