" What man and woman, if they ever gave serious thought to what having children inevitably involves, would ever have them?” asked Frederick Buechner. “Yet what man and woman, once having had them and loved them, would ever want it otherwise?” Buechner imagined what it would be like to wish away magically the pain associated with someone he loves. He couldn’t do it, “because the pain is so much a part of the love that the love would be vastly diminished, unrecognizable, without it.”52 Indeed, love for one’s children without pain would be as unrecognizable as a resurrected Christ without nail scars. "

― Russell D. Moore , The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home