Baby Blurbs

We returned from the Baby Conference this past Monday, and I keep meaning to sit down and write a long, reflective post on how wonderful it was, how inspiring and encouraging all the speakers were, how lovely it was to be surrounded by like-minded families....  Obviously this hasn't happened, so I thought I'd just write a couple of blurbs from the week instead, hopefully with more to come later.



First, thank you for telling me about yourselves on my last post!  It was great to get all those comments and find out a little more about my readers.  Btw, I LOVE getting comments, so don't feel like you need to wait until I ask to give them!  ;)

Like I've already said, the Baby Conference was such a blessing.  We were able to hang out with Luci and Randall quite a bit and get to know this awesome couple better.  It was so great being able to see Luci speak with Jennie Chancey!  She did splendidly, and really conveyed some much needed info to the audience.  It was also wonderful meeting up with some friends I'd met at the Father & Daughter Retreat, and of course getting to meet lots of like-minded families (and then hold their babies)!  I even met a lady and her family who I'd found only a few days before on an online home-steading forum!



If I had to pick a favorite thing about the conference, I think I would pick the fellowship with all the Christ-followers.  That's just something "radicals" like us don't get very often, and I can't tell you how encouraged we were just by seeing these other families who were following the straight and narrow path.  Of course the speakers were wonderfully articulate and inspirational (and, most importantly, scriptural), but you can get that on CDs--and in fact, we did.  But at conferences like these, you go for the fellowship, the communion with like-minded Christians who are willing to be extremely counter-cultural in order to follow Christ.



I encourage you to visit Vision Forum Ministries and read about the Baby Conference topics.  I encourage you even more strongly to consider purchasing the CDs (today is the last day of their introductory special).  I can't re-tell the messages better than they were told from the stage, though I will probably be visiting some of those topics in the near future on the blog.

On a similar note, I've been reading a great book this week (courtesy of Luci!) that I highly recommend called Start Your Family:  Inspiration for Having Babies (as if I need any inspiration).  It's by Steve and Candice Watters.  SYF isn't quite as "extreme" as Be Fruitful and Multiply (which I highly recommend as well).  Because of this, it is ideal to introduce more mainstream Christians to the almost-forgotten-in-evangelical-churches idea that children are a blessing from the Lord.  The Watters examine common fertility myths and reasons many couples delay children, and then give a compelling but fair look at why this is unnecessary, using statistics, anecdotes and most importantly Scripture in their conversational (and controversial) argument.



In their closing chapter, they include a quote from J.R. Miller's book Home-Making which I found particularly inspirational, and with which I will close:

It is a new marriage when the first-born enters the home.  It draws the wedded lives together in a closeness they have never known before.  It touches chords in their hearts that have lain silent until now.  It calls out powers that have never been exercised before.  Hitherto unsuspected beauties of character appear.  The laughing heedless girl of a year ago is transformed into a thoughtful woman.  The careless, unsettled youth leaps into manly strength and into fixedness of character when he looks into the face of his own child and takes it in his bosom.

New aims rise up before the young parents; new impulses begin to stir in their hearts.  Life takes on at once a new and deeper meaning.  The glimpse they have had into its solemn mystery sobers them.  The laying in their hands of a new and sacred burden, an immortal life, to be guided and trained by them, brings them to a sense of responsibility that makes them thoughtful.  Self is no longer the centre. There is a new object to live for, and object great enough to fill all their life and engross their highest powers.