Losing Myself

early thoughts from my 11th pregnancy

I guess I’ll start by saying there is no quiet, unassuming way to have a huge family. Whether you want your life to be making a statement or not, it is, everywhere you go. You can see people doing the math as you walk by with your stair-stepped children. They are doing long-division in their heads, dividing up the years by number of children to see if it is humanly possible that all of these small people came out of this one body.

People generally don’t understand why my husband and I would choose to make our lives so much harder than it needs to be. People will say, “My grandmother had ten children,” and then, as a modifier, “But she lived on a farm, and back then they had to have big families to do all the work.” Implying the only reason you should ever choose to have a lot of children is if they can make your life easier.

This isn’t how I see my family. This is not the reason my husband and I have chosen to have nine, soon to be ten children. I would typically tend to keep my family planning a private matter, but there is no way to do that when you pull up anywhere in a 15-passenger van, fling open the doors, and the kids just keep coming out. No, I am not necessarily trying to make a statement every time we go to the grocery store. But I do have things to say about having a big family, and since people are obviously curious, I am going to try again. There isn’t time in a small-talk situation to begin to explain. But if you were at my kitchen table, and we were close friends, and I felt I could say what is really on my heart, I would share something like this:

Having children is the scariest, most humbling, most beautiful and terrifying thing I have ever done in my life. After my first child was born seventeen years ago, I never, in my own strength and of my own free will, would have chosen to have another child. I don’t like losing myself. Pregnancy is like a long, slow hibernation of the parts of me that I most enjoy. My mind becomes a swampland. My body is slow, tired, and unresponsive. I am sick, prostrate on the bed. I no longer think in essays. My journals are neglected. I go to bed early. I try not to resent the energy that the rest of the world seems to have in plenty. I can see the next year of my life stretching out in small surrenders, and I have to admit that, though I know I will be happy at the end of it, I do mourn the ways my life will be slow, uninspired, and unproductive in the ways that delight me and make me feel alive.

Birth is a dragon that lives inside my body. Every time I think it might kill me, but it doesn’t. Each birth is a battle that feels like life and death to me. When it’s over, the dragon climbs back up inside the mountain and goes back to sleep, and I hold a new baby in my arms, relieved beyond belief that I survived and the hard work is done.

Yes, it is hard. I have lost so much of myself in motherhood. I have lived in constant cycles of surrender just to get these children here. And it takes the greater portion of my mind, body, soul, and spirit just to meet their basic needs from day to day. There is very little left of me. And at times like this, early on in pregnancy, this can push me near to helpless despair. My heart can be overwhelmed, because, like anyone else in the world, I do not like losing myself. I do not like discomfort or pain. I do not like losing control. I do not like surrendering to hard things. I like comfort. I like ease. I like being on the other side of the difficult journey and having the story to tell.

The reason I am doing this again is because I know that, at this moment, it is the work I am meant to do with my life. If I’m honest, I do not feel the desire to the hard work. But I feel the calling and the assurance that I am in God’s will completely in surrendering, once again, to allow another person to come into the world and into our family. This is the way it goes. I married a man, we have prayerfully, over many years and conversations, come to share certain convictions, and this is our love story. It has ten children in it. We didn’t set out to exhaust my womb or to have as many children as is humanly possible. I have said so many times, “I can never do this again.” And I meant it. But God, in his mercy, did not require us to adhere to any dogma or make heroic claims about our lives and what we would do. He didn’t ask me to commit my life to motherhood, to promise I would walk through ten births and one miscarriage. What he did was gently, graciously give me the faith and courage, one child at a time to offer up a shaky but sincere, “Yes, thy will be done.” I am not trying to be a martyr for a cause or try to illustrate an ideology about family planning. I am not trying to be an overachiever or to win a medal. I am simply trying to humbly, quietly live out a calling that is radically opposite from the original ambition of my life. Only the nudge from the Holy Spirit could convince me that having another child is a good idea. The truth is this: I feel the pleasure of God in the precious lives of these children. He is pleased to give them to us, to provide for their needs, to show us that in our weakness, He is made strong. In our poverty, His riches overflow. The desire to please God is stronger than my desire for comfort, or to be understood, or to have an easier life.

And we have experienced the joy and great satisfaction of having and raising children. These are not just babies that must be cared for, not just distractions from our real lives, not just the season to get through so that we can get on with our more important work. These are eternal souls, created in the image of God. Their lives have purpose and meaning, and only God knows what that small, shaking “yes” we uttered one breath louder than our fears will grow to mean.

Also, as a side note, we like babies. We like two-year-olds and four-year-olds. We like 6 and 8 and 10 and 12. We like teenagers. We like our kids. We love them. We wouldn’t trade anything for any one of them. They are our best friends. They make our lives happy and rich and full. They are not burdens. They make life better for us. Not necessarily easier, but always better. (And sometimes way easier.) There is no amount of money that could make us feel richer than we feel having them. There is no amount of ease and comfort that we would trade for seeing their beautiful faces around our kitchen table day after day. There is no worldly success or position we would trade for the honor of being parents to this specific family, which includes every single one of these nine, soon to be ten children. I am not hyperbolizing. Once they are here in the world, we could never choose to do without them.

Jesus once told his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.” (Matt. 16:24-26, NLT) I think about this verse a lot. I know he wasn’t referring to motherhood, but in this season, surrendered as I can be but still feeling a little lost, I take great comfort in knowing that I am discovering life that is truer than the one I imagined for myