Blessed art thou among women, and Blessed is the fruit of your womb…

How can one say the Hail Mary and not ever reflect upon fertility? Our Lady’s ability to have a child is a supernatural wonder. She possesses greater than angelic purity and as a human being, she has the ability to have a child. (It is impossible for an angel to have a child.) It is a marvel to contemplate.

The lesson our Lady teaches by her example, we should hold human fecundity in awe and wonder. We share in the amazing creative power of God (the angels do not). In fact we cooperate with it. God doesn’t force us. He wants us to share with Him this power. It is a wonder in itself that we have the ability to circumvent cooperating with God using natural means.

I am asked by strangers: “Are you done yet?” (The question parents of large families must endure.) Apparently it is difficult for people to understand my longing for children. I have six children, the seventh, God willing is coming, and people are left speechless. Sometimes I explain,
“Well, I am like a woman who has been starved. It doesn’t matter how much food you lay out on the table for me, there can never be enough to satisfy my hunger.”

And I wasn’t even that deprived! I did spend several years trying to adopt before being given a child through adoption. But, all the while I waited for my adopted children, I always had the company of my first child, my biological child. Some people never have a biological child or they wait years for that experience. By the grace of God, I had one biological child given to me by God on my honeymoon. By God’s grace alone. We never thought once about beginning our married life using natural family planning. What if we had? I would likely have missed out on my one biological child, the one who allowed me to experience parenting right from the beginning. A privilege I greatly esteem.

I wonder if we would have even gone down the path of adoption if we had practiced nfp? Who knows? (I remember reading about many people who had one pregnancy, only one, and it was on their honeymoon. )

I think it is easy in today’s society to overlook the great wealth possessed by the fertile. The world makes it easy to be content in throwing it away, postponing to the future having children. Life is short. Fertility is even shorter. It is easy to forget that fertility is a limited gift not given to all and certainly not given every month. No one really knows how much fertility they have unless they are totally and completely open to God. Is this an area that you want to kick yourself over? Is this a place that you want to say: “Oh, if only I had been more open?”

Just as junk food can blunt the appetite for wholesome food, filling ourselves with the wealth of this world can blunt our appetite for the wholesome riches that feed our souls. Openess to life is the source of countless blessings including a holy marriage and a happy life. Why fill yourself with things of this world that pass away? Service, sacrifice, relationships will fill your heavenly coffers. You can enjoy these things in this life and in the next.

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