Inspiration Inside Me

I think I was about 7 or 8 years old the first time it hit me. I was sitting in my little girl rocking chair with my name painted on it holding a baby doll. As I rocked the doll to sleep, this weird feeling came over me; my stomach knotted, and a dull ache came over my arms. I wanted to be holding my very own live baby so badly that I started crying. Later that night, I even asked my mom if she would adopt a baby that I could take care of because I didn’t want to wait until I grew up to be a mommy.

Rereading Start Your Family put me in a really reflective mood about my own “inspiration” for having a baby, and I realized that inspiration had been inside me all along, since I was a little girl. I didn’t necessarily need anything to inspire me to have a baby; God put that incredible desire in me when he created me. I don’t know if all little girls or women feel that; but I did, and I still do.

When I got to be a teenager, I used the standard wait-a-couple-years when I thought about my future. But I think that was more of a result of cultural influence than anything. No one says, “I want to get pregnant on my honeymoon,” and to say that would be really going against the grain, inciting all sorts of questions and comments and looks that can only be interpreted one way: “You’re crazy.”

During college, I became “birth control Emily” (don’t worry; it was a term of endearment, I think). I discussed (debated? I don’t remember) the issue of birth control with my friends and acquaintances and wrote blog posts in favor of letting God plan family size. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I now disagree with myself, but part of me wonders if maybe I clung so tightly to those beliefs to legitimize what I felt and wanted all along. I had suppressed my desire to have children right away and to have many children because of fear of what others would think and the influence of feminism. And now, all my philosophizing and theologizing would justify myself.

It’s wonderful to try to develop a biblical worldview regarding children, and certainly every couple should seek out wisdom from the Bible and prayerfully consider their course of action. But those things only told me what I found out over 15 years ago: God created me to be a mother.