DEAR BOUNDLESS ANSWERS

Candice, help!

ALL of my (married) girlfriends (including myself) at church are on some form of birth control as we are all "trying" to (essentially) control and plan our lives by waiting to have kids until after grad school, or job promotions, until we can afford a house, until we've had alone time with our spouse or whatever the reason may be, and this is all very normal. I started thinking about this, and it started to bug me because I feel like we are all trying to play God's role by controlling this aspect of our lives. I brought this thought to my husband, and he said "No way! If God wanted us to get pregnant, trust me, He could make it happen, but until then, we'll just live our lives." And later as this disagreement progressed, he followed with, "So, if everything is supposed to just occur in it's natural state, then you shouldn't take medicine for your body either, like if you had a headache, because then you'd be trying to 'control' things and play the role of God."

Honestly, Candice, this is when I threw my hands up, but since I am not exactly comfortable asking my friends at church if they think they're playing the role of God, and if so/not, what are their thoughts on that, I thought I'd ask you.

Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems a logical question to me. I mean, I'm in grad school and working right now, and I agree that it makes more sense to wait to have children until I'm finished, but something just feels wrong about me choosing when the timing is right versus "God being in control." But then again, maybe there is a time when it is appropriate, because maybe after you have several children, then you want to stop? I dunno. Help!

REPLY

Thanks for writing. It's a privilege to be able to address your questions.

You start by asking if it's wrong to be on birth control and end wondering if you're "making too big a deal of something silly." Let me assure you nothing could be further from silly than this. Few things are as foundational to being human than wrestling with procreating. And as believers, few things are more central to our faith than obeying God's creation mandate (Genesis 1 and 2) and fulfilling His desire for a godly seed (Malachi 2:15).

Be encouraged, you're asking the right questions. And because they're such important questions, in addition to answering them as best I can, I'm including some links to other resources that will take you deeper and provide more detail than I'm able to in this column.

Your questions seem to be based on your assumptions. I've grouped them like this:

Question 1: Are we trying to play God by trying to control the timing of our children?

Assumption 1: It's "all very normal" to control and plan your life by waiting to have kids until after grad school or job promotions, until we can afford a house, until you've had alone time with your spouse.

My thoughts: What you define as "normal" is actually a very recent anomaly. It wasn't until the invention and widespread availability of the pill that couples even had an option for artificially (and "safely") preventing pregnancy. And the cultural and moral implications of such "control" are grim (witness a stark rise in STDs, unwed births, teen moms, divorce, single parenthood, etc.).

More on the issue of "control" future down.

Question 2: Isn't birth control like any other medicine, e.g., aspirin? Aren't we just using what we know about the body and science to our benefit? If birth control is an attempt to "play God" wouldn't all medicine fall into that category?

Assumption 2: God will open your womb to conceive when the time is right regardless of what you're doing to prevent pregnancy (this one belongs to your husband).

My thoughts: To compare birth control to aspirin is intellectually dishonest. They are not equivalent. One is designed to stop something good, the other is designed to heal something ill.

Yes, God can work around and through birth control, should He so desire. And birth control can and does fail on occasion. But as a rule, God follows the principles He set in place to govern our natural world; stories of miraculous conceptions despite a couple's efforts to prevent more children are an exception, not the norm. I believe God is not inclined to make the pill or patch fail in order to impose His will for our families on us. When we erect barriers to God's blessings, He often lets us. We limit God by decisions of our free will.

Now about your husband's opposition: Steve and I didn't start out on the same page. We both spent a lot of time praying about the decision to start trying for children. We knew it was essential to the health of our marriage that we be in agreement.

Even if you think your husband is unwilling to even pray about the possibility of going off the pill, you can pray. You might find some encouragement in another article I wrote called "Pray Boldly." Though the subject of the article is praying for a husband, the principles of storming heaven for answers to deeply important questions are the same.

Question 3: Whose role is it to decide when to have children and when to stop having them: mine or God's?

Assumption 3: It makes more sense to have children after you finish grad school and you will need birth control after you've had several children in order to stop.

My thoughts: Control is an illusion. We think that because we can prevent pregnancy that when we decide we finally want children, we can make it happen. I thought so. When the couple who mentored us throughout our dating and engagement came to visit during our first year of marriage, we told them that we were waiting to have children till we had paid off our credit cards and bought a house. Mary asked matter-of-factly, "How can you assume that you'll still be fertile when you decide you're finally ready?" It's true; I knew next to nothing about my "fertility window" and assumed I was in control of the whole baby process.

I was simply believing what I'd been taught. As I wrote in another article:

For the past 40-plus years, the feminist movement has assured women that it's best to focus on your education and career first and foremost, and if you decide later that you want to get married and have babies, you'll find a way to fit them into your life.

Trouble is, it's not that easy since your prime career development and prime fertility years overlap. You can't maximize both simultaneously. And even more shocking to learn in our age of fertility miracles is that the baby-making elements of our lives are much less flexible than the career-building ones.

Women are most fertile between the ages of 18 and 25. Fertility begins a slow decline at 25 that speeds up dramatically at 35. At age 40, a woman's fertility is only 5 percent of what it was at its peak.

If you want to have a family, you simply can't afford to put it off until after you've achieved all your career goals [or financial or travel or relational goals]. Your body won't let you. (from "If You Want it All, You Need a Plan"

After that visit from our mentors, we talked seriously about our goals for family and decided we needed to stop trying to prevent God from blessing us with children. It ended up taking seven months to conceive our son. When he was 27 months old, we had our daughter (all the while successfully using Natural Family Planning). Now, after nearly three years of unsuccessfully trying to conceive a third baby, I'm convinced that if we'd followed our original plan to be debt-free before starting a family, we'd quite possibly still be child-free.

You've raised many questions, and I've done my best to address them all and still there's so much more that could be said. I'm sorry if this seems a little scattered. I pray God will work through my limited abilities to bring you to His truth.

Blessings,
Candice Watters

(Note: I realize a lot of our readers are single and may wonder why I chose to answer this question from a married woman about having babies. Though it may seem far off in the future, deciding what you believe about forming a family and getting on the same page with someone you are, or will be, dating is foundational to the success of your relationship.)

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If you have a question you'd like Candice to consider for this column, please send it to editor@boundless.org. Please note, all questions that are selected for "Boundless Answers" may be edited for clarity and privacy and become the property of Focus on the Family.