I was 26 years old and had 4 children, including a set of twin daughters. We lived in an 1100 square foot house with no basement. My husband and I had only planned on having 2 children and living in this starter home for 5 years…..Haha!

Our second pregnancy was twins and we only found out 3 weeks before they were born. I had grown up in a family of 3 children and I always hated uneven number of children for the fact of never being able to divide things equally so I was tickled when that fourth child came along! I guess I am OCD in that respect.

It was the fall revival at our little country church that we attended. At the end of the service as the preacher gave the altar call, I felt a strong nudging to go forth. By the time I knelt down at that altar, I was bawling my eyes out.

The preacher came over and knelt down beside me and kindly asked if I needed him to pray for a special need. I said, “Yes, please pray about my children”. The preacher had this very puzzled look on his face as he had just finished preaching over the noise and blabbing of my 4 young children. I guess he couldn’t figure out what awful sin they had committed at their young age. My husband and I had to work different shifts for lack of finances and other reasons so I was there alone and maybe he also thought I was on the verge of some break down or something because of the way I was crying.

He prayed with me and what he did not realize was that the realization of the responsibility of my husband and I to raise these poor, pitiful little children had just smacked me right in the heart! In my mind I told God how I did not feel that we were capable parents, nor smart enough to do this parenting thing without His help. I spiritually lay every child I had down that night at that altar and made God a promise. I promised to see to the best of my ability that they were in church and raised in a Godly environment.

I won’t sit here and tell you that everything was sunshine and roses after that because it wasn’t. Times were hard and looking back I feel that I failed in many ways on keeping my part of that promise but God kept His. All four of our children were saved at a young age and baptized and I couldn’t be more proud of them in so many ways.

We ended up living in that little house for 8 years and instead of 2 children we had 4. Looking back I can see where God had His hand on our lives all along. Our children are grown now and our oldest son has already passed on into heaven. We have had our share of hurts and heartaches over the years but God has walked beside us and sometimes carried us through it all.

If you are young or discouraged in your life right now, I would suggest you do the same as I did because God is so much better at directing us than we are at directing ourselves. It takes a lot of faith to let go and sometimes we forget that we gave our burdens to Him and we try to pick them back up ( in my case) or just keep hanging on to those things.

What helped me the most was to realize that our children are just on loan to us from God. Our job as parents is to point them back to Him. I love my children dearly but know that I will let them down in so many ways and try to keep their eyes looking to the maker. He’s the best! I hope you find this helpful and can do the same.