Sometimes I Regret Having Children

My little girl is afraid of shadows.

Her eyes get big and she grabs my arm and says, “Mommy, what’s that?”

And I take a deep breath and calmly reply, “It’s just a shadow, Honey. And what do we know when we see a shadow…?”

“We know there is a light somewhere.”

****************

You see… sometimes I regret having children.

It’s not because of the sleepless nights or the diaper blowouts or the tantrums or the lack of peace and privacy. Those things are hard, but at the end of the day when I see those sweet faces or when I feel their arms around me, everything else just sort of melts away. It doesn’t matter anymore. I am not my own. I have been given one of the highest callings and no matter how hard I think it gets, the truth is I am a privileged woman. I never knew how deep and painful love could be until I became a mom.

Yet there are moments I regret it. Moments where the tears fall so hard and my heart aches so bad that my soul mourns the very day they were born.

One of those moments was when the Pickle was little. I stumbled upon the story of Super Ty Campbell… and within a week of ‘meeting’ him I watched him die. And the tears rolled down for days. How could I have ever brought a beautiful little girl into this world of death and disease?

It happened the day a boy walked into an elementary school and opened fire and all the little children huddled in corners and under desks not strong enough to hold off the bullets. I sat in my classroom of 2-year-olds and had to formulate a plan in my mind of what I would do if a man burst through that door. How would I save them? Where would we go? And even more terrifying… what about my own little girl in another room? Would I save my students first and let my little girl die? Questions no teacher or parent should ever have to ponder.

Another moment came when I forced myself to watch the “Planned Parenthood” videos. I held my boy so close and so tight. I ran my fingers over his perfect nose and his tiny ears. I counted every toe and I held his sweet little hand in mine and the ball of pain and regret wedged itself somewhere between my heart and my weeping eyes where I mouthed the prayer, “why?”

And again. A single image seared in my brain of a little boy in a red shirt ‘sleeping’ on a beach half a world away. A child just like mine who has seen more pain and suffering in his three years than I have seen in my thirty. And I weep and I feel hopeless and I cry out to Jesus because there is no way this side of heaven that all of this horror will be stopped.

And I regret.

Having.

Children.

I regret having children in a world where little girls are sold as sex slaves.

I regret having children in a world where I hold eight-week-old babies in my arms who are addicted to drugs.

I regret having children in a world where evil is cutting peoples’ heads off and ripping pregnant womens’ stomachs open.

I regret having children in a world where poverty is at my back door. And people run from their homes because dying in a boat is better than living in their suffering.

But it’s too late. These precious ones have filled my heart with their perfect innocence. In a world of dark headlines they are a splatter of bright pink paint. In an empty world they are full of hope. In a world dying of disease, their laughter fills my home. In a world losing its way, they are just beginning their journey.

You see, it’s so tempting to put my head down and get tangled in the troubles of today: The tantrums. The mommy wars. The Jones’ down the street. The laundry mountains. The depths of the dish-pile. The busy schedule. The tight budget.

It’s so easy to narrow my vision and make my tiny speck of a world so big and so overwhelming and so all about me.

But then there are these precious moments that make me regret having children. Moments where my eyes and my heart and my mind are open to the vastness of this world. Moments where I see the big picture. Where I hurt for those on distant shores and across the street, not just those in the room next to me.

And it’s in those moments of regret where I also find the deepest, purest, most unequivocal feeling of gratitude. Gratitude and blessing…

and hope.

All the little meaningless things fade away in the presence of the big heavy things. And I know once again that God gave us our children to be lights in a very dark world.