Personal Choices

As a child, I used to ask a thousand questions a day and was well known for being very blunt about my questioning. My grandmother used to tell me that it wasn't nice to ask people certain questions but I always figured that if I were so honest with other people, then why should they have a problem being honest with me?

It was not until I had gotten older that I realized the difference between people being honest of their own free will and people being backed into a corner and the honesty driven out of them. For example, people will often ask us when we are having children. This one is especially sensitive to me - not because we will not be having any, but because I have an older cousin that never had children. You see, no one ever asked her why she didn't have children because they always thought there was a chance she could not have any naturally. That was way before the age of modern science and now it is seen as a duty to have children in the United States because medicine now allows us to have that opportunity. Well, that is all fine, well, and good but that doesn't take into account all the hormones and emotional torment some women have to go through just to try having children.

God did not grant my husband and I with having children naturally and I think that is a good thing. Why? Simply because I don't want to pass down the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) gene to my children (even if it is just recessive) and because Greg and I can enjoy life with a freedom from disease and other attachments. Does that mean that people with CF shouldn't have children? No! It is a personal choice and we respect those that choose to have kids... it just isn't for us.

Now if we could get people to learn how personal of a question it is and that they shouldn't ask it, our world would be a much happier place.