er children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: "Many daughters have done well, but you excell them all" (Prov. 31: 28-29).
More and more young couples are deciding to trust God in the area of family planning -- ready to receive as many "as God sends." At the time the decision is made they both feel very good about it. But after they have been married for five years, the young husband finds himself with four pre-school children, and one wife with second thoughts.
How can a husband in such a situation encourage his wife? The first thing he should do is seek to determine what some of the sources of discouragement are. This is because intelligent encouragement will only be effective insofar as it addresses the problem. In what follows, there are a few suggestions for encouragement geared to some of the temptations encountered by Christian women who are bearing children.
A principal cause of discouragement is exhaustion. If a mother is doing her job at home with her little ones, she will be far more physically tired than she used to be. What can the husband do?
First, he can help -- both through helping with the kids, and also through refraining from acting like an extra kid himself. He should also help by watching the troops so that his wife can get out at least once a week. He should also arrange for a regular babysitter so that he can take her out -- she needs a sabbath.
Second, he should recognize that the kids are placing demands on his wife's body all day long -- they want to nurse, they want to be carried, they want to be held, etc. This means that he should be sensitive to how he approaches her sexually. He must not be just one more voice in the clamor.
Third, he must teach his wife to look for the long-term blessing, both in this life and the next. The most important returns from child-rearing in this life do not come in the first five years. There is necessarily a heavy investment of time and energy when the children are little. But if they are disciplined and taught well, as they grow they will begin to contribute far more to the family than they receive from it. We are born into this world with one mouth and two hands. So when obedient to God, we produce more than we consume. But initially, as newborns and toddlers, children merely contribute to the workload.
A husband should also encourage his wife by reminding her of the eternal value of the work she is doing. When she and her children have been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, then that apparently eternal pile of laundry will finally come into perspective. A husband should help to provide a glimpse of that perspective now.
Another reason for possible discouragement is the hostility of the world to biblical child-bearing. One time my wife and two (!) of our children were stopped on the street by an older women who said, "My! You don't believe in the pill, do you?" The mental picture that unbelievers have of a fruitful woman is one who looks like she was drug through a knothole, with a small regiment of runny-nosed idiots hanging onto the hem of her tattered dress. In the face of such hostility, the encouragement the husband must supply is obvious. He must not only appreciate the work she is doing for him, he must let her know constantly how much he appreciates it.
Related to this is the importance of honoring pregnancy. Throughout Scripture, we see fruitfulness exalted. One of the most valuable things I ever learned from my father was the loveliness of a pregnant woman. So instead of mockery and flippant jokes, Christians should honor those whom the Lord has blessed. And it is also important that a Christian husband honor his wife in tangible ways. One such thing he should do is aimed directly at his wife's temptation of "feeling dowdy." The Bible teaches that one of the central responsibilities of a husband is to keep his wife in clothes (Ex. 21:10). There is no requirement for the wife to be clothed ostentaciously (indeed, there is a requirement against it), but a husband should see to it that his wife is able to dress nicely all the time, but particularly during pregnancy.
Another source of discouragement is found in the temptation of assuming too much about the providence of God over the future. We have all been taught by the anti-children crowd that if a couple with a normal sexual appetite refrains from using birth control, the necessary and inexorable result will always be approximately forty-two children before menopause. But as the fellow said, "It ain't necessarily so." And when there are more than just a few children, God remains faithful -- He never betrays our trust.
For example, the Lord blessed us with three children within the first five years of our marriage. Under such circumstances, it is very easy for a wife to start doing story problems in her head. (A woman has one child every 18-24 months for 4 years. She has twenty years of fertility left. What is wrong with that woman?) The problem with such thinking is that it is based on a false and unbiblical premise -- i.e. that the uinverse is an impersonal place, and that the providence of God has little or nothing to do with the blessings we receive. In our case, although we would have welcomed more children, the Lord has not added to our family over the last eleven years.
Some couples who do not use birth control have ten children, some have three, and some have not been blessed with any. The Bible teaches that the number is not the result of chance; the Lord is the One who opens and closes wombs. (Nevertheless, I am not arguing here that birth control is necessarily unlawful. A discussion of that issue is for a future column. For now, let it suffice that Christians who use birth control must not do so because they accept the lies of pagans who have a low view of children.)
So to keep his wife encouraged, a husband's
top priority should be her spiritual and emotional contentment. She should be in his
prayers, and she should know that she is. She should be frequently held, comforted, counseled, and taught by her husband from the Word of
God. While some in the world may despise her calling and vocation, she should be praised in it
often by a grateful husband. And instead of
a bedraggled appearance and large number of children demonstrating to the cynic how often she makes love, her beautiful appearance
and well-kempt children should demonstrate how much she
is loved.
