The First Commandments

When I was first having serious conversations with Ben (is it really only a little over a year ago??!), he said something that had me puzzling for a while.  "I believe in the first commandment," he said.  Common enough statement, except that we had been discussing what we thought of having children.  It seemed to me an obvious statement that he believed there was no other God besides the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but I wasn't quite sure what that had to do with children.  But Ben was pulling a very mild joke on me, one that I fell for.  He was still discussing children.

Because the first commandment is actually in Genesis: "Be fruitful," God said to his creation.  And the second commandment is, "...and multiply."

Ben said, "You know, those are two different commandments.  Being fruitful doesn't just mean having children.  It means that you're like a tree and your life has to bear good fruit.  But while your life bears good fruit, you are also supposed to multiply."

In other words, he felt that it was very important for those who believed in God to exhibit the fruits the Spirit as well as to raise up Godly children.  There was more to being fruitful than simply producing children: they were ONE of the fruits of a person's life, not the only one.

But we did regard having children as a very, very important fruit of a Godly marriage.  Having and raising children have been subjects of discussion for us since the very beginning of our friendship.  When Ben asked me to marry him, he said, "I want to have a house with you.  I want to have lots of babies with you.  I want to grow old with you.  But to do these things, we have to get married."

About a week before our wedding, Ben asked me, "How soon realistically do you think we'd actually have a child?"

"I don't have any idea," I said.  "I have friends who were open to having children right away who didn't for a few years; and others who had children right away.  It usually takes a little while.  Honeymoon babies are kind of rare, for instance."

Almost exactly a month later, based on all kinds of new things I had certainly never experienced before, I came to Ben and said, "Now, I know I SAID honeymoon babies are rare..."

Two months and some change later, as I'm continuing to exhibit proof of this suspicion, we're preparing to put our long discussions into practice.

For those of you who've been waiting for me to make a slip in my blogging for the past two months, this is not a slip!

If anyone missed it, we're delighted to be expecting our first child to make his or her formal appearance sometime around the middle of September.  

At about nine weeks old, he or she already is nearly a completely formed little person, with arms and legs and fingers and toes and ears and eyes and a face and a heartbeat we could already hear from the outside if we had the right machine.  This is a miracle we're still having a little bit of hard time believing could be happening so quickly - after all, we're just now coming up on our three-month anniversary - but one thing's for certain: we're full of joy and wonder to have been given the opportunity to fulfill God's first commandments so quickly!