C
Convert_in_99
Guest
Are those terms not somewhat interchangible?
I guess I’m confused as to what you are asking and trying to say now. 
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I guess I’m confused as to what you are asking and trying to say now.
J
jmjZelie
Guest
Because there is a new person there where there wasn’t before. A person capable of loving and being loved. A unique soul with his or her own personality. And now the parents and their new child belong to each other.
Belonging
Companionship
Love
Personhood
Immortal souls
Those are the greatest blessings. Those who do not marry or who cannot have children can still appreciate these blessings as part of their own selves being given life first as a baby and then love with God and other persons of good will in human society.
Kendra, you were once a baby. YOU are a blessing. How can it be anything less? You exist rather than not exist. You were made to show forth God’s goodness and share eternal life in heaven with Him. Is that not a spectacular blessing, to you and to your family and to the world?
P
PaulinVA
Guest
I have a really good life.
I have a great wife, the kids are doing well. I’m basically healthy. We have enough money. I don’t deserve this.
But, I hesitate to say that I am “blessed”. To do that would imply that others, who don’t have a stable home life, or enough money, or health, are not “blessed”. And, that can’t be right. I’m fortunate, to be sure.
So, I’m not so sure about the concrete aspects of blessings versus the rhetorical. You have sex at the right time and you could become pregnant. That is awesome. Kids are great. But the biology just happens. God doesn’t decide. Really, think about it, if God always intervened in His biology, NFP rules could never have been developed, because pregnancy would be happenstance.
Kendra, I feel for you. But, I don’t think it’s a “blessing” that God is withholding from you. It’s just life.
I have a great wife, the kids are doing well. I’m basically healthy. We have enough money. I don’t deserve this.
But, I hesitate to say that I am “blessed”. To do that would imply that others, who don’t have a stable home life, or enough money, or health, are not “blessed”. And, that can’t be right. I’m fortunate, to be sure.
So, I’m not so sure about the concrete aspects of blessings versus the rhetorical. You have sex at the right time and you could become pregnant. That is awesome. Kids are great. But the biology just happens. God doesn’t decide. Really, think about it, if God always intervened in His biology, NFP rules could never have been developed, because pregnancy would be happenstance.
Kendra, I feel for you. But, I don’t think it’s a “blessing” that God is withholding from you. It’s just life.
G
gardenswithkids
Guest
What do you believe the word “blessing” means?
Here’s what dictionary.com says blessing means:
Yes, children are blessings, particularly relating to meaning # 2 and/or #3 above. Good health is also a benefit or gift from God. That does not mean that God doesn’t favor people who have no children or those who have poor health. God blesses different people in different ways. All who read this have been blessed with life.
Life is a gift. Our creed says we believe in the “Lord and Giver of Life.” For those who simply say “children result from biology”, the word “Biology” means the study of life. (logy=study bio=life) Life comes from God.
P
PaulinVA
Guest
Yes, life comes from God.
BUT, to Kendra’s question. Some people do not have what other people have, whether it is health, children, or whatever. To say these things are a “gift from God” leads to the question if you don’t have those things, why hasn’t God blessed you? Why aren’t you “blessed”? Why did God withhold blessings from you? Why are people born in the middle of a famine to just die?
I find those questions troubling. Deeply troubling. So, I try to avoid them by explaining that some things just happen.
X
Xantippe
Guest
Plus, maybe I’m not the person who is the primary beneficiary of the blessing–maybe it’s not about ME primarily, but about somebody else. Maybe it’s not so much that I need a child so much as somebody else needs a next-door-neighbor, future spouse, or beloved high school teacher. Consider Baby Moses. He wasn’t primarily a blessing to his own parents, so much as to his people generally.
J
jmjZelie
Guest
Blessings are almost never merited. I did not earn the blessings of my children. I did nothing to merit the blessing of my own life. None of us can merit the blessing of our own life.
Just because God bestows a certain kind of blessing upon one person and a different kind of blessing upon another, does not mean that the first person merited it while the second did not. Nor does it mean that the first person got their blessing at the expense of the person who did not get that blessing.
