How Do You Feed Them?
An honest answer to the question
I have nine children. One of the most frequent questions I get asked by strangers is how do you feed them?
I think people are generally overwhelmed by the thought of so many people, so many meals, so much cost. I get it. I get overwhelmed myself at times. My husband and I are not wealthy. We have strung together a number of small jobs that we work at faithfully week after week, in addition to homeschooling our children and doing the work that God has put in our hearts to do regardless of the amount we are paid. I’m not going to lie: there are many seasons where we are scraping by. There are times that the rising prices of groceries can shake me, and I see my future stretching out in front of me, 33 meals a day for all foreseeable years. I may even start to panic. Because this family is precious to us. We are in way over our heads. And if the miracles ever start to run out, we are going to be in a bind.
And then, I remind myself what God has done for us. He cares for this family more than we do, and he proves it to us. He has been so good, so faithful, and has shown us that if we seek Him first, and live out the vision that he has put before us as whole-heartedly as we know how, He will provide all that we need.
In this post, I would like to share some of the reasons I will never doubt, no matter how many children we have, that God will provide for our needs. These are true stories, in no particular order. Each one could be an essay on its own, because each story was life-changing and timely and met our needs in an extravagant way. But I am listing them briefly in order to give an overarching picture of God’s faithfulness and provision, in hopes that it will both answer the question and be an encouragement to you.
So here goes.
A couple of years ago we had no idea how we were going to pay our mortgage. A friend texted randomly that she wanted to bring us some raw milk from the local market. She said she was going to drop it on the porch. When I went out to get it, there was a gallon of milk and a thousand dollars in cash on my porch.
The office where I am sitting used to be my front porch. A friend paid all expenses for this room to be built so that we could teach music lessons from a space with an outside entrance instead of having to teach in our living room, which completely shut out access to the rest of the house for our family. It is a beautiful, inspiring space that totally changed the rhythm of our life.
I was pregnant with our fourth child, a child that we didn’t have room for in our vehicle, a vehicle that had just died on the side of the road that we didn’t have money to fix. A neighbor picked us up off the highway and brought us home. I cried silently in the back of the car because I had no idea how we were going to provide transportation for this growing family. A few weeks later, we were given a mini-van.
Once someone paid all of our bills for an entire summer while we were finishing recording our cd from home and paid all production costs.
When I was pregnant with my 8th child and desperate for a plan for how we were going to fit another child in our little house on a non-existent house budget, someone I barely knew started having dreams (as in sleeping dreams) about my basement. She came and asked if she could see it. It was like a dungeon, a bare concrete floor with insulation in the ceilings and walls. Cold, uninhabitable, as it had been in her dreams. She told me that she ran a non-profit and they wanted to “do something” in my basement. Fast-forward three months, and she and sixty volunteers from my community had come into my home while we stayed at a local camp for 3 weeks, and turned our 900 square foot dungeon into a picture in a magazine, fully furnished, with a bedroom for my girls, a bathroom, living/play space, storage closets, lots of natural light, and all of our artwork hanging on the walls. More than we ever could have ever dreamed for ourselves. All at no cost to us, for no other gain that the satisfaction of doing something good for my family, and following a nudge from the Holy Spirit.
Once, early in our marriage, Randy and I were on our way to play a concert in Atlanta, and we weren’t sure we had enough gas to get there. We were pumping at the station before we left town and used up every cent we had. While Randy was getting gas, a guy in the next lane said, “Randy! Hey, I owe you $100 for guitar lessons.” And he wrote him a check right there at the pump.
I have lost count of the times (though I do try to keep a written record) of all the instances where we didn’t know how we were going to pay a bill and out of nowhere, a check came unexpectedly in the mail, or I heard a paypal ding from someone who just had us on their minds. (An actual journal entry I just read out of my miracles journal: July 16, We had 3¢ in the bank. Dea sent $100 via Venmo out of the blue.)
We have had people bring meals unexpectedly because they were thinking about us, a friend who weekly brings dozens of eggs, a friend who had to give up caffeine and and brought a dozen bags of our favorite coffee from her pantry, along with huge bottles of gourmet vanilla and heavy whipping cream.
We have bartered for plumbing and electric and concrete work, for meals at our favorite restaurants, for handmade soap, for gourmet home-cooked meals. We have bartered with a brilliant mechanic for 8 years, and he has made the potentially nightmarish problems of transportation for a large family a breeze. We have bartered for handmade pottery and pottery classes for our kids.
We have been given vacations that we never could have afforded. Once, we were given thousands of dollars worth of tea, left over from a local tea room that shut down. We have been given art supplies, musical instruments, clothes, furniture, train sets. We have been given whole family libraries of homeschool books and curriculum. A friend paid $200 every month for my daughter to have violin lessons for years. Once, a woman met us at Lowe’s, left us with her credit card, and told us to buy whatever washing machine and dryer we wanted. One time, when the clerk was ringing up my groceries in the checkout line, someone I barely knew walked up, stuck her credit card in the machine, and walked off, not caring how much she just spent on my groceries. Last year, a woman paid our mortgage for a year and paid off over $30,000 on our outstanding house debt. Our oldest daughter was given a car this year.
We lack nothing. Even though we are in over our heads. Even though the needs can sometimes pound like waves. We work hard and try as best as we can to be faithful to the calling God has put in our lives. And he always meets us with more than we can think or imagine. In most of these stories, the depth of our needs and desires were unknown to those who reached out to us. They were moving on a nudge, a thought. We were “brought to mind.” There is no other explanation for this much kindness from so many directions than the faithfulness of God.
Last week, I was having a heart-to-heart with my mother-in-law, who has known her share of tight times, and she said, “Mackenzie, if God doesn’t come through for us, it will be the first time.” And I knew she was right. If I did not trust God to take care of me and my family, I would be forgetting all of these stories. His faithfulness, his manna from heaven, his daily bread. Miracles on every side. As time goes by, as our family grows and our needs become exponentially greater, the faithfulness of God rises up to meet each one. He meets us in the morning with mercies that are new every day. This is the abundance from which every need is satisfied—his riches, his love, his goodness, his absolute faithfulness.
This is how we feed them.
Dear friends,
Thank you all for being here, for bearing witness to my life, to reading my stories and following along this journey of faith with us. I am so grateful for you.
May God reach into your deepest needs and give you more than you can even begin to think or imagine.
Love,
Mackenzie
From the family:
A clip from our library show last week:
I love hearing these boys play music together. (Kells, on the bass, is 14. Remy, on keys is 12.)This is their own arrangement of a Super Mario 3D World song. I dare you to listen and not feel happier.
Rosie is in the studio! (and upcoming concert date):
Stay tuned for info about her cd, which she will be finishing up in the next few weeks. We are really excited about it, and can’t wait to share details. Also, mark your calendars for August 9, when Rosie will be playing her debut full concert at Fender’s Alley in Cornelia, Ga.
Reading:
This week, I started this book by
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing your life with us.
I needed to read this today, thank you!