Why did we have so many kids?

Please forgive me if I have written these things before. I blog pretty rarely, and I don't have time to go back and actually read what I've said. I just realized I haven't updated my picture in yeeears.

When I was pregnant with my first child and had time to naval gaze (is that the right spelling for the word that means belly button?)... meaning focus on myself a lot more than I could later when I was pregnant again but also chasing toddlers, I had a pregnancy calendar that I was horrible at filling out, full of cool quotes about pregnancy and parenting. The one I remember best and quote most often is this:

"The decision to become a parent . . . is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

This is truer as time passes. They have my heart. My kids are very much an extension of me. You cut them, I bleed. Their stress is my stress.

About this time last year, for example, I had interviews with several different internships in computer science and construction management, one for college admission, and was applying for both tech and graduate nurse positions. I also remember having several papers, presentations and programs due at the same time. Proofing, practicing, making sure things get printed out. I wrote a novel last year. Okay, well, my daughter wrote a novel. But I was there with her all along the way.

And then there are all the relationship type things. For the record, at the time of this writing, I have two children in relationships with people I absolutely adore, and both have my approval and respect. But the emotions involved in all the pursuits, the observing, the praying, the leap of faith, the calling of the father or the girl, receiving the call, the waiting for a response, or just the waiting for there to be someone worth waiting for, are not for the faint of heart. It is hard. Even when everything goes exactly the way you hoped it would, life has a way of, well, draining the life out of you.

I am lousy at handling suspense. I don't watch a lot of movies or shows, don't do a lot of recreational reading, because I can't handle the not knowing. I (re)read a book the other night. The whole book. Because I needed to know what happened. I HAD READ IT BEFORE. But I didn't remember everything. So I read it again. The whole dang book. Stayed up till 2am. Can't handle suspense, even in small amounts.

But this real life adulting stuff - I don't know how it ends. And that is hard. It requires a lot of prayer. A lot of leaning. It is the first time, since becoming a parent, that I have questioned becoming a parent. It is the first time I ever said to my husband, "Why did we have so many kids?!" Not potty training, not driver education, not hormones. Adulting. I'm sure I have written this before, but it was way easier giving birth to babies than it has been giving birth to adults.

The verse I've been holding onto is "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee." I apologize for not referencing it, and for the fact that I am actually quoting it from the New International I-learned-it-in-a-song Translation, but it is really in the Bible, I read it there yesterday in the NASB.

I have a choice. I can stay nestled, stay leaning, my mind fixed on the Prince of Peace. It is not a one time choice. It is sometimes an all day every day choice. Sometimes it is a choice I make over and over again as I wake up at night. I will choose to live in perfect peace, my mind stayed on Jesus, abiding, trusting.