I hear people all of the time lamenting the fact that they cannot get pregnant. "We have been trying so hard to get pregnant but we just can't", they cry! A couple of things come to mind when I hear this. First, is it such a bad thing to be trying to get pregnant?! I mean, is that not about like trying to break the world chocolate-eating record? How much more fun could a job get? Oh, don't throw me in that briar patch, says Blair Rabbit! Yes, they are not going to get much sympathy from me! Second, have these people who cannot get pregnant ever been around kids? Have they spent any time with children of any age? Maybe they think that having kids is going to be as hard work as conceiving the little suckers. I hate to break it to them but raising kids is not near as much fun as trying to have them.
Seriously, when is the fun part in child-rearing? I need to know. I need something to look forward to. I know that the first few months are very difficult. No sleep, diapers, spit-up, cholic--sounds like me soon. Then comes the "Terrible Twos" that last for a couple of years, acting up in pre-school, and before you know it you have parent-teacher conferences more often than you used to have sex! With Middle School comes their first cuss words and learning more from their friends than you would ever want them to know. High School means they are going to try acting out all those things they learned while the only thing you are doing in bed is wondering where they are and what they are doing and if your insurance is going to cover it.
Oh, sure, there are times when they make you laugh but it is usually just because you can either laugh or cry and laughing takes less energy. Pretty soon you realize that they are having all the fun and yet they still have a worse attitude than you do and they seem to have no greater joy than when you are all miserable! I am sure glad I was never like that and I cannot understand why anyone would want to have one in the house! Mark Twain said, "Familiarity breeds contempt - and children." You are better off with contempt!
1 comment:
Brother Blair, you are certainly correct that nothing diminishes the opportunity for trying to conceive children so much as being successful in so doing. For once you have planted your, ahem, furrow and reaped your harvest, the party starts, uh, winding down.
Nonetheless, one can't agree entirely with the premise of being better off with contempt.
There is, we may all agree, much frustration and heartache attendant to parenting, and it has surely always been thus. Our Maker surely does not begrudge our practicing the art of conception (so long as we follow His laws), but I believe He expects us to bear the results with grace. As per Ecclesiastes, or was it the Byrds, to every thing there is a season.
In the words of Noel Paul Stookey (no, I am not making this up), "A man shall leave his mother, and a woman leave her home. They shall travel on to where the two shall be as one. As it was in the beginning, 'tis now and 'til the end -- woman draws her life from man, and gives it back again. And there is love." Mr. Stookey, better known by his middle name, when flanked by fellow musicians Peter and Mary, is also, if memory serves, an ordained Presbyterian minister. I, of course, am too young to be an old hippie, but I did listen to some of their songs...
What Adam and his old lady started, well, it just keeps goin' round, man. It had to be tough raising Cain and Abel, and still that whole scene didn't turn out so well... And, of course, the, uh, not listening thing that Eve started with the apple, and then Lot's wife, you know, Mrs. Dash, all that continues today -- they just won't listen. But, I don't suppose we can expect that to change -- it'll be that way to the end times, so we gotta keep obeyin' and trying to do right, so that we don't get caught unprepared.
Whew! Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. As a father of three, I don't expect to be siring any more progeny. Lots of days there's not much satisfaction in this whole Dad deal, but those moments, oh, those moments, that your child tells you she loves you, or when you know you've passed on a great truth to them. Those, my friends, are more precious than gold.
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