You get married with dreams of having four kids and staying at home with them. You assume he wants the same thing.
And then you a few years pass and he says two is more than enough, anything is else is too expensive, and by the way you better get at least a part-time job to help pay for all this.
Or you decide on two, have them in your early twenties, and then you hit 32 and really want another one. But he's happy to have the baby years over with. What do you do?
Maybe it's not about kids. Maybe it's about moving. He gets a job offer on the other side of the country, and you don't want to uproot the kids and take them away from grandparents.
What do you do when you have a really difficult decision to make and compromise isn't really an option? How do you compromise on whether or not to have kids? And how do you compromise on whether or not to move? No middle ground is readily apparent. You either do or you don't. So which is it?
For many of my friends children was never an option because they believe in letting God plan their families. One of our friends had their thirteenth and fourteenth children two weeks ago (they had twins). I have others with eight or nine.
But most of us aren't like that. We don't necessarily want big families, and we do use birth control.
I know that speaking from the other end of it I wish that I had left more of my childbearing up to God. After I had Katie at 27 I thought I never wanted any other kids. We planned to adopt. And I'll tell that story another time. But I wish that we had had more before it was too late.
I really don't have any easy answers for these types of issues. I know that in the case of children, it would be easier in a way without birth control! Then we wouldn't have fights about these sort of things! But because we do, we won't always agree.
I also have two friends who followed their husbands when they had job offers far away. They were not enthused. For the first few years they hated it. But they've adjusted, and I think they're quite happy now.
The key thing I believe is that when you do make a decision that your husband wants, you have to do it wholeheartedly. You can't reserve the right to be angry later. We have to give up the bitterness, otherwise we're not really deciding in his favour. We're just acquiescing, and that never works. It's horrible for your marriage.
So, to sum up, I just don't know. These issues are really hard. But I'd love to know what you think! Leave some comments, and tell us how you settled these difficult things. Have you ever gone through something really hard like this? And how did you settle it? Maybe we can help each other through some of these hard times.
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Labels: loving, marriage, wifey wednesdays |
Stumble It!
It's been a long time since we disagreed on anything major. But early on we reached a stalemate on how many kids. We had 3 in the space of a year: One daughter,then twin daughters 11 months and 23 days later! I was finished. He wanted more, but since I was the one who had to carry them , he honored my wishes. Fast forward 10 years, and I had a complete change of heart and we've had 2 more since 2006. My example is not a good one. I basically rebelled and he let me.
My advice today would be to honor God's word and follow the leadership of one's husband trusting that He will honor our obedience and work things out for our good.