Birth Control
We drove up the lane to our Amish friend’s house, and many eager little copy and paste’s, seemingly almost the same size, spilled from every crack and cranny of the house. Eagerly they came up to us, their curious nature belying their Amish clothes, touching the flowered cotton fabric I was wearing, and smiling eagerly. Their parents invited us into their home, sat us on a narrow twin-size bed that they had in the living room in lieu of a couch. My husband was her husband’s employer, and they were visibly excited to have us.
As we chatted, an almost childlike, simplistic view started to emerge. Dat of the home brought out a big piece of paper that he had carefully filled with the map of a homestead: fruit trees and shrubs, gardens, and lovely grounds, crayon-colored in with a childlike hand. This was his dream for his own little homestead. The children listened breathlessly as he expansively explained each part before reverently folding the paper and putting it away again.
Perhaps they could feel our palpable curiosity because without restraint they explained some of their beliefs to us. Just last year the preachers had made a visit to their home to make sure they were not ‘holding back’ in their baby production. I looked askance at the seven, stairstep, children twittering around our feet.
“But,” I spluttered, “aren’t you having a child almost every year?”
Mam smiled kindly at the innocent infidel. . “Yes, but we could be having them faster.”
My face felt tight when I smiled back, my lips frozen in a shocked grimace.
On the way home I almost gagged when I talked to my husband about that mindset. “Their women may as well be cattle producing calves.”
I still see that mindset. We must leave God in control of our babymaking, and God is not strong enough to be in control on his own, so we must hand over all control and without restraint make all the babies.
The Quiver Full movement.
I hate movements. It messes with your God-given instincts and what he has said in his word. It causes you to personally invest in something that very likely is not even from God. It appeals to the people who follow the teachings of man, who add to scripture and find merit in doing more and teaching more holiness than God taught.
It’s especially prevalent in the cult ATI started by Bill Gothard, a sexually immoral, religious, and sexually abusive man. How on earth Bill Gothard got anyone to follow him, and even to this day people follow him with religious fervor, I have no idea!
I can always pick out the men who believe this way. They are usually charismatic, much liked men, well-dressed men, but look at their wives. She has a broken look in her eyes, is rarely dressed well, and is almost always profoundly exhausted. It’s hard for us to respect men like that. We have seen the fallout and it is not the fruits of a man who loves his wife like God loved the church.
The quiver full mentality can be completely right and good, and it can also be abusive and sick.
There is a flip side to this coin, another ditch, so to speak, but I am not sure I am ready to get into that. I know less about it, but I have seen it around. Fearful of maxing out their resources, whether emotional or financially, people have very few children. This mentality like the quiver full can be perfectly right and good, but it can also be fearful, and all the way wrong.
So what is the right way, and why am I making it so complicated?
In reality, I don’t think it is complicated. I believe with my whole heart that if we love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength, he will give us wisdom and direction for the size of our family whether that’s one child or twenty or none at all.
I do know this for sure, no one has the right to judge your decisions. You alone can make them. You alone, know.
My husband and I have trusted Philippians in this area of our life. Perhaps this thought will help you too as you swim through the mist of too much information available and the cacophony of voices shouting to be heard, “do it my way, no my way, my way is best.”
“for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose”
It’s so simple. For a child of God, our very desires are planted by God. We can trust him to give us good desires. It is him who puts it in us and then gives us the grace and strength to persevere.
I know what some of you are thinking, so if I want to go rob someone, that must surely be from God.
Well, no.
Forgive me for my moment of levity. We are so good at bringing up worse-case scenarios that don’t apply to us.
I should be careful how I thrash my sword about with this thing of wanting to do the wrong thing. I have wanted to take people behind the woodshed for a righteous thrashing more than once, and I doubt that is something I should act upon. I guess being able to recognize the flesh is a good thing. Kapeesh?
This is one reason I take it so seriously when my husband tells me he wants another baby.
It’s why he takes it so seriously when I tell him I don’t want to have another baby.
We have never been led wrong when we waited on God to align our desires. Somehow in both the patriarchal world and the matriarchal world, our wants have become the grounds for a wrestling match between husband and wife. It’s such a smart trick of the enemy because as long as we are wrestling with each other, we will certainly not be wrestling him.
He doesn’t want us to know that we are each other’s greatest resource: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Looking at it from patriarchal eyes, it becomes almost impossible to be perfect enough for the husband. If you don’t dress exactly as he likes, it’s a sign of disrespect. If you ask too many questions; disrespectful and immediately to chail.
From a matriarchal viewpoint, if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. It makes for weak men and bitchy women.
Of course, God’s way is the perfect way and it works. Husband and wife work together, appreciating each other’s strengths and covering for each other’s weaknesses. In our house, my husband is the one who helps me navigate feelings. It is him I go to for perspective and insight. I am the one he comes to when he needs calm logic. Sometimes we talk things out and he still buys my son a jeep. I am the practical one, my husband is the fun one. Hence; my son has a jeep. Seeing my son’s face in his jeep has given me so much joy and makes me laugh.
God’s way is always perfect and it always leads to a place of peace. Sometimes it doesn’t bring peace immediately, but respect the process and it will. Even if that process is doing something that other Christians judge you for. Don’t look to the left or to the right. Only to Jesus.
