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A year and a half ago, my friend Flo told me that one can buy ovulation tests in bulk. I was just about to place an order, when I found out that I was already pregnant.

Jump to present day. I'm starting to slowly weaning the baby, which means, my body will soon say, "You're ready for another one!" I looked into buying ovulation tests again, and would you believe it? Of all places, the Dollar Tree has some.

I was a little nervous buying ovulation tests from a dollar store, but I thought I'd give them a try. I went with a friend (telling her that I have a quick but strange errand to run) and bought five. But my friend could not understand why I was buying them.

"Are you trying to have another baby?" she asked.

"No, these will tell me when I'm ovulating, so I can avoid getting pregnant."

"I don't mean to be nosy, but why don't you just use the normal methods of birth control?"

And then, I balked.  (that's a baseball term; basically, it means I didn't go through with it). I told her that I don't like putting strange things into my body, we don't want to do anything permanent, and that methods of 'birth control' are not 100% guaranteed. I went on and on, but I couldn't say the words, "Because we want to trust God."

And I came face to face with the fact that I do not completely trust God in this area. I thought that, having thought about it, prayed about it, talked about it, and written about it, I did. But there is still fear in me that with my last ten or so years of fertility, I will have five more children. And the fear that, though I feel done after a decade of bearing and nursing children, God will say, "No, you're not." When it seems that suddenly everyone around me is getting pregnant, and then my husband tells me that he had a dream about our sixth child, I tense up and wonder and worry.

I took a pregnancy test yesterday, for peace of mind. No, I'm not pregnant. But I feel like a cheater, a faker, a cop-out, for not trusting God. I still believe with all my heart that we are doing the right thing. Now I want to believe with all my heart that He is doing the right thing.