Velinda's VIEWs

You know what View stands for? Voice In The Existential Wilderness. Yep. One of the things that held me back from ever writing the ramblings of my mind, is I thought "Who in the world would want to listen to me?" I don’t fit into a category very well, so who would be my audience? And it remains to be seen if there is anyone out there that wants to hear what I might say.
I’m the kind of woman who had the audacity to bring nine kids into the world. There is a huge group of people who would find that despicable. I can hear the outcry!

"What about the Environment and Over Population of the Planet?"

"You can’t possibly be a good mother to nine children, and meet all their emotional needs!"

"How can you think of bringing that many children into a world like this?"

I don’t have an answer to all those questions, but I do have a response.

"There are resources for everyone on this planet. The problem is distribution. I have a whole treatise on this, which will have to wait."

"You’re right, I can’t meet all my children’s emotional needs. But neither can you– even if you have just one child. Life is learning how to take responsibility for your own emotional needs, and I’m all about working on that, with my kids. There are plenty of times when I don’t feel like I’m a good mother. Another day I’ll share my thoughts on being a "bad" mother."

"I don’t believe we create the spirits who become our children. I believe that God created them, and has asked us to give physical bodies to His spirits. (You know, the multiply and replenish the earth, thing). As long as there are children still being born, it must mean that there are still spirits in His realm that are waiting for a chance to come to this earth, have a body, and be part of a family.

Being the imperfect wretch– I mean mother, that I am, I spent a good deal of time wondering if on Judgment Day, God would look at my husband and I, with all our kids and say "What were you thinking?"

But after spending a night in an apartment, listening to a man in the apartment over my head raging at his sobbing wife and crying children until the wee hours of the morning, I quit worrying about what a bad mother I was. I decided that I could not leave the propagation of the earth to unwed teenagers and natives in Borneo (which is by no means a criticism of people in Borneo or any other Third World Country, because I don’t believe that our Western world culture necessarily brings a better life in many respects, to Heavenly Father’s children).
I thought if I could bring a child into my home, that spirit would not then, have to go to a home of abuse, and that would be my contribution to the planet.

I knew I would not be solving the problems of the world, but at least it would be something. (You know, the ‘I cannot do everything, but I can do something, and what I can do, by the Grace of God, I will do,’ thing). I decided to bring as many children as I could sanely bring, into a family that would love and care for them, even imperfectly................... Now the only question is how I defined sanely."

Naturally, I have more thoughts on all of these. But that’s enough for one whollop. And it brings me back to the beginning, not knowing if there is anyone out there that would want to hear the random neural firings of a mind like mine. The jury is out.

Joy in the Journey