Frontiers

It is interesting to me that we present some kind of challenge. We, being our family. When we go out in public, I feel like we are a walking billboard or sideshow. I have had people I don't know from Adam defend their decision to sterilize their marriage and limit themselves to x number of children. I would never ask anyone about their fertility. I am not looking at other families and judging the number of children they have and wondering if they've had a tubal or a vasectomy. That's so personal. I don't even ask my close friends if they're "done". But I have complete strangers asking me about our plans, and explaining/justifying theirs. Obviously we don't believe in sterilization, I think it's wrong to fix something that isn't broken, but I am not going to condemn someone for doing so. But I am sometimes, uncharitably I know, drawn to wonder, what is so awful about their child(ren) that they wouldn't want anymore. Or what's so terrible about co-creating with God, or terrible about their marriage... I know, I'm so not perfect. But for these people who feel it necessary to defend/explain themselves to me out of the blue, or attack me about the size of our family, I wonder that there isn't something deeper that tells them that what they do is against God and each other. Some truth written on our very hearts, so deeply ingrained that we can't entirely shake it. That we can't give name to but it exists all the same.