We have been parenting for a good while now. And the longer we parent, the more truth I see in all the old adages about being a dad:

• Time flies.
• Blink and it will be over.
• The days pass slowly but the years pass quickly.

All true. It seems like yesterday when we were expecting our first child. In fact, it seems like yesterday when we were asking the question of when was the right time to actually bring a child into the world. We asked that question to each other and to more experienced couples in a lot of different ways:

• “How long should we be married before we have kids?”
• “What should our bank account look like when we become parents?”
• “How will we know when we’re ready?”

We asked all those questions and more to people who already had children, and nearly without exception, they laughed at us. They laughed because they knew what we were too young and inexperienced to know:

There is no right time to have a baby.

That’s because no matter when you have a child, your whole life is going to be flipped upside down. Everything will be reordered from your budget to your sleep cycle, and that’s true no matter how long you’ve been married, how much you have in savings, or how many parenting books you’ve read. 

But inasmuch as those couples told us that there was not necessarily a perfect time to have a baby, many of them told us that there were certainly wrong times to have a baby. The wrong time to become a parent is when you believe that having a child will fix something inside you:

• A child will help you feel more respected.
• A child will make you feel needed.
• A child will repair your broken marriage.

These are the wrong times because in those times, you are laying an unreal and unfair expectation on that child; you are placing a weight on that baby that is far too heavy. Now if that’s true, then the opposite is also true – though you might not be able to name a specific time and date for the right time, the best time is generally when you are so satisfied and content in life that you want that satisfaction and joy to spread into another life. 

New life springs from abundance, not deficiency. And here is maybe a helpful illustration about God’s creation as well.

God did not create the heavens and the earth, including human beings because He was lonely. Or bored. Or to take up space. Or because of any other deficiency in Himself. God has existed, and will exist, from and for all eternity in perfect satisfaction and community with Himself. Father, Son, and Spirit, three in one. Creation came from the abundance of the trinity not to fulfill something lacking in it. And that is very good news for us.

Just as it’s a crushing weight for a child to fulfill some unmet expectations or desire in the lives of his parents, so also would it be crushing if an even heavier weight was laid on the back of humanity. We do not exist to fulfill something lacking in God; we exist because there is NOTHING lacking in God. And that truth makes His invitation to join His eternal life, in Christ, all the more beautiful, because we are invited into that abundance. In Jesus, we too can experience perfect togetherness. We can be with God forever and ever. And until that day, we can live in the secure peace of knowing that we don’t fulfill God’s need.