Slightly serious.

I don't write about serious or emotional stuff often, mostly because life is serious and emotional, so why point it out.  However, this has been bothering me for a while now, about 4 years exactly.

I LOVE children!  I have always loved children.  Growing up I said I wanted 7, as I got older and started getting in relationships I said I wanted 6...probably a deal breaker for a lot of guys.  When Reed and I got married he completed knew of my dream to have a larger family, by this time my numbers were down considerably to 3-5, depending on how it goes with each child and how we feel we could handle it.  So, it shouldn't have been a surprise to most people that after my first child we soon had another, and after the 2nd, we of course wanted a 3rd.  Why this surprised some people I don't know!

Yes, 3 children is a lot of children, especially in this time era, but it is in no way a HUGE family.  Yes, I will admit that there are times when I am completely exhausted or so overwhelmed that I go take a shower and have a good cry, but let me point out that I did this when I only had 1 child!  It makes me feel better to have a little solitary cry.  I don't know why, but it just does...some type of stress relief maybe.  Most of the times when life feels hard and overwhelming it is completely MY fault.  My house, especially in the mornings, runs like a machine.  We have a very strict schedule (we have to with Max) and if we stick to it we don't have any problems.  The kids have their jobs, I have mine, and once we are done we use our free time to play or relax.  When I vary off the schedule, get a little lazy, worry about what other people think, or back off on discipline is when problems occur.  Keeping myself disciplined to never slack off is what makes life easy.

I am not sure why people think it is their business to tell me how many children I should have or what I can "handle," but it is extremely annoying.  Comparing my family dreams and hopes to The Duggars is not only overly dramatic and a huge exaggeration, but it is just flat out RUDE and absolutely NONE of your business! Yes, you can say that "my hands are full" because that is an observation and at times they literally are, but please lets stop at that.  Telling me that I "don't need, "can't handle," or "would be cheating my other children" is not only rude, none of your business and just mean, but also you have absolutely no way of knowing any of those statements to be true!  If you are not a regular visitor at my house during normal living hours, observing my children, and interacting with my children in normal circumstance then you have no idea what our life is like.  If you do not at least make regular appearances in our weekly routine they you don't even have the faintest idea of how we live our life.

I have seen both Max and Jerry grow and blossom every time we have added a new member to the family.  Max is completely nurturing, compassionate and the least selfish 4 year old you will ever meet!  I find these qualities to be much more desirable than a narcissistic, attention hoarding, spoiled only child (if it is your choice to only have 1 child, then that is great and I wish you the best of luck...absolutely none of my business to judge your family size either.)  Jerry is sweet, loud, but intensely loyal to his siblings.  We had our rough patch in the beginning when we adopted Abilene, but he was an over night big brother, he didn't get the normal adjustment period most children get, and he was terribly 2. I think Abilene loves her brothers more than she loves me sometimes.  Yes, she needs me, but she wants her brothers constantly.  None of my children are lacking attention, none of them are missing out, and certainly, none of them are suffering because of their sibling!!!  Children are not born with the sense of selfishness that seems to run rampant in today's society (I think selfishness occurs more often now because we have less children and create an atmosphere that makes it easy for children to be selfish, but that is an entirely different blog post!)  Children are born to love people with unconditional love and a servant's heart.  They want to help people, they want to make people happy, and most importantly they want love to be returned to them.  They see another sibling in the family as another person to love, another person to play with, and they will eventually realize, a life long friend ( I would be lost without my sisters!  They are truly my absolute best friends.)  The only reason they would be suffering is if I couldn't afford to feed/clothe/properly care for another child.  Believe me when I tell you, this is NOT the case.

Why did I chose to write this today?  Simple.  After Abilene joined our family we decided to pray that if we were meant to have more children that the child would find us.  No more actively looking for a child to adopt, no more stressing.  Guess what?!  We were called by a couple and a lawyer that wanted us to adopt their unborn child.  We didn't have a current home study, not a single plan in place and this family wanted to work with us no matter what the odds.  They had an amazing heart.  We turned them down...we turned down what we prayed for.  Basically we didn't have the money to do another adoption right now and our children would have suffered if we stretched our finances hard enough to pay that much money up front (if you don't know a lot about adoption, you should know that it is extremely expensive!)  It was just heart breaking to turn it down, it was even more heart breaking that we couldn't even tell anyone what we were going through because of the absolute lack of support.  Please don't make fun of our dreams, goals, what we love, and most importantly how we decide to build our life.  You think you know better and that you can "fix" my life and I'm sure I have some ideas of how I could improve yours, but at least I am not rude or arrogant enough to tell you what you need.  Give people the benefit of the doubt that they actually know what they want for their life that they probably but a lot more thought and time into than you do before you criticise.