Planning or lack thereof

I have been mulling this post around in my mind for a while, not sure if I should post or not, but once again knowing that I have very few readers is helpful (haha).  And I want my own children to know my thinking on this so here goes this post.

For those of you who know me, you know that I happen to be a little OCD when it comes to planning.  HOWEVER, the timing, spacing, and number of my children has never been planned.  Granted I always SAID I wanted 6 kids, but I was willing to accept more or less or whatever.  It's hard for me to explain my philosophy on this subject given my OCD tendencies, but the best explanation I can give is the recent words of President Boyd K. Packer when he said, "When we were first married, my wife and I decided that we would accept the children that would be born to us with the responsibility attending their birth and growth."  Like President Packer, I believe that there are a lot of spirits waiting and wanting to come to earth, and I believe that Heavenly Father knows better than I do which and how many of  His spirit sons and daughters should be part of the Kent and Kay Barlow family and when each should make his/her grand entrance into mortality, and in the end it was/is just a HUGE relief to leave this one big decision up to Him.  Now I am mindful of the fact that I have not struggled with infertility, have easy pregnancies (not even morning sickness to speak of) and fast and fairly easy (as if childbirth can ever be "easy") deliveries.  I do/did not suffer with postpartum depression, and my "favorite" time in my life since being a mother was when I had 4 pre-schoolers (Weird-I know-it might be worth another "I'm weird" post.) So I do not pretend that my feelings on this subject are perfect for everyone, but this lack-of-planning "plan" is what is best for our family.  Sometimes I think about what might have happened if we HAD planned:  No Dallin-we were still in school and too poor.  No Analise-I was just starting a master's degree program-too busy.  No Kaylee-She and Analise are only 18 months apart-3 kids in 3 1/2 years? Too many too close.  No Lynae-We were already past the 2.5 standard kids and had both a boy and a girl-besides dealing with 4 pre-schoolers is way too much to handle.  No Trent-Trent about did me in.  He was a WONDERFUL, calm, easy-going, go-to-sleep-on-command-anytime-anywhere kid (still is) but trying to juggle the demands of piano lessons, dance lessons, scouts, soccer etc. with a newborn and no kids old enough to babysit-well, it was no walk-in-the-park.  No Luke-Luke was a screamer 24/7 for the first year of his life-not good for anybody.  Of course I didn't KNOW he was going to be like that until after his arrival, but I like to think that Heavenly Father did, because I got the easy-going Trent just prior, and for some odd reason, even though our other children all arrived around 2 years apart, I had a 3 1/2 year reprieve between Trent and Luke.  Also, since I THINK Luke is probably our last, it was helpful to have a baby that didn't leave me too sad, nostalgic, and/or baby hungry for more.  How sad it would be if I purposely chose to miss out on any one of these 6 amazing people for such eternally insignificant reasons as it is humanly impossible to save enough on one income to put them all through college (nope, it wasn't all saved ahead of time, but somehow, each semester it works out-3 in college now and it is working.) or because we got our token "boy" and "girl," or even because we sometimes got stares and questions like "Are ALL those yours?"  Hindsight is always 20/20, but I love that my kids are close enough in age to "hang out" and be friends. I love that I am not yet an "empty nester" (which I might have been if I'd stopped after the token "boy" and "girl,") and I love that our 7-bedroom home has been filled with kids and not "things." So nope, none of my kids were born in what I consider the ideal "birth months" (February through May) and we may have more than is "politically correct" and people may STILL ask, "Are ALL these yours?!"  (They usually think that our family is a yours-mine-and-ours.) And sometimes it was and is hard to have 6 kids who all have needs.  But I have trusted and continue to trust that Heavenly Father knows what I can handle and what is best for me and for each of the children entrusted to me, and I am  grateful for all 6 that have been entrusted to me.  “Children are an heritage of the Lord: and … happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them."  (Proverbs 127: 3, 5) I am grateful to have left my "plan" for the arrival of my children in the hands of my Father in Heaven and for His blessing of a  "quiverful."     

Our "quiverful"
November 2012