Children

We've been trying to have kids for awhile now, to no avail. I took another pregnancy test this morning and didn't even want to look at the results. It's become depressing. Part of me knows it's me, the other part of me wonders if because of all the crazy medications my husband has been on, that it might be him. And I don't want to hear this "It's God's will, it'll happen when He wants it to happen". I know that it is, but all hearing that does is frustrate me.

It got me thinking about when we do have kids, though.
This past Sunday during services they had the pre-youth aged kids sing in front of the church. I love when they do this, because you can pick out the ones who really don't want to be up there. The forced kids really add a certain hilarity to it.
I don't want to spoon feed my kids Christianity. I don't want to raise them atheist, either. I just want them to get to know Christ on their own terms. I'll tell them about God, and we'll go to church when they're little, but... I want them to decide for themselves if Christianity is the path they want to go down. Hopefully, for the sake of my husband's family, they'll choose Christ... I only say this because his family is SUPER Christian. My family probably wouldn't care one way or the other.
I just don't want my kid to be the one up there fidgeting and not smiling. I used to hate it when they'd make us do something like that for school, let alone church. I guess what I really want is for my kids to be comfortable at church - to know it's a safe place, a fun place, and not a place where they feel like I felt growing up--out of place.

I know in the church this "letting people think for themselves" is a big no-no, but these are my hypothetical kids and not theirs. I know what's best for my children, along with my husband. If they want to be Christian, awesome. If they want to be Buddhist, ok. If they're gay, straight, bi, whatever makes them happy. As long as they're healthy and happy, I will be too... now, what a complete disaster it would be in the church, if they were to hear the youth pastor's kid is a homosexual... Lord.
That's part of the fear of it all. I know that there is going to be people in the church judging us based on how our kids think, feel and behave. Part of this is warranted, sure, but part of it is them looking past their own children to criticize mine. Being in the youth group has been very telling of parents behaviors toward their own teenagers growth in Christ. You're tired? Ok, we'll skip church. You want to be in baseball? Ok, we'll skip church. You either commit to coming and being part of the group, or go be in sports or sleep in on Sundays - but don't be half-assed about it.

Pastor spoke with my husband the other day and asked him to call all the youth who haven't been showing up regularly to see what's up. Of course we know that we should be doing this, but being pretty new here, we didn't want to step on anyone's toes.
He sent out a nice but firm email to the parents and the kids who used to be regulars, and has gotten no response - from parent or kid.
The email basically stated that people have excuses but God is important and no excuse should keep them from God. I tried being a little nicer, and plead with the kids. I said that we miss them when they don't come, and that they're loved there, and that each one of them adds a spice that's missing when they're gone.

Which leads me back into our own, future, hypothetical kids. If they want to go to youth group when they get older, or be in Children's church, then I will hold them to it - it's a commitment.


I guess we're not used to this whole Sports > God attitude the South has. We have one parent who keeps on top of all the games (of every sport), and all the events in town. Every time we post an event on our Facebook, she swoops in to piss on it.
"Baseball game that day", "Parade that day". We try to schedule things around games and events, but the last time we changed the date of something because of every freaking imaginable thing going on around town, we ended up having to cancel the whole thing.
My thing is, not every one of our youth is in a sport all year round. A few are, but are we going to change our whole program because a kid DECIDES they would rather be in sports? What about those who aren't in sports and suffer because of that - is that fair?

I really hope my future hypothetical kids won't be sports fanatics. I hate sports... They're boring, and pointless, and make fat kids feel bad about themselves. I'm sure many of us remember being the kid who was picked last.

My family all says I'm going to be such a great mom. I just know that the church is going to think I'm a terrible mother... The church can be such a bitch sometimes.