Amy of Amy’s Humble Musings recently posted “A bath for baby.” The post started with this:

The answer to, “How do you do it all?” is simple. Nobody does it all. If you bake your own bread and mill your own wheat, then you probably don’t polish your silverware. If you polish your silverware, you probably don’t parse Latin verbs with your kids. If you do Latin with your kids, you probably don’t have a garden. If you have a garden and do all of the above, you probably don’t take a shower. And I’ll bet your garden has weeds.

To this I say a hearty Amen! And why? Because it is true that no one can do it all. I’ve written before in Simplifying Choices that although I think canning is very cool, I don’t can. I also don’t sew. I’ve needed to do other things that were more important. Life is about trade-offs and we all make them everyday.

As I thought about Amy’s post, I reflected on how vastly different our lives are. We discovered last year that we have the exact same wedding anniversary (including the year). However, our lives have taken vastly different directions over the past nine years. Some differences are simple like she lives in Florida and I live in Michigan. Can you say different weather? But there are more profound differences. She and her husband have five children. We have one that is 1/4 of the way here as I write this! Her husband is a rocket scientist and travels a lot. My husband is a graphic designer and is home 24/7. She gardens and I read gardening catalogs. I work part-time for pay in our home-based business and (to my knowledge) Amy does not work for pay. I’m sure if I knew Amy more, I could share more differences. But I think you get my point that we have completely different lives.

However, we are both seeking to follow Christ. There is no doubt when I read her blog that she wants to be found a faithful servant of Christ. And I hope that those who read my blog would also discern the same thing about me. But that seeking has led to such different lives. That is why the “cookie cutter” mentality regarding Christian living drives me crazy! Within the parameters of Biblical Christian living, there is such a wide variety of God honoring lives.

I think in a desire to “map out” the perfect blueprint for Christian living, many people forget that God creates individuals with unique temperaments, spiritual gifts, and callings. He simply does not call everyone to live cookie cutter lives and, as David would argue, He seems to go out of His way to ensure that those who promote cookie cutter Christian living are not successful in the long term. (That is another post.)

Very early on in our marriage, we decided that although we did not feel we were ready to have children, we wanted to be open to whatever plan God might have for us. So we gave God every opportunity to give us children earlier than we would probably have chosen to have them. And if you asked us, we would have also told you that we wanted probably two or three. MAYBE four on a good day. But we have always thought that given our temperaments and personalities that we would do best with just a couple of children. However, we also wanted to be open to whatever God might have for us that we might not be able to fully comprehend at that point.

Well, if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time you know that all our “openness” resulted in zilch, zero, nada children (until this year). God simply had a different plan for us. And just because we have one on the way, it doesn’t mean that there will be any more. This could be the only child we have. God may send another one. He may send two more. Is it possible that our intuition about what was best was right all along? I certainly do not regret the choice we made to be open to whatever God might do, but I do find it really interesting that given our ages it seems likely that our conviction that “less is more” and “later would be better than sooner” for us when it comes to children seems to be playing out in the way God is ordering our lives.

Going back to Amy’s quote, I also think that sometimes less is more because perhaps God DOES need us to do Latin and Greek with our child. Maybe this baby I am carrying is going to grow up and become a brilliant theologian who will light a fire like Jonathan Edwards. (Hey, a mom can dream, right?) Maybe our one child will need the focused attention of his mother and father in order to fulfill that calling that God has for him in the Kingdom. Could God raise up a great theologian in a house with ten children? Of course! But just because He can, doesn’t mean that He will. It could be His plan to raise up our child without siblings. And it could be that we will never know the why of His plan until heaven. But if God only gives us one child, there is a reason for it.

It could also be that God only has one child for us because He has other things He needs David and me to do in the Kingdom and raising more children would interfere with those other plans.

As was addressed at the beginning of this entry, NO ONE CAN DO IT ALL. Is raising godly children a powerful part of the Kingdom? Of course! Is blogging to encourage other Christians a powerful part of the Kingdom? It can be if it is what God has called me to do and I do it faithfully. Is blogging or writing articles to challenge/encourage others in their Christian walk as important as raising a child for Christ? YES, if it is what God has called me to do in His Kingdom.

I am sure there are Christians who would vehemently disagree with me and say that raising as many children as you can for Christ is the “highest calling” for a Christian. I disagree. The highest calling for a Christian is doing exactly what God calls YOU to do based on the unique life situation, spiritual gifts, and temperament He has blessed you with.

For some believers that will include raising many children. For some believers, it will mean not raising ANY children. For some believers it means spending an hour or more in prayer daily. For others it means caring for an elderly relative. For other believers is means being single when they would rather be married. For some believers it means being an ethical business person.

The highest calling is being faithful and doing our best with whatever God has given us to do as His Kingdom representatives.

So those who would seek to impose their “absolutely biblical Christian living blueprint” on all believers should be careful to make sure that they are not seeking to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers around them and excessively burdening their brothers and sisters in Christ with expectations that are not of God.

There are those who are zealous for the things of God to the point where they are unwilling to allow God to lead His children as He sees fit. It is almost as though they are convinced THEY are the Holy Spirit that people need. What a terrible day it will be for them when the discover that in their zeal to make sure everyone was doing everything “right”, they caused others to miss out on the unique blessings and callings God had for them in the Kingdom. How many gifts to the body of Christ have been lost because brothers and sisters in Christ labored under expectations and beliefs that God never intended them to carry?

May each of us go forward today in that delicate and critical balance of grace and truth.