I know that’s a rather simplistic view, but really, it probably is more simplistic than we give it credit.
Our pastor here in PA likes to say, “you don’t need counseling, you need to die to yourself.” And every time he says it, I imagine a Hiroshima bomb going off. The absolute utter, unbelievable, indescribable, wreckless, horrifying, horrific madness: that we should need to die to ourselves. I know many of you got the kind of counseling that opened your eyes and you count it as God’s mercy. But honestly, some of you just need to die to yourself.
I just need to die to myself.
I do and will continue to die to myself.
Last night I died to myself and then had to stand beside my body with my foot on my face because I kept lifting my head and saying “let me explain.”
All this to say when you work with your spouse like the team you are, the better your chances are at being wise, and hearing God’s voice.
I am aware of how this seems to alienate the ability to live well in a healthy way to only those who are perfect.
But that truly is not how it is. If you are married to an unbelieving husband, you trust God completely like a daughter of Sarah who does good and is not afraid of anything her husband might do, and God will hear you and honor you beyond your wildest dreams. You will be able to follow his leading, and guidance almost minute by minute.
I got a message from a wife who said in amazement, I am just doing exactly what God tells me, he says do this, make that decision, treat him this way, do that. She is fighting for her marriage and her husband. If you could see her in the spirit world, you would see her standing there, bloody, cut, but standing upright with all the righteousness of God’s army behind her. God sees his daughters who choose to listen to him first and foremost, and no matter the man, you better believe it he will go to bat for a woman like that.
He has gone to bat for me. He has gone to bat for my husband.
Dying to self in the easy things is easy. What merit is that really?
“But El, I can’t even hear God.”
Die to yourself when your flesh shouts for blood if you want to hear God. Die to yourself when your flesh is owed your rights.
Return to that simple trust that a child would have. None of this is confusing, nor do you need a Bacholers in Bible study to hear God. God is for us who aren’t as smart or quick thinking. He is for us who don’t even know how to put into words what is in our hearts. He is for us. We are his people.
Let me see if I can bring this runaway bunny trail back firmly to birth control, or the lack of it. This is my fleshly advice. If you want children, have them while you are young and stupid. Because when you get old, you won’t be stupid enough to have many many children.
Do have many many children. There is no losing, only winning. God always provides, and they are so fun. When I am sick, I lay on the couch and make a whole row of my littles sit on me. See how much money I am saving? I don’t need a heating pad or a weighted blanket.
When you have many children, you get to desensitize your boys to breastfeeding. Something that is so normal and natural and yet has managed to be perverted to the point that a woman needs to be covered while nursing her baby. The best thing you can do for your boys is nurse those babies in front of your boys. They will grow up an advocate for their wives just as my husband is an advocate for me. After our baby is born, he stops anyone from interrupting us when we are in that holy moment of connection over that first feeding. The last time my baby took about 15 minutes to latch on for the first time, and the baby’s impatient nurse tried to convince him that only 25% of babies nurse in the first 8 hours. He almost choked on the biscuit he wasn’t eating. “You clearly don’t know my wife,” he replied, “this is her seventh child, that baby will nurse.”
When you have many children, your children get lots of practice dying to self. Which you know they need.
It’s obvious my advice is just to have many many children, especially now when the world hates children more than ever. But that’s just because I love my many kids so terribly much. It is not everyone’s calling to have so many children, nor can everyone.
But you know what everyone can do? You can have a maternal heart towards the people that are not claimed. You can gather them in, forget yourself and your rights, and feed them for as long as they are around. Hugs, food, advice, a shoulder to cry on, and acres and acres of love.
I cannot help but think this is true religion, undefiled by man’s reasoning.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
We think so small here. Orphan and widow.
There are many orphans and widows in this world who still have a spouse and parents.
So many needs. So few workers to harvest.
This is why some of us are making ALL the workers, singlehandedly.
Searching for these pictures to use gave me a raging case of baby fever. I told MrB, “I forgot how cute our babies are, and how much fun it is having a teeny tiny baby that is all mine.”
He looked happy. “We can always make another one,” was his unhelpful response. This, from a man who wanted only two children, max, when we got married. I remember hearing him say that to me, and me snickering to God on the inside, “you gonna handle this?” I axed him, “I gotcha” he replied poking me with his elbow.
Let me wrap up this slightly laborious blog post. Yes, I am a huge fan of many children. But I am an even greater fan of you hearing from God, and trusting him. Give all your preconceptions of God to God and be willing to have your mind changed from the inside out. Be willing to do what he says, even if it makes you look all wrong in man’s eyes.
Rhonda was the one who first laid this principle out for me, and it has set me free. No more confusion or doubt. I strongly encourage you to give her a follow. Her religion is pure, it’s not religious religion.
We are all up to our necks with religious religion. It flows like rivers of misht, up to our neck, making that we can’t breathe or hear.
But like Anna in Mr God, This is Anna, it is entirely possible to talk to him, listen to him, and be free of all the cobwebs of the things you were taught all wrong.
I constantly have people asking me for book recommendations for personal growth. I rarely have one to give, but Mr God, This is Anna is one I recommend.
Ps.This blog post should be called Birth Control and a little propaganda.