Are Children a Burden or a Blessing?

We live in a culture that is very open on its opinion of children. Live your life, have fun, build a successful career and THEN have children--but don’t have too many of them, you don’t want to waste too much of your life being held back by these young humans and you definitely don’t want to lose out on living with the luxuries you’ve worked so hard to attain. If you’re a woman, you definitely don’t want to ruin your body, God forbid you begin to look older. And don't forget, you still want to be able to go out with friends and afford multiple family vacations throughout the year. This is YOUR life, do what makes you happy, and don't let kids get in the way of that. These mindsets even influence the minds of many Christians.

The flip side of the culture we live in today is that children are too often viewed as an accessory to life. As long as they live up to our expectations and requirements of pleasing us, then they won't be a problem. As long as they enter our life at a convenient time, they make for some cute photos or videos to post online, and we don’t have too many of them, all will be well and dandy. But if we don’t have the finances or we want more time for ourselves, children are a burden--a curse on our success even. Sadly, this is how most of us have been trained to view children (whether directly or passively).

Let’s be real and honest, children are a burden.

The Oxford dictionary defines a burden as “a load, typically a heavy one.” Children are a load, and a heavy one at that. I mean, as parents we are completely responsible for caring for these smaller, younger human beings. Feeding them, clothing them, helping them grow in every way the best we can, caring for them ‘round the clock whenever they are in need. They are a weight, they slow us down, they bring more work and more responsibility into our lives, in no way do they make life easier, but they aren’t a curse by any means. These things aren’t bad things, depending on whether or not we are interested in growing ourselves.

There are burdens we take on in life that are worthless and unfruitful, but raising children is not one of those. Children challenge us in ways we could never imagine, and the challenge gives us an opportunity to grow at lengths we could never imagine and often times in ways we never even knew we needed to.

Children do bring so much joy and light to life, but too often parents are missing out on this joy when they believe the lie that the difficulty of raising children is worthless and their kids are just annoying and get in the way of them having a better, less stressful life. As followers of Jesus, we can’t fall for this.

Blessings are not always a neatly packaged bundle of comfort and ease. Sometimes, they are difficult and uncomfortable. If we look at it from an eternal perspective, the burden children bring on is actually where the blessing begins.

James 1:2-4

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kind. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing.

God requires that we take a higher perspective than simply viewing children as a burden. A perspective beyond the immediate discomforts and difficulties of the flesh and into the greater depths of spiritual blessings. A perspective that doesn’t view this heavy load of responsibility as a setback, but instead as a bow string being pulled back ready to launch us into new heights.

As we raise children, we are given innumerable opportunities to serve in ways we may never have had without having children. There are very few of us who are willing to commit our lives around the clock for others as a single, childless person. That level of commitment sounds like an outrageous task, and that task is what parenting is.

Too often people will praise me for having “a lot” of kids and how I must be a “special person” to take that on, but the reality is that I needed to grow (and still do). God didn’t give me these children because I was awesome and so well equipped to be a mom. He gave them to me to teach me, to constantly remind me how desperately in need of Him I am, and to help me grow.

The burden of children has certainly made me stronger in my faith. It has been a training ground for running straight to God when I don’t know what to do. It has stretched my faith in trusting God’s provision for our family. It has been so severely humbling to see how I’ve treated God through the lens of being a parent. Each day, each moment, God continues to use this journey of parenting to grow me in patience and endurance. I truly cannot count all the ways my children have been a blessing to me, from the simple joys of seeing them smile, hearing them laugh, and holding them close, to the spiritual blessings God is working in me. The growth doesn’t stop, if only we take God on his word that children are a blessing.

The work and weight of having a family is more than worth it to me. God made us to live in families, not to be alone. If we are struggling with how we view having children, we need to take a moment and ask ourselves what we do prioritize. More often than not, our negative outlook on childrearing is not simply over the fact that children are a heavy responsibility, but it’s more so that the responsibility of children will get in the way of what we are prioritizing most; a career, personal time, body image, financial status, you name it.

Children are undoubtedly a gift, but they were not given to us from God to serve us and fulfill the wants in our own hearts. They are not given to us to make us happy and they aren’t given to us so that we can make them into who we want them to be. They are souls, like you and I, made in the image of God and belonging to Him above all, who we’ve been given a responsibility to care for, in sickness and in health, to lead, with all gentleness and compassion, and to teach and train in all truth.

It’s a heavy responsibility. It isn’t easy, and some moments are just plain ugly, but overall, it is one of the greatest blessings we get to experience in this life and this precious burden of raising children comes with an invaluable reward.

Psalm 127:3

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.