The below story was emailed to me from my friend (and the wonderfully named), Leah Thomas. I hope you find her story helpful and encouraging.
I am a wife to a wonderful husband and am a mother of two
amazing little boys. One of my sons,
Joseph, is 3 years old and the other one, Isaac, is 9 months old. I work from home as a wedding planner and I
run a reasonably successful wedding venue.
My husband, Joe, and I are also in the early stages of planting a church
in the Central Florida area.
My husband and I have not chosen the path of permanent birth
control. However that is not to say we
would never. Stating that I know now
that I will never be in a situation that might lend me to question the wisdom
of having more children down the road is a statement I am not willing to make. I hope I never have to ask that question, but
I will not say never. I love and am
completely and totally smitten with my children and would potentially love to
have more.
My parents however did make that choice. I have a younger brother and it is just the
two of us siblings. My mother began
having strange symptoms after I was born and they continued on through her
pregnancy with my brother. She was
diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. MS
can take many different forms and the severity is very different for everyone. My mother had an extremely progressive form
of the disease and was wheelchair bound in just a few short years after
diagnosis.
MS complications caused her very sudden death three years
ago. I say sudden because we weren’t
expecting it right then. However,
through most of my childhood she was in and out of the hospital and it was
always in the back of our minds that she would die young and possibly at any
time. The uncertainty of her life
expectancy combined with the difficulty of living life with, for her, a
paralyzing disease is one that made them question the wisdom of having another
child.
It was an extremely difficult decision for them, but it was
unclear what the strain of another pregnancy might do to her system and she was
in “survival mode” trying to raise two young children. So they chose a permanent form of birth
control. They say hindsight is always
20/20 and I believe she would say she was devastated to have never been able to
have more children, but that she did best for her family.
My parents were amazing examples of how to live by faith and
demonstrated Christ centered lives. Both
of my parents believed that children are a gift from God and they also believe
that God is sovereign in all things.
That does not mean that there is never a time to pray and seek God’s
will for your family as it pertains to planning when and if it will grow.
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