The last question, about how we do (fill-in-the-blank) obviously depends on what’s being asked, but I have learned through experience that I can do a lot of things with a large family I never imagined I could. I won’t go into specifics here since the field is wide open, but trust me, if you can take 9 kids on a plane to Disneyland, there isn’t much you can’t do. ;)

Satan wants us to believe that big families are too much work, that they require too much sacrifice, and that it will be emotionally damaging to the children we already have to add more. And if those messages won’t work, he’ll try to convince us a large family is so far outside what’s socially acceptable that we’re a freak show, an embarrassment. When I think about this, I visualize the people in the “great and spacious building” ridiculing those trying to make their way along the iron rod to be able to partake of the fruit of the tree of life. Many of them became ashamed because of the tauntings of the world and lost their way. I wonder if our culture has become ashamed, too?

I hate the overused phrase, “having said that,” BUT, having said all that, I want to make it clear that I am not advocating that every LDS family should be a large family (realizing that “large” is a relative term). As the quote from the church handbook says above, the decision about how many children to have is a very personal one, and is for the couple to decide through prayerful counsel with the Lord. I know many wonderful, amazing, inspiring small families, and many incredible large ones. My objective with this entry is to get us to consider how and if these cultural preferences are factoring into our own family size choices when we’re not even conscious of it. We all have varying capabilities and resources that make family size a highly individual choice, but to what extent are we allowing Satan to cloud our perceptions of our resources and abilities?

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