Children are a Gift!

My husband and I are unexpectedly, but with anticipation, pregnant with our fourth child due to arrive in March of 2012!  A little boy, according to my last ultrasound!  We are thrilled.  Maybe even more so than we were with our others, which is hard to believe since we have been thrilled with each of our babies!  But there is just something different about this baby.  It's a little bit of a miracle I guess... Considering that two and a half years ago I was sick to the point that we didn't know if I would live.  And yet, by the grace of God, here I am today, my health is completely restored AND I'm expecting new life!  Thank you, Lord!

So,  I was reading a newsletter from Focus on the Family today and in the letter was this on a recent conference that a representative of Focus on the Family attended: At one point, and American diplomat, Laurie Shestack Phipps, spoke.  She wondered how we could talk about family, but not be concerned about high birth rates in places like Africa.  Don't we understand, she asked, that so many children put a strain on opportunities for women, on public services and on job creation?  Why don't we address the need for family planning (meaning contraceptives) and reproductive health (code for abortion)?

Before I could say anything, another diplomat spoke up.  she was Sarah Flood Beaubron, a UN representative from the tiny nation of St. Lucia.  Here's what she said: "When I was growing up...(our nation) was asked and pressured to reduce our rates of fertility.  Over the last year years we have seen that we are now below replacement levels... We have a population of 165,000  people approximately, and our resource is our people.  We don't have gold, and we don't have oil, or anything like that.  We are in a predicament, because we were asked and pressured and cajoled to decrease our fertility... this is now a very urgent problem for our small country..."

So there it was.  The tired philosophy that children are a drain on resources, followed by the truth:  children ARE the resource.

Wow!  That is powerful!  Children ARE the resource!!!