The Song Of The Childless Woman

He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of his people. He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children.

PSALM 113:7–9

IN HIS NOVELHARVARD YARD, WILLIAM MARTIN DESCRIBES A prosperous seventeenth-century Puritan who faces one of life’s greatest poverties: childlessness.

John needed only to look out his window to see the Lord’s bounty upon him. He could gaze across his vegetable garden and down to the Great Cove, to his ships—half a dozen by his wife’s inheritance, half a dozen his by his own intelligence. . . . But his piety and faith had not been great enough, because the richest of the Lord’s blessings—a house filled with happy noise—had not come to John Wedge. His morning sounds were always the same—the humming of the slave woman who stirred his porridge, the whisk of a broom worked by an indentured servant, and the quiet coughing of his wife. He heard no childish bickering, no mothering voice rising to calm a dispute, and for those, he would have surrendered everything else.^a

It’s not often I’m compelled to stop when reading a novel, but I certainly did with this last powerful turn of phrase: and for those, he would have surrendered everything else. Parenting is a lot of very hard and very tiring work. In the midst of the grind, we can forget the song of the barren couple that opens up for us entirely new horizons of insight and thanksgiving.

In reality, we’re living a dream.

One of the greatest blessings God can give is to take a childless couple and make them, as the psalmist wrote, “happy [parents] of children.” Kids are a tremendous blessing—flesh-covered miracles of God’s gracious favor. But sometimes, when we get too close to the work, when we lose so much sleep, we become blind to children as blessings and see them only as burdens.

But where we see dirty diapers, the barren couple sees a living, breathing baby they get to clean.

Where our culture views as a “prisoner” a parent who quits his or her job to stay home, the barren couple sees a home filled with laughter and the delight of their precious child’s presence.

Where we see financial obligation, the barren couple sees something finally worth spending their money on.

The next time you’re tempted to complain about all those car trips to shuttle kids around, don’t forget this: a barren woman would gladly drive twenty-four hours straight if only she had a child to transport.

May we never lose sight of the true miracle: God has placed a living, breathing human being into our care!

When I wrote the first draft of Sacred Parenting, some early readers challenged me when I wrote that there was no joy like a family’s joy. Some asked me whether this statement might offend singles.

The last thing I want to do is offend singles, but I stand behind what I said: there really is no joy like a family’s joy. Certainly, singles can still have a rich, meaningful, and fulfilled life. They may well experience certain edges of carefree happiness married people will never know. But they will never experience the singular phenomenon of laughing with your child on the long journey we call parenting. When that laughter is born out of living together twenty-four hours a day, caring for them and sacrificing for them and delighting in them and disciplining them and getting angry at them and having them break your heart, melt your heart, and enlarge your heart—well, there really is nothing else like it.

There just isn’t.

The psalmist couldn’t have been clearer: one of God’s richest blessings is to establish the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children.

If God has placed you in your home as a happy mother (or father) of children, accept this as God’s good favor. Thank him zealously, and often, for this journey you are on. Do you see your children as a blessing? Do you realize how some barren women would give their right arms to have what you have? They would gladly take all your troubles without complaining—if their empty arms could be filled with even one child, let alone two, or three, or four.

Last night I drove my children home from youth group. As the kids and I talked, laughed, and shared stories in our own car, I thought, There is nowhere else on earth I’d rather be than right here. There is no one else I’d rather be with than these children. For this one moment, everything is just as it should be. It’s perfect, and I’m content.

No, none of us have perfect children. Sometimes, we don’t even have pleasant children! But whenever we’re tempted to complain, let’s consider the ache of the childless couple.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the blessing of children, whether they have joined our family through biological birth or adoption. Help us to remember how much we desired these children, and grant us the grace to never take them for granted, and to never let the blessing be overshadowed by the burden of caring for them and providing for them. In Jesus’ name, amen.