This month marks our 16th anniversary. 16 years ago, this month, DH proposed to me – and I made him wait a week before I gave him an answer! 16 years ago, this month, we went to get the license on my 18th birthday. 16 years ago we headed to the Justice of the Peace to give our “I dos”. 16 years ago, this month, I had my whole life planned ahead.
“What was my plan?” you may ask. Well, it definitely involved children! I wanted a handful, and I wanted to start right away. My plan was to have four children close in age. Then, we would wait 5 or 10 years and have one or two more children. I also wanted to alternate boy, girl, boy, girl. The caboose two it didn’t matter. I expected to have our first child by the time our first anniversary rolled around and around HIS first birthday we’d be pregnant again. That would be so for each of the four children that came in the first set.
God had His own plan for my life, though, and it involved waiting for children. We were on our way to our 3rd anniversary and still no children. My dearest friend got married (to a horrid beast of a man and it didn’t even last 6months) and got pregnant right away. A couple we knew from working at Pizza Hut wed and got pregnant right away – they were trying to wait a while. Here I was so desperately wanting a child and didn’t have one and both these couples DIDN’T want to get pregnant, but did. I couldn’t understand that at all. It was a really rough spot in life for me. Not so much for DH. One night, as I told him we might need to go see a dr, because I couldn’t understand why we were still childless, he told me that he wasn’t ready for children! News to me! After that I just kept my weeping to myself and prayed and prayed that God would change DH’s heart. He did, about a week later he came to me and said he’d been thinking about why he wasn’t ready and the only excuse he could come up with wasn’t a good reason at all, that we could go ahead and try for a baby, even if it meant drs. That was the night our first child started her life. 
.
OK, now God was on board with “my” plan and I expected to get pregnant with my 2nd child when my 1st turned one – well, somewhere between 11 and 13months anyway. Nopers – 8 months of actively trying. You gotta know, I really thought we were ‘broken’ at this point, that having a large family might actually prove difficult for us. Imagine my surprise when I found out our 3rd child was on her way and my 2nd was only 3months old. God’s got a great sense of humor, ya know?
It was during the pregnancy and infanthood of our third child that I learned a lot of things about parenting, life and God. I found “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” and we decided to use that for birth control because I decided I would never, ever use the pill due to it’s abortifacient properties. Yet, at the same time, God was really tugging on my heart to just “let go and let God”. Dh thought that was insanity. And so began my praying again – praying that God would work on DH’s heart, if that was what God wanted from us. During that time I was charting. DH went on a business trip and when he came home I was two days past ovulation and therefore “safe” – yup, the beginning of number 4.
Yup, God had His own plan all along. Not only did he control when I got pregnant, He determined WHO I was pregnant with. Remember my plan of BGBG? uh, ya, God said, “girl” four times in a row. We’ve since had four boys in a row. Those four came about through a combination of charting cycles and DH wrestling with God over being “quiverful”, or fully trusting Him with our fertility. I would chart, dh would wrestle. As God won out and DH was ready to be QF, we’d get pregnant. Then, after baby is born, DH goes back to wanting to “wait a while before having another” and wrestling with God.
Wonder what comes next? Me too! Will we have more children? I don’t know. Will we ever be a fully soldout quiverful family? I don’t know. Will we ever chose to forcibly end our fertility? I don’t know that either! Time will tell and we’ll see what God does.
Well, that’s how I got here – 16 years of marriage and 8 children to show for it. I’m feeling pretty good about that, even if it wasn’t how *I* planned things. ;o) I also think it’s way cool that God brought the children in the order that He did – 4 girls, then 4 boys is so cool! I can’t help but wonder who He might send next!
