How Do I Decide?

3. When you have to make an important decision or choice, how do you make it? Do you make lists and think about it, weigh things logically? or do you go more by gut? Something else? A combination?

When I have an important decision or choice, like if and when to have a third child, I think about it a lot. I don't make lists, but I do try to think reasonably about the pros and cons.

In this decision a lot is based on my own opinion and feelings.

I grew up in a large family and loved it.
I don't feel like my two kids are "it".
Adding another would enrich our family, give it another dimension, add another personality, give Green Bean and Peanut Butter someone else to turn to when they're tired of each other.

BUT

Sometimes two boys feels like more than I can handle already.
My life is full and rich with the two extremes of personality I've already been given for sons.
My Hero feels like we've got enough on our plate as it is, though he still thinks he'd like one more eventually.

so when?

I keep feeling like having one two years after Peanut Butter would be ideal, since waiting another year or two after that would leave him/her behind, never quite old enough to do most of the things Green Bean and Peanut Butter are doing.
But I'm not in a rush to be pregnant again (because of the one final day of pregnancy that fills me with dread) or to have more chaos and needs and work added to my day.

That's kind of how I think through important choices. Mulling over pros and cons, giving my own opinions and feelings as much weight as other more rational considerations. My Hero pointed out that with a third child we'll have to come up with funds to finish a room in the basement, since Green Bean and Peanut Butter's room won't hold one more. But that really doesn't concern me. We have the space, even though it's not finished yet, and if nothing else we could put bunk beds in the boys' room and make it make do for a while longer (though their closet would NOT hold a third child's clothing.)

Ultimately I take all this and talk with my Father in heaven about it, glad that no matter how muddled or confused my and My Hero's thoughts and feelings are, these things are in His hands, and far more important than how many are part of our family is how we live this life He's given us. How much we include the One who created life.

Honestly, I'd prefer the days of yore, when the size of one's family was left more literally up to God to decide. I like that we can't chose the gender of our children, and I wish it was also just a case of accepting what I was given as a number of children without feeling responsible for deciding. I'd like that.