Are We Done Yet?

Lately a lot of people have been asking me the same question: "So are you done having kids?".  There was a time when that question sounded perfectly normal and valid, but not anymore.  The Lord has completely changed my thinking on children and birth control, and now when I hear that question I actually feel confused! 

Are we done having kids?  How in the world should I know?  Am I God?  Why do people ask me that like I am all-knowing and I SHOULD know?

THAT is how I mentally respond to that question now.  I don't know.  I can't know.  It is not my call.  I am not in control.

The word "control" is the very problem of the term "birth control". We as humans--especially control freaks like myself--want to be able to control everything. This is not of God. There is no peace in that. As Christians, we are to submit ourselves to God and His will for our lives. We're to take our hands off the controls and give them to God. "Trust in the Lord with ALL of your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6 I think that means all areas of our lives, don't you? I don't think I can say I trust in the Lord with all of my heart, and then say, "okay God, I'm just having 3 kids, alright?" Who are we to just TELL God that?

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have come a long way in this area.  After my first three kids, I was adamant that I was done having children.  I never wanted to become pregnant again and I was even afraid of the possibility.  I believe that my exact words were, "if I ever find out that I'm pregnant again, I will jump off a cliff!"  Ha ha...I did end up pregnant again and I am still here, so the cliff jumping never happened.  Baby number four was a HUGE surprise and shock, and boy did God do a work in me through that pregnancy!  He taught me so much!

He taught me to surrender everything.  There was a time that I thought I had fully surrendered to Him, but the truth was that I had surrendered everything except childbearing, which I had tucked away in a little private pocket that I thought God wouldn't see.  I hid it and kept my tight little fingers on it, and wouldn't give it to anyone, ESPECIALLY not God!  But one day, He made it very clear...I was to give up birth control and trust HIM.  He is the one who opens and closes my womb, and He will decide when my womb is done bearing children.  The amazing thing was that I hadn't even said anything to my husband, and the next day he told me basically the same thing...that we shouldn't use birth control anymore.  What a confirmation!!

I am not pointing a finger at you and telling you what YOU should do.  I am just telling you what God has taught me, and what He has told me to do.  Everyone needs to seek the Lord for their own families, and we definitely need to follow the lead of our husbands.  Pray, give this area of your life to the LORD (that is the hardest part), ask your husband what he feels is the right thing to do, and submit to his decision.  This is God's way, my sisters, and it is good.  He has set it up this way because He loves us and it is best for us!

Now I'll finish up with a couple of things for you to consider.  Consider first what the Bible says about children, and then consider the history of the birth control movement.

The Bible says that children are a gifts and blessings. "Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them..." Psalm 127:3-5  

I recently started studying the history of the birth control movement.  When you are born in a time like ours, it is easy to be accustomed to the way that things are done, and to forget that things were not always done the way that they are now, and that not all things are being done God's way.  Nowadays, it is just the norm to assume that everyone will use some form of birth control.  People plan when they will start having kids, how many they will have, what they will accomplish before they have them.  Well, this has not always been!  It wasn't until the feminists emerged with the women's rights movement that there was a major birth control movement, and the introduction of the birth control pill.  This not only caused the outlook on childbearing to change, but it also made promiscuity much easier!

I believe that feminism is one of the greatest reasons for the downfall of the family.  When women decided that they needed "rights", and that staying home with their families was not enough, they went to work and abandoned their posts.  The family has fallen apart, health issues are on the rise because healthy meals are not prepared at home, crime is rising because children are not supervised.  It's a mess!

Below is some information about the birth control movement that I found online.  Read it, read the Bible, pray, and God will guide you.  Much love to all of my sisters in Christ!

The birth control movement began during the women's rights movement in the United States during the 1910s. Leaders of the movement advocated women's rights to control reproduction and lobbied for public education and distribution of contraception, despite stringent anti-obscenity laws. It took more than 50 years until women could obtain contraception legally.

Post-Suffrage Movement

1. After the suffrage movement resulted in women gaining the right to vote in 1920, the women's rights movement began focusing on obtaining additional equal rights for women. According to the National Women's History Project, the birth control movement began as a way for women to gain freedom over their bodies, sexuality and lifestyle choices. The movement not only focused on public education about birth control methods, it also intended to prove that modern women could choose to live fulfilled lives without becoming mothers.

Comstock Law

2. According to the National Women's History Museum, the birth control movement was held up by an anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Law. Drafted by politician Anthony Comstock in 1873 as a way to curtail premarital sex and lewdness, the law legally banned contraception and deemed informational pamphlets on birth control as the distribution of obscene materials. During the 1910s, advocates of the birth control movement wrote articles and gave out information on contraception and were continually tried and convicted under the Comstock Law.

Founder

3. According to the National Women's History Museum, New York nurse Margaret Sanger is considered the leader of the birth control movement. Sanger published articles and pamphlets on birth control in the 1910s and opened a birth control clinic in 1916. It was open only nine days before Sanger was jailed for 30 days for distributing contraception. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1922, and the organization opened the first legal birth control clinic in 1923. It was allowed to distribute condoms and diaphragms only to married couples.

Eugenics

4. According to PBS's series "The American Experience," the birth control movement joined with the eugenics movement in the 1920s and 30s to gain support for the cause. The eugenics movement in America focused on selective breeding to maintain a perfect society and wanted to limit "unfit" classes, such as minorities and the handicapped, from procreating. Margaret Sanger publicly endorsed the use of birth control for eugenics, though she may have done so only to gain public acceptance of the birth control movement.

Supreme Court

5. Though the birth control movement began in the 1910s, the Supreme Court didn't make the distribution of contraception information legal until 1936, reports the National Women's History Project. In the United States v. One Package to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, doctors were given the right to inform patients about contraception. Although the first birth control pill was developed in 1960, it wasn't until the 1965 case, Griswold v. Connecticut, that the Supreme Court ruled that the right to use contraception was a constitutional freedom.

Read more: History of the Birth Control Movement | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5052080_history-birth-control-movement.html#ixzz1C1ZybqE5

Here is the history of the birth control pill:  The birth control pill was developed and tested in the 1950s by a team of U.S.-based scientists, whose work was funded by the women's rights advocate Katharine Dexter McCormick (1875-1967). The first human trials were conducted in 1956 in Puerto Rico, and resulted in approval of the pill by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1960. The freedom the pill provided to women by allowing them to control when and how often they became pregnant greatly influenced the women's rights movement of the 1960s. By the beginning of the 21st century, dozens of varieties of the birth control pill were on the market, and were used not only for contraception but also to regulate the menstrual cycle and to control acne.

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