Marriage And Children
In
the midst of all this, Kristin's calls for us to marry
became more frequent and adamant. She said God wants us to marry. How did she
know that? She said she keeps seeing a vision of me with seven sons in the water.
Seven sons? I had had the money and the energy to raise children when I was in the corporate world before getting saved and leaving for the mission field. But even then, I had never imagined raising seven of them. Now that I am an itinerant vocational missionary in my mid-forties, with neither assets nor savings, does God want me to start raising seven children? Does He want me to return to working for money full time? If not, even if He is going to provide a substantial passive income, just parenting that many kids will require both parents to do nothing but raise children. I had seen missionaries with three or four kids get so swamped with parenting that they had little time or energy left for actual missionary work, and I was pretty sure that I had been called to the mission field. So I told Kristin that if God wants us to have seven children, He would need to show that vision to me as well.
While Kristin and I had gotten used to spiritual warfare, even just the guttural noise that emanates from her as the demons resist and/or are being cast out freaks out people in the rooms next to us and make them leave their rooms. What would that noise do to a baby growing in her womb, who couldn't leave for nine months? Moreover, a demon had come out of her and entered me, so demons could enter the children, either in the womb or after birth. A demon had also tried to break my neck and kill me. The force of its attack had only damaged my throat but would have broken the neck of a child. So to protect the children, any marriage would need to wait until all demons have been cast out.
The younger alters also seemed to have a Disney view of marriage: marry prince charming, who will carry them into his castle, and then spend the rest of his life tending to her and making her happy. One alter said she wants to have only sons, as raising daughters would be "trouble." Another alter said she wants to raise sons only when they are two to five years old, "when they are cute." So who will raise daughters if God grants them, or sons after they are older than five? She replied, "You raise them."
Even the adult Kristin's view of marriage wasn't realistic. She had suffered so much and saw marriage as the finish line for her suffering, where she will find refuge and security. I told her that marriage is the beginning, not the end, of a partnership for which both the husband and wife must be healthy and ready, willing, and able to sacrifice themselves for their children. Instead of getting resolved, any unresolved personal issue carried into marriage gets amplified and hurts it, as well as the children. So any marriage would also need to wait until all alters have been integrated so that the children can attach to one stable and consistent personality of their mother.
I told Kristin that when all demons have been cast out and all of her alters have integrated, she should fly away from me for about six months to discover herself, including her (new) desires, aspirations and the type of husband she wants, for the first time as a truly free woman. Would she still want to remain a missionary and marry one? Missionaries' time for actual missionary work tends to dry up when they get swamped raising children in the mission field, as well as raising the money with which to feed them. Raising seven children would mean at least twenty years during which at least she and most likely her husband as well can't do much missionary work. So what would she want more: being a missionary or raising a large family?
If she felt called to raise a large family, wouldn't she be better off marrying someone who isn't called to be a missionary and who can just focus on raising a family with her? And if she wants to remain a missionary and marry one, would I be the man who is best for the rest of her life? I told her that she shouldn't marry me because she is grateful to me for having taken care of her when she was in need. I was already double her age and only getting older, while she will remain a beautiful young woman for many years to come. If we married, she was probably looking at two decades of widowhood or remarrying in her 50s or 60s, which wouldn't be easy. So wouldn't it be better for her to marry someone her own age so that she can have one long marriage instead of two shorter ones or a long widowhood?
I told her that if she returns to me after those six months of discovering herself as a free woman and says that she still wants to marry me, we could marry. But if she finds a Christian man her age and tells me that she wants to marry him instead, I told her that I will walk her down the aisle.