Blessings from God are varied and inexhaustible, because the Giver of all good gifts is infinite.
If we see that we have a blessing while another person does not, we should not discount our blessings, but it should humble us.
Think of a wealthy, but godly man. He sees his neighbor struggling with grinding poverty and he knows that his own wealth is totally a blessing from God. What should he do? Should he despise his own blessing and say it is mere fortune that some are wealthy and some are poor? Or should he find a way to use his abundant resources to meet the needs of his neighbor, in a way that respects the human dignity of his neighbor and allows him to lift himself out of poverty? Then his blessing becomes his neighbor’s blessing.
Blessings, especially when they come in the form of people, are meant to be multiplied and shared in such a way as to bring glory to God.
Just because God bestows a certain kind of blessing upon one person and a different kind of blessing upon another, does not mean that the first person merited it while the second did not. Nor does it mean that the first person got their blessing at the expense of the person who did not get that blessing.
Blessings from God are varied and inexhaustible, because the Giver of all good gifts is infinite.
If we see that we have a blessing while another person does not, we should not discount our blessings, but it should humble us.
Think of a wealthy, but godly man. He sees his neighbor struggling with grinding poverty and he knows that his own wealth is totally a blessing from God. What should he do? Should he despise his own blessing and say it is mere fortune that some are wealthy and some are poor? Or should he find a way to use his abundant resources to meet the needs of his neighbor, in a way that respects the human dignity of his neighbor and allows him to lift himself out of poverty? Then his blessing becomes his neighbor’s blessing.
Blessings, especially when they come in the form of people, are meant to be multiplied and shared in such a way as to bring glory to God.
G
gardenswithkids
Guest
You ask profound questions that bring us to the age old question on the mystery of suffering and death.
There’s a spiritual classic book I found to be of great help to me years ago around the time when my mom was dying called “Abandonment to Divine Providence”. Relying on memory, it distinguishes various type of His Divine Will. Sometimes God “allows” something to happen and sometimes He directly intervenes. He’s God, so He gets to do that if He wants. I’d write more but I don’t have time now
K
Kat127
Guest
I would say they are a blessing two ways.
First, they are our children. A continuation of our humanity. Another soul to love and praise the Lord. Another person who gets to experience this experience we call life.
Second, children can be a means of sanctification and hope. There are few people who are so dour they never crack a smile at children. Sometimes children remind us what’s important in this world and to stop and enjoy living in the moment. Children can challenge us to grow in patience and thoughtfulness. This is true even if they are not our children.
But I would not say children are a natural consequence to having sex when fertile. People do have ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages. There are stillborn children. Getting from conception to a live birth requires a lot of things to go just right. Not all of those things are in our power.
B
bitterhope
Guest
Just getting to conception also is beyond our power. Many couples never conceive despite having no medical explanation. All appears to be working “right” but no babies ever come.
K
Kat127
Guest
You are absolutely right.
B
bitterhope
Guest
There are also countless women who get pregnant after tubal ligations, using birth control, when NFP charts say it’s impossible, after menopause, after years and years of infertility (particularly after adopting children), and many other impossible situations. God really is the Author of Life and we may be cooperators with Him, but only He is in control. We can put the order in but God decides if and when to fill it.
P
PaulinVA
Guest
I know that some people take comfort in the belief that God intervenes, so that things “happen for a reason”.
All of your examples could just be our imperfect understanding of science or whatever. Given the choice of believing that surgeons sometimes botch tubal ligations or God intervenes and creates a pregnancy against his biology, I will go for the surgeon.
We had a miscarriage when my wife was on the pill when we were first married 30 years ago. I prefer to believe that the hormones didn’t totally work to prevent conception and implantation then to believe that God reached down and caused a conception (against his biology) in a situation where the baby would die.
