From Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss, some thoughts about children...
Katy remarks about the ease of life without an infant to care for:
...we have had a delightful summer, not one sick day nor one sick night. With no baby to keep me awake, I sleep straight through, as Raymond says, and wake in the morning refreshed and cheerful.
Mrs. Brown, Katy's hostess in the countryside, tells of a conversation about children that she had with her husband:
"Well," says I, "supposing you had a pack of 'em, what have you got to give 'em?" "Jest exactly what my father and mother gave me," says he; "two hands to earn their bread with and a welcome you could have heard from Dan to Beersheba." [I LOVE that last line: "a welcome you could have heard from Dan to Beersheba." That's fantastic!]
Katy responds:
"I like to hear that!" I said. "And I hope many such welcomes will resound in this house. Suppose money does come in while little goes out; suppose you get possession of the whole farm; what then? Who will enjoy it with you? Who will you leave it to when you die? And in your old age, who will care for you?"
"You seem awful earnest," she [Mrs. Brown] said.
"Yes, I am in earnest. I want to see little children adorning every home as flowers adorn every meadow and every wayside. I want to see them welcomed to the homes they enter, to see their parents grow less and less selfish and more and more loving because they have come. I want to see God's precious gifts accepted, not frowned upon and refused."
Katy writes later:
Home again and full of the thousand cares that follow the summer and precede the winter. But let mothers and wives fret as they will, they enjoy these labors of love and would feel lost without them. For what amount of leisure, ease, and comfort would I exchange husband and children and this busy home?
A few months later, she writes this:
It is not always so easy to practice as it is to preach. I can see in my wisdom forty reasons for having four children and no more. The comfort of sleeping in peace, of having a little time to read, and to keep on with my music; strength with which to look after Ernest's poor people when they are sick; and, to tell the truth, strength to be bright and fresh and lovable to him--all these little joys have been growing very precious to me, and now I must give them up. I want to do it cheerfully and without a frown. But I find I love to have my own way, and that at that very moment I was asking God to appoint my work for me, I was secretly marking it out for myself. It is mortifying to find my will less in harmony with His than I thought it was and that I want to prescribe to Him how I shall spend the time, and the health, and the strength that are His, not mine. But I will not rest till this struggle is over, till I can say with a smile, "Not my will! Not my will! But Thine!"
The next summer, Katy and her family return to the countryside and stay with the Browns:
We got there this afternoon, bag and baggage. I had not said a word to Mrs. Brown about the addition to our family circle, knowing she had plenty of room; and as we alighted from the carriage, I snatched my baby from his nurse's arms and ran gaily up the walk with him in mine. "If this splendid fellow doesn't convert her, nothing will," I said to myself. At that instant, what should I see but Mrs. Brown, running to meet me with a boy in her arms exactly like Mr. Brown, only not quite six feet long and not yet sunburnt.
"There!" I cried, holding up my little old man.
"There!" she said, holding up hers.
We laughed till we cried; she took my baby and I took hers; after looking at him, I liked mine better than ever; after looking at mine, she was perfectly satisfied with hers.
[This exchange reminds me of the joy I had last summer when not only were we blessed with a beautiful baby boy, but so were our next-door neighbors. It was delightful to be pregnant at the same time as Wilma, and it's wonderful to now see two yearling boys around: her Jason and my Shav.]
Sons are a heritage from the Lord,
children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
~ Psalm 127:3-5
