the have's, the have not's and the don't want's...

... so there is some heated discussion going on on the latest gaper's block poll called "kids: yay or nay?"...as a parent, i'm a bit biased on this one, i suppose...but i think my answer would have been very different just two short years ago...back in the fall of 2003, i was a happy-go-lucky girl, in love with her boyfriend, going to rock 'n' roll shows until the wee hours, spending countless hours perusing the narrow aisles of the local used record store, jetsetting off to seattle or NYC without a care in the world...i LOVED my life then--the freedom, the fun, the rock AND the roll...if you'd asked me THEN this question about having kids, i would've said NO WAY! i was already in my 30s and quite comfortably set in my untethered lifestyle...i had absolutely no desire to suffer the agonies of pregnancy and childbirth, let alone be responsible for another human being for the next couple decades...that would totally cramp my style, ya know?

well, lo and behold, a few months later i find myself puking all over the subterranean's ladies room...and this time, it wasn't just the booze and cigarettes...two weeks later, i take a pregnancy test just to rule it out before i go to the doctor's to see if i have stomach cancer or something...(i'd been told by my OB-GYN that i couldn't get pregnant without hormone treatment...i guess teddy was hormone treatment enough)...so imagine my shock when i saw that little pink line magically appear on a stick that would indicate my life would never be the same again...

i admit that my very first reaction was fear...good god, i wasn't even engaged, let alone married...but then i had this very reassuring feeling that everything was going to be okay...i don't know if it was the mommy hormones or what, but i knew that in many ways this was going to be the best thing that ever happened to me...

...and i was right...i LOVE being a mom...that's not to say though that ALL women will love being mothers, or all men will love being fathers...and i totally respect people's decision to NOT have children...what i don't understand, however, is people who are so hostile towards kids that they would want to go as far as banning them from public places...or banishing those who choose to have kids to the suburbs...to me, that's just another form of discrimination...nobody appreciates an unruly child or a parent who doesn't seem to care about their child's behavior in public...however, this is no excuse to lump all kids and parents into one generic group and quarantine them from the rest of society...

reading some of those comments made me think of how jesus felt about children:

"let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these..."

"therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

"whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me..."

children really are precious and wondrous beings...i think our society would be much better off if we could all treat children with the respect and care they need, whether we personally choose to have our own kids or not...