Open to Life

This phrase gets bandied around quite a bit by Catholics who are trying to explain that they aren't contracepting, and who truly believe that God gets the final say on their family size. Generally these Catholics, like my husband and I, believe what the Church teaches about the great responsibility that comes with our gift of fertility, and that it takes a concerted and prayer-filled effort between both the spouses and God to come to an understanding of what His Will is for one's family.  

My husband and I were married at age 21 and felt led to not wait to begin growing our family.  We both were eager to experience this "openness to life" that we had talked about during our rather long engagement.   Four children and 6 years later we learned that openness to life means occasionally being surprised by the generosity of Our Heavenly Father!  Now its been 7 years, and 5 pregnancies and I am just fully grasping and internalizing the REST of what being Open to Life means.  

Claire's death taught me that when we are "Open to Life" we must be entirely open to God's Will for that Life.  That Life is His.  He gives us the tremendous gift of caring for the children He gives us, but they are ultimately HIS.  He may call them to Himself when HE chooses.  Being open to Life means being open to death, and understanding that Death is really just a birth into Eternal Life.   This revelation has led me to  a greater understanding of just what it means to say "Yes."   I have always thought that the Marital Act is a way of saying "Yes" to God - much as Mary did.  It is saying with our bodies the words spoken at the Consecration "This is my body, given up for You."  In the language of the body, and in our hearts, we say this to God, we say this to our spouses, and if we conceive, we say this over and over again to our unborn child.  But we must be willing to allow that "Yes" - our own personal Fiat - to include the possibility that God may want our child in Heaven with Him - before we are even able to hold him or her.  This makes saying that "Yes" an even greater act of Faith.  It also makes it mirror the Fiat of Our Heavenly Mother much more perfectly.  Mary's Fiat was lifelong - from the Visit of the Angel Gabriel, to Simeon's Prophesy of the Sword Piercing Her Heart, to the Way of the Cross, the Foot of the Cross, the Tomb, and the Resurrection and Ascension.  Mary's "Yes" was all-encompasing, total surrender to Our Loving Father.   A surrender to His Will not only for herself, but for her Child - the baby she carried under heart for nine months, and wrapped in swaddling clothes.  As mothers, this is what God asks of us as well - total surrender, and a real Openness to Life, and God's plan for that Life.