Renee Emerson

Actually it doesn’t feel like so many from the inside of the family. It feels like a stained glass of personality (with a pane knocked out – Kit), and I’m always head-counting, there’s z, j, w, where’s D?, and here’s the baby being held.

Of course it can feel like a lot of people when there’s maybe cake to be passed around or they eat an entire of something for a snack (4 children is enough to eat an entire anything).

Or when we go somewhere I can’t keep them grouped, like a badly designed park full of blind spots and danger.

Or switching over summer clothes for winter- an awful lot of sizes (I know everyone’s) and folding and seeing what’s ripped and worn from older sister last year.

But there’s always someone to play with, read to, run around with, and hardly ever does someone say they feel left out. The baby will play with anyone so he is a good standby if the others are ornery.

It’s honestly so hard to stop having children. Each child we have had has been so wonderful to know- and to decide not to have more is to miss out on someone forever, some other charming beautiful person, their jokes and quirks and funny baby dances.

(and even with all the sadness we have had in losing Kit, we are always grateful to have known her. She was completely good and bad only blessed our lives)

[And This is not a pregnancy announcement or any sort of announcement of future plans]

Still, one gets old, and I suppose there is a limit to everything. Hard to know where exactly, at least for some of us, the likes of which end up having 6 kids.

I do know that I don’t want Fear to decide our family size. Love is greater than Fear (perfect love casts it out…). It’s something to pray about—-and though God has not been one to answer yes to my prayers, He is not usually silent.