Daniel and I discussed it before we got married, maybe even before we’d officially decided to get married. Both of us wanted a big family (at least by modern standards – Daniel wasn’t nearly as ambitious as I before I became his THE ONE), and we both knew we wanted to build our family biologically AND through adoption. Little did we know how difficult either of those desires would be.
My mom had uncomplicated pregnancies, multiple home births. I expected that would be my story as well. But then I developed severe preeclampsia at 30 weeks with my first baby.
And my first babies were all rough sleepers. And some among our first have had learning disabilities. And all of them are what the psychologists call “strong-willed.”
We had a hard beginning to the starting of our family. A hard enough beginning that many expected us to stop after one or two.
But I had discovered that difficult doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker. God had used and still is using our difficulties around pregnancy and parenting to teach me dependence on Christ and to sanctify me into his image. He used and is using my children to expose sin and to call me to greater righteousness.
And when the time came for us to start parenting children from hard places, we were able to take in stride a lot of the difficulties that throw other foster parents or potential adoptive parents for a loop. Yes, fostering and adopting is still different, but it hasn’t (for us) been significantly harder than parenting our biological children.
I have always considered the difficulty worth it. After all, these are children, persons made in the image of God! Any amount of difficulty can be borne for the privilege of shepherding these precious, priceless people.
But while I’ve considered it worth it, and have been thankful for the spiritual growth I’ve experienced through the process of pregnancy and parenting, fostering and adopting, I’d not understood the great grace of having a hard beginning.
You see, after eight pregnancies (all hard in their own ways) and parenting nine children (5 biological, 4 foster), I ended up with the elusive (to me) “good baby”. Moriah has been sleeping a five-hour stretch each night since she was 6 weeks old. I’ve never been able to expect a five-hour stretch until at least 9 months.
And now I realize that if I’d have had this easy a time with my first, I’d have quit after the first hard one. After any of the rest of my children. Every other child would have seemed too hard. Fostering would have seemed an impossibility. Adopting? So much for that desire.
But God granted me the grace of hard beginnings, and waited until we already knew we were ready to finish our family before he gave me an easy child.
Praise God for his grace in giving us the privilege of raising these 7 precious children (and the three he allowed us to parent for only a time.) Praise God for his grace in keeping any of our children from being “the one that broke the family.” Praise God for the grace of hard beginnings.
**Of course, Moriah is only four months, so whether she remains “easy” remains to be seen. Certainly, the postpartum preeclampsia I experienced with her and her early difficulties with weight gain were not particularly easy – nonetheless, the overall experience with her thus far has been nothing like the “deep end” God graciously threw us into with our first pregnancy and several of the others, teaching us to cling closely to him as our life preserver.
