Life with children

I just read an article about children in China that has got me thinking. It was talking about the 1 child limit per couple. They estimate they have eliminated 300 million births ( the population of the US). There are exceptions. If you live in the country and need help with the farm, you can have more children. If you have lost a child, you can have more children. It was started in 1979, so they are starting the second generation of controlled growth. They say the children are spoiled by both sets of grandparents and parents. Both parents usually work. They say that people like the system and that it make sense to them. One father who lived in the country felt sorry for his children that they wouldn't have everything. It worries me what the society will evolve into. We have talked about moving to China several times in our marriage. I can only imagine what they would think about our four children. Living in Idaho, it hasn't seemed so crazy to people that we have 4 kids. In traveling to D.C., we got more comments. I am grateful for my children and I am grateful to be their mother. I know that there are things that are sacrificed because we don't have enough money to do everything for everyone. I wouldn't have it any other way, though. I was reading a talk about motherhood. It included these thoughts from a mother: 'Through the thick and the thin of this, and through the occasional tears of it all, I know deep down inside I am doing God’s work. I know that in my motherhood I am in an eternal partnership with Him. I am deeply moved that God finds His ultimate purpose and meaning in being a parent, even if some of His children make Him weep."
As my children drive me a little crazy sometimes and I have to remember who I am and why I am doing this again, I like this quote:“It is this realization,” she says, “that I try to recall on those inevitably difficult days when all of this can be a bit overwhelming. Maybe it is precisely our inability and anxiousness that urge us to reach out to Him and enhance His ability to reach back to us. Maybe He secretly hopes we will be anxious, and will plead for His help. Then, I believe, He can teach these children directly, through us, but with no resistance offered. I like that idea. It gives me hope."
Here is another section of the talk: "Yours is the grand tradition of Eve, the mother of all the human family, the one who understood that she and Adam had to fall in order that “men [and women] might be” and that there would be joy. Yours is the grand tradition of Sarah and Rebekah and Rachel, without whom there could not have been those magnificent patriarchal promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which bless us all. Yours is the grand tradition of Lois and Eunice and the mothers of the 2,000 stripling warriors. Yours is the grand tradition of Mary, chosen and foreordained from before this world was, to conceive, carry, and bear the Son of God Himself. We thank all of you, including our own mothers, and tell you there is nothing more important in this world than participating so directly in the work and glory of God, in bringing to pass the mortality and earthly life of His daughters and sons, so that immortality and eternal life can come in those celestial realms on high."
Would I change the fact that I have four children. Never. I can't imagine our family without all of them. I will put a smile on my face as I face another pile of dirty laundry, and thank Heavenly Father that He trusts me enough to have four of his children under my care.