Wednesday, January 2, 2008

All those kids

A family that lives in our neighborhood has five kids. They range in age from 7 years old down to 10 months. All five of the kids are part of our children's ministry and the difference that I see in them from summer until now is amazing. The family is more stable and the mom and dad are at church every week. They are building relationships with others in our church and everyone seems to be growing.

Recently these parents shared that they were pregnant. Of course my first thought was "Really God, can I please have just one child?" Then my second thought was, "Gesh, they can hardly handle the kids they have, what will they do with another one?" It makes me sad that selfish responses were the first thing that came to my head. And at the same time, I'm sure that I wasn't the only one to think these things about this family's situation.

The other day this mom almost miscarried her baby and is now on bed rest. At first I had thought that it would be really sad if she miscarried her baby but at the same time, she has five others. And in the same moment I knew that wasn't true. A mother doesn't love child number six any less than child number one. If she had lost her baby she would have lost a piece of herself. I'm really glad that she didn't lose her baby. I'm glad we'll have another little one in the nursery. I'm glad that as a church we now have another way to love on this family and serve them as they continue to care for five kids with mom on bed rest. I pray that during this time I get to know this family better. And I really hope I get to hold the baby!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do you have a lot of trees in your yard? We had a problem similiar to this. Turned out tree roots had grown through clay pipes in our yard. The water couldn't drain out so it backed up (and all over our floors).

Best of luck figuring out the problem!