Seven?!?

*UPDATE: please read this immediately after

What the heck?

Have you lost your mind?

Do you know how old you are? What are you doing to yourself?

And this is just the stuff I've said to myself. Forget what anyone else is going to say.

All I know is.....

God reads my blog!

You know how I know this? A few weeks ago I posted about waiting for a baby girl so I could name her Golda. And now I'm pregnant.

That's right. Baby number seven is on his or her way. I'm thinkin' sometime around the end of September but my babies have no respect for my schedule so it really could be anywhere from August to November. Sorry, am I being too cavalier?

It's been tough for me to get my head around this. I mean, I'm ok with the large family thing where 'large' is defined as more than three but less than six. But for me, seven starts pushing the envelope.

I didn't set out to be like this. Really. When I first started dating Bo, I didn't know if I wanted kids. After we had been married 10 years, I thought three was the perfect number. I guess seven is the new three?

Anyway, shortly after my third was born, Bo and I began having these nagging thoughts. Three was the number we wanted but what if it wasn't the right number? Let me explain.

First a disclaimer: I neither expect any reader out there to agree nor understand the beliefs I put forth here. The belief system I have is just that, my belief system.

So, where was I?

Just before we were married, we got serious about our faith ("born again" in Christianese). We started to really think about what it meant to follow what God said in the Bible. What does it mean to trust God? What does it mean to have faith in Him? We decided that as best we could, we were going to follow what we discerned God wanted us to do ("trust in the Lord") In some areas of our lives this was easy. We would come to a decision point in our lives, pray, seek the counsel of people we respected and then proceed. We would trust God to provide for us. That didn't mean we sat on our butts and waited for things to happen. It meant we realized there's a bigger plan at work in our lives so don't sweat the small stuff. But when it came to family size, we said to ourselves that three was a fine number and we were done with makin' babies.

Then we went to a homeschooling conference.

Don't ever go to one of those unless you're prepared for a paradigm shift. I'm not saying it will definitely happen, but it can. These conferences can totally mess with your definition of family and faith, in a very good way, but upend what you assumed to be the right thing to do.

So it was at one of these conferences that the thought occurred to me ("I was convicted"): if I was going to trust God as the authority in my life, I couldn't withhold this one area of fertility. Again - major disclaimer - I'm not saying birth control or family planning is wrong, I'm just trying to paint a picture of how I went from Long Island Mall Chick to Large Family Homeschooler.

Back to my story. Fearing that I would become Michelle Duggar, I did not immediately share these thoughts with Bo. I figured if this was really the way to go, I would need to think more, read more, pray more and see if God confirmed this by having Bo come up with the same idea without my influence. Sure enough, Bo approached me a few months later saying that he had been having these nagging thoughts ("God was convicting him") about who would determine our family size. We discussed it for a few months, prayed, and decided to let our family size be determined by God.

Why am I telling you all this? I think the common assumption about large families is that we fall into it willy-nilly. If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me "What's the matter? You don't have cable?" I'd have full cable, satellite and TiVo (on tv's in every room). Another assumption is that we're trying to prove a point: "We're gonna out-populate all them (fill in the blank)!!" The point is that it was a personal decision made after lots of discussion, counsel and prayer.

And let me tell you, trusting God to determine your family size is not easy. We're not blind to the needs of a large family; we're well aware of our carbon footprint, the financial aspects of 'livin' large', the psychological effects on the children, et cetera. But it's what we've chosen. Feel free to disagree, but please do so politely.

So here I am. I am "The-Mommy-Blogger-Formerly-Known-as-The-Domestic-Goddess-Now-to-Be-Referred-to-as-The-Venus-of-Willendorf" or V-Dub for short. If you don't know what the Venus of Willendorf is, go look it up (do I have to do everything for you?)

I printed out Psalm 128 as a way of telling Bo to expect our fourth child. After our fifth, Bo taped it to my kitchen cabinet. Maybe after this one, we'll get it carved into something.

Blessed are all who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways.

You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;

your sons will be like olive shoots
around your table.

Thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.

May the LORD bless you from Zion
all the days of your life;

may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
and may you live to see your children's children.

Peace be upon Israel.

I've read in some Bible commentaries that seven represents perfection. It is from the Hebrew root (savah), to be full or satisfied, have enough of. Sounds good to me.