A
Anglewannabe
Guest
That is true but it is also true that society no longer values moms. I have never had children and I honestly don’t know how moms do it. I see parenting magazines that advertise clothes for women where the model is pregnant and all she has is a belly and thing legs and arms
What has happened that society won’t even allow a pregnant woman to put on weight.I see pregnant women in the office and the comments that have to put up with make me what to hide in shame. I use to do aerobics in a gym where one of the instructors became pregnant. She worked there for years while she was a student. In Canada, in order to qualify for maternity, you need to work so many hours. For this woman to qualify she needed to teach aerobics until her later stages of pregnancy and the gym would not give her hours working a reception to help her out. Not very nice.
As much as children are a blessing, I think society needs to start respecting what mom’s do. And I mean respecting them in a Christian manner, not a secular manner
E
EasterJoy
Guest
To say you are blessed is a recognition that you** do **owe a debt of gratitude for what you have, that you did not do anything to deserve the good things you have, and that you realize you **do not **have what you have because you are better than those who don’t have what you do.
To say children are a blessing is simply to recognize
a) they’re a good thing, even though they bring us into the sacrificial debt of love and
b) those who have them cannot automatically claim greater merit than those who do not
P
PaulinVA
Guest
But, you have to address the question, blessed by whom?
I prefer fortunate instead of blessed, because “blessed” implies that someone (God) did the blessing. If that’s the case, others weren’t blessed by God and that leaves us with a difficult question as to why.
B
bitterhope
Guest
Things do happen for a reason. It doesn’t mean we always understand that reason. At least not on this side of heaven.
Science only explains so much of things. Regardless of how hard we attempt to explain things away with science the more questions arise. you can blame the surgeon but how is he responsible for tubes growing back together after 5-7 years when most sterilization failures occur? women going through menopause and later giving birth 5+ years after cycles stop? Something causes these things to occur. If it isn’t God than what?
I’ve lost children too. Each of my babies have mattered, have served a purpose in our family, and are a blessing from heaven. All blessings have the potential to cause heartache. If they didn’t matter that wouldn’t happen.
Life isn’t God’s only blessing. None of us receive all blessings God has at His disposal except for life. Life is the greatest blessing of them all. We are all blessed, every living being is blessed simply by being alive and created in God’s image. Children are newly created living beings created in the image of God. Of course that makes them blessings. We all benefit from these children, not just their parents. Without them our world would cease to exist. I have been blessed with many children but there are many other blessings God will never bestow upon me. No matter how hard I beg and plead I will never receive those gifts. That is fine. It is His will that counts. It doesn’t mean health and wealth wouldn’t be amazing but they aren’t mine to have. God has His reasons for that. I don’t understand but that’s not important.
Some blessings are hard. Martyrdom is a blessing. The call to religious vocations is a blessing. I just don’t see how Catholics wouldn’t view children s blessings, particularly since the Bible says repeatedly that they are and the catechism states that they are.
G
GEddie
Guest
I think the questions you raise about “blessings” dovetail into the parallel question of “miracles.”
Religious pamphlets and inspirational magazines are full of anecdotes where in a crisis situation, all the gates open to allow a happy ending: The cancer goes away, the financial crisis resolves, the familial conflict is reconciled. The conclusion is that a “miracle” occurred.
But if we are to scream “miracle!” every time some such happy ending is reached, what are we to make of the (far more numerous) instances where all the gates slam shut on a tragic outcome?
Methinks we should accept that blessings and miracles are both beyond our earthly comprehension, and only in our spiritual bodies will we begin to understand.
ICXC NIKA
K
KendraDZ1902
Guest
Yes, this.
A
ahs
Guest
Blessed by God, of course.
Why is “why” a difficult question to ponder? Is God not free to bless some couples with fertility, and withhold it from others? Does He owe us some explanation for it? Why do innocent people die? Why are the martyrs martyred? Why did the Saints suffer in their earthly lives? Why must we pick up our crosses, each of us, whatever that cross may be, and carry it? Why can’t my friend have children of his own…doesn’t God know that he should be as “fortunate” or “blessed” as me?
But then, this begs another question: Who says he’s not blessed or fortunate just because he can’t have natural children?
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