Reeling

We are reeling this evening from some incredibly hurtful things that people said about us.

I won't go into great detail because my kids read this blog, but I will tell you about one of the encounters.

Four separate people, each of whom we deal with closely, each just totally stabbed us in the gut, all in the same day.

I am choosing to look at it, in part, in a thankful way. Thankful that at least now we know where we stand with them. And how from now on, I will be guarded in my interactions with them because my heart is not safe with them.

One of the people actually told my husband that he should stop having kids because having so many kids is hampering him from spreading the gospel.

Hmm.

He laid out how exactly that should happen--if you catch my drift (think procedure here)--and also said that I should go to work.
Because I am so "gifted" by being able to teach music lessons, that we are foolish for me to "have to go through all this over and over", that I could be making a lot of money if I would just go to work.

Dennis asked him if he thought we shouldn't have so many kids. He said he didn't mean the ones we already had, he just meant that we should stop having more. When Dennis told me about it, I said that if they had had this conversation six months ago (before finding out I was expecting our 8th) this man would have said the same thing.

I don't want to give this particular person so much credit by getting upset about it, but it does hurt me deeply.

I'll tell you why.

When people tell me something like this, what is really at the core--really at the core--is this:

they don't think my children are worthy of their own life.

That's what hurts me.
Say what you want about me, but when you tell me that my children are not worthy of life you wound me at my very core.

Some of you who read my blog probably share this man's opinion. I'm asking you--begging you--please don't share it with me.

Examine your heart and see if I'm not right about the root of that kind of thinking.

People pass judgment all the time on families who have "too many" kids. Tell me if the core of that kind of thinking isn't that you are deeming that those children are not worthy of their own lives.

For this man to say that my life is being wasted, staying at home and "going through this", I say this: no one needs me more than these children.
That doesn't stop once they reach school age. (He said he thought it was ok to stay home when kids were young, but once they are old enough for school, that's where they should be and at a job is where I should be.)
No kid who needs to learn piano needs me more than these children whom the Lord has entrusted to us.

No business needs my work more than these kids need me.

The way he spoke, it was the dollar that was more important to him than the souls within this family.

It was degrading, it was humiliating, it was awful.

And you know what else? He's not alone.
People in our family have implied the same things.
It's hurtful.

And it tells me that he, among others, have deemed that our children are not worthy of their own lives.

And that hurts.