Open to Life and Learning to Love

Ever since I began homeschooling and went to my first gathering of our Catholic homeschool group I have been enamored with big homeschooling families and I have longed to have a larger family myself.  When I first started homeschoolilng I had only one 11 year old and felt very out of place at this gathering.  Now, 6 years later I am no longer homeschooling this bigger one but I have been blessed with two more little ones and am hoping for more at the age of 41 years old.  I was hoping to have another one by now as my littlest just turned two but it doesn't seem to be as easy to conceive anymore as we have been "trying" for a year and have had a miscarriage two months ago. 

After the conception of my daughter almost five years ago after two previous miscarriages (back when we were again wondering if we would be able to have more children), I had gotten into the habit of thinking about how many children I could have before the age of 45 (because I know someone who started having children at 35 and had number 6 at the age of 45).  I always imagined a child every two years and now that it is obvious that it would have to be at least three years before the next one would be born (I would love for that to be the case) I am afraid that we will have no more children which at the age of 41 soon to be 42 is a very real possibility. 

And so I am struggling with living in the present moment and leaving the rest to God.  I am struggling with being open to life in a silent and hidden way.  I am struggling with the fact that being open to life means being open to God's will which may mean having no more children.  I am struggling with embracing my role as mother and homemaker when somehow I feel that having more children would enhance that role and make it even more meaningful.

But maybe God can teach us to love more by both giving us more children and by allowing us to struggle with infertility.  And maybe that is the real beauty of being open to life which may result in a large family or a smaller family or no children at all.  Being open to God's will means that we are open to suffering and therefore open to learning how to love from Him who is love.  We humbly submit because we know that we need him in order to know what real love is.  The important thing isn't how many children you have, though many children can be a beautiful sign of being open to God's will, the important thing is just being open to Him.

Maybe one of the lessons that God is trying to teach me is that I need to learn to trust that God knows what is best for me and my family; that he may want me to bear more fruit in another area or that I have plenty of fruit to bear with the children I have already born.  Trying to guess the mind of God in these areas probably isn't very productive.  Shouldn't it be enough to know that his great love for me as his child is real and that he knows the deepest desires of my heart and will give me those desires in one way or another?  And so I will keep hoping and praying for more children but I will also try to keep trusting in God's love for me and what he is trying to teach me.