Say yes – baby
Brian Janaszek refers readers to an article by Slate columnist Emily Yoffe, and adds his affirmation to her defense of childbearing. It's not just about perpetuating civilization, he writes:[T]he worst of times – tantrums, nightmares, soiled underwear – are no match for the tender moments – your child singing his bedtime songs with you, or zooming around the playground on his bicycle with an enormous smile on his face. Those moments melt even the worst stress and frustration. The cynic might call me selfish, but this only looks at one side of the coin. The other side is the discipline of being a parent – sacrificing all manner of things (though, in the end, so many sacrifices don't really [seem] that way) for your children, your family.While I'm wary of all confident statements of expectation that decisions we make may change the world recognizably for the better in the span of ages as we experience them now, I want to affirm, in turn, 'saying yes to the future' here as something much greater than glass-half-full good vibration. To say yes to the future in the fullest sense that bearing children implies is a response of faith to God who made us mankind to come to know him – which is the good itself – in the unfolding of time, through the passage of generations. And it's not a far step from this to recognize that we have both reason & right to find happiness in receiving this burden as calling & gift.
... [P]arents are changing the world, "saying yes" to the future, one child at a time.
Yoffe's piece is a good read by the way. Among other smile-inducers, loved this:
[T]he other night, my daughter, now 10 years old and no diapers in sight, was reading a book on American history and asked my husband about a confusing episode. A week in Paris could not have made my husband happier than telling her everything he knew about Iran-Contra.
posted by paul bowman @ 6:43 PM
6 Comments:
"To say yes to the future in the fullest sense that bearing children implies is a response of faith to God..."
Those words were a close approximation of my exact thoughts as Beth & I approached the "Yes, let's commit to the 'Parenthood Project'" phase of our marriage. I'll be the first to admit, though, that my faith gets tested sorely with every broadcast of the 6:00 news.
Did the period of approach turn out to be long & circuitous or short & direct, in retrospect — if you don't mind my asking?
Pretty short - we married at 30, and weren't getting any younger.
This is a beautiful passage. This weekend we greated a new little nephew into the world. None of my SIL's friends have children. They don't want to give up all the traveling and clean house. I thought this way for awhile. Now, I realize that there are profoundly more beautiful and sanctifying things in this world.
Now... if we could only get pregnant.
Funny that it's often people who are most convinced of the goodness of the things that Christian understanding affirms as good, affirms as being for our desiring & pursuing, from whom God withholds the grasping of those things — sometimes for a frustrated period of years, sometimes for a lifetime. (In this conversation's context my case — without even the prospect of a woman in my life with whom to think together about marriage, much less any prospect of children — is clearly one marked by some frustration.) But he himself is the good, at root, that he's granting to us to come to know & enjoy. This same Christian understanding that recognizes the real goodness of things in the world also affirms that, in the world's fallen condition, God's granting this singular Good above goods to us is manifest no less in his taking away than in his giving of the good things that we have, as our present state allows, some capacity for receiving. Knowing him in his blessedness: that is the future — the future we're confident of being brought into (and in whose direction we're bold to take such steps as we can — 'saying yes') — the future, above all, that we already see realized in Jesus now come into the world.
(And any & every occasion for calling that to mind is one I can use, believe me!)
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