It is wonderful. We shouldn’t be afraid to cross swords in this way because it is a productive endeavor.

Well done!

I do appreciate your comments about nutrition and cycles. I haven’t meant to ignore you, but I just feel kind of uncomfortable hijacking Jen’s blog with too much personal information about my own health, which I am quite sure nobody is really that interested in Suffice it to say, I did at one time have a copy of that book on fertility, nutrition, and cycles you mentioned, but my own specific health issues have had to supersede all others. I’ve had to follow some pretty specific and restrictive diets to maintain my own health (digestive issues), and I do take nutrition very seriously. I try to eat well, exercise daily (ok, almost daily!), and take vitamins because I believe strongly that if we don’t take care of ourselves physically, we will not be able to be the best parents we can be.

Thanks for sharing your advice, and I do wish you and your wife the best in your efforts to follow God’s Will for your family in your particular circumstances.

Jen, I’m sorry to post this here, but I didn’t want Steve to think I didn’t appreciate his advice regarding NFP and nutrition, and I couldn’t figure out where else I could put the message, as I didn’t find a blog for Steve when I clicked on his name. I wouldn’t want to email anybody privately because my email address contains my family name, and some of you may know me, or at least know of me. I know firsthand just how small the circles of traditional Catholic families can be in this country!!

I certainly didn’t take your post to be an argument for not having large families. I just felt you were bringing up a very valid point—until we address some of the real issues, psychological, emotional, and physical, that directly affect and impact couples choosing to have many children, we will not get anywhere as far as spreading the good things that having a large family can bring. If the general public does not see a valid good coming from a particular walk of life, there will be no incentive for them to try to take that walk themselves.

Despite the ambivalent feelings I still have toward motherhood, I LOVE these six children we have been blessed with and feel that my husband and I have done a very good thing for society by having them. To ignore that it’s been a long, HARD road every single day for the past nearly 13 yrs, however, is silly.

I say, don’t kill the messenger. There are plenty of other women out there who feel just like I do and who have found this whole thing to be a huge struggle, and I would argue that until such issues are addressed, NFPers will never be able to influence a society that is so geared toward NOT having children to suddenly be open to having packs of them.

I also wanted to say that although I DO believe motherhood is much harder in some ways in our modern world, I also don’t live in Pollyanna-land thinking that people way back when had it so easy. Most of them worked their fingers to the bone from the time they were 8-10 or so until they died in their 40s. I thank God every day day for my electricity, running water, and clothes washer. Having family members who have worked closely with orphanages in Africa has brought home to me just how blessed we ARE, and I don’t take any of this for granted. To say, however, that just because we have all these objects at our disposal means that motherhood is easier psychologically doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either.

I don’t really care what anybody on this blog (or anywhere else, for that matter) thinks about me as a mother or about our child-rearing techniques/philosophy or about what I’ve been through, but I do think my story is meant to be shared if only to let people know that we ALL come from very different places and to assume that we are all capable of doing the same things well is ridiculous. You can choose to ignore stories such as mine if you like, but I argue that the culture-of-life won’t win over many new followers if real issues aren’t addressed. I think Jen was getting to the heart of this in her post.

Let me venture to say that God allowed us the capacity to be able to figure out how children are created. In choosing not to create them by abstaining certain times of the month, would one venture that I was sinning?

I used to want 5 children – now I am thinking 2 or 3, if we should be so blessed. I want to be able to give the time and energy to my children that they deserve, as wonderful little masterpieces made by God.

Let me throw another log on the fire. What of someone who continues to procreate, knowing there is a heightened risk of genetic mutation in the children that can lead to some very serious malformations and many times, death.

Do we not use that information to our advantage by perhaps not having more children? I don’t feel like I articulated this very well.

150 years ago women were not expected to entertain their children, play with them, take them to lessons, etc., etc., like they are today. The pressure is high.

This was never about a judgment against you it was always about the ideas and language being advanced.

I wasn’t calling you a liar. I was calling the ideas at large in the culture about large families lies.

I keep reading, and rereading your post and comments, wanting to see this, but I don’t. I do acknowledge that I may be too close to it, and it may be a deficiency in me that is the source of that failure.

If you say it is so, I will take you at your word.

Shake and make up?

*swallows hard*

Yes, shake and make up. No hard feelings. Let us forgive so that we may be forgiven.

FWIW, I really have gotten lot to think about from this (not just Creighton). I had a bit of a flash of insight after this, and the last post by Jen (unfortunately after my last round of posts to you) that are making me view things in a different light, and with more hope.

We really have done the best we can given our circumstances, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay stuck in that same place.

There definitely is something in what you are saying. Must go ponder it a bit.

Thanks for the compliments in quoting so much of my original blog.

And peace Steve.

This was never about a judgement against you it was always about the ideas and language being advanced.

I wasn’t calling you a liar. I was calling the ideas at large in the culture about large families lies.

Shake and make up?

Et, Tu, Jen!!

I just had to use that.

OK, so if Jennifer AND Jennifer have now said that my warning against maximalism was off the mark, I own that. I apologize, I was wrong. It was imprudent.

There. Fin. I stand chastened and humbled.

I still have a ton of problems with how it was handled, and with some of the implications that were made toward me, but whatever, I don’t want to be the one to hold a grudge.

Cheers!

Maybe it’s just my warped perspective, but I feel like warning against maximalism in this society is like warning kids against being too health conscious and eating too many fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, there are probably a few kids out there who are too neurotically health-conscious, but they are SO much the exception to the rule that it’s not even worth talking about.

But, as I’ve said, I live in a really liberal city, so I might be totally off here.

Does this mean that if, by some miracle, I became pregnant I would even entertain the idea of abortion? No! But it does mean that, even if I’d kept up with NFP instead of sterilization, I would be avoiding pregnancy always.

I do think that large families are a blessing, and fortunately, my children have been exposed to enough of them to see that for themselves. They no longer talk about having only two babies, but about having 15 (the seven year old) and 35 (the four year old). The numbers do change, but I am happy for them that they see motherhood as a wonderful thing, and that they see lots of children as the blessing it can be.

My friend told me (when I called her up on Friday to cry on her shoulder) that family size isn’t corresponding to holiness. The Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph had only one, and how much more holy can you get than THEM!?