Posted in Large Families

Often, when I am out in public with my children, I will receive comments from well-meaning people about my family size.  (The most entertaining part about this is that I think my family is small!)  The one I hear most often is "You have your hands full!"  The more curious observers will sometimes ask: "How many children are you planning to have?”  to which I usually reply "As many as God wants to give me!" (which of course shocks them into speechlessness in most cases).

I love children, especially my own, and genuinely believe what God says in His Word about the blessing of children.  They are a reward, a heritage from the Lord, a wonderful gift from the Father of All of Life.  The more the better, that's how my husband and I feel about having children.  Why don't more people feel this way anymore? I believe it is because many people do not truly see children as special, wonderful gifts.  Too often, children are seen as burdens instead of blessings.  Many times, people choose not to have children, or to have only one or two, because of the work or expense of childrearing.  Sure, it costs money to raise a family, and sure it is a whole lot of hard work, but the benefits really do out-weigh the short-term investment.  Many of the benefits cannot be measured monetarily, but can only be measured with the heart.  Life is about building relationships, not bank accounts.

I'm an old-fashioned kind of girl.  I love to read old books, I like antiques, and I see the beauty in time-honored traditions.  I believe in good-old fashioned values of faith, family, patriotism, honor for parents, husband as the head of the family and wife as the heart, lots of children growing up in a house filled with love, laughter and good memories.  These kind of old-fashioned values never really go out of style.

The Old-Time Family
By Edgar Guest

It makes me smile to hear ‘em tell each other nowadays
The burdens they are bearing, with a child or two to raise.
Of course the cost of living has gone soaring to the sky
And our kids are wearing garments that my parents couldn’t buy.
Now my father wasn’t wealthy, but I never heard him squeal
Because eight of us were sitting at the table every meal.

People fancy they are martyrs if their children number three,
And four or five they reckon makes a large-sized family.
A dozen hungry youngsters at a table I have seen
And their daddy didn’t grumble when they licked the platter clean.
Oh, I wonder how these mothers and these fathers up-to-date
Would like the job of buying little shoes for seven or eight.

We were eight around the table in those happy days back them,
Eight that cleaned our plates of pot-pie and then passed them up again;
Eight that needed shoes and stockings, eight to wash and put to bed,
And with mighty little money in the purse, as I have said,
But with all the care we brought them, and through all the days of stress,
I never heard my father or my mother wish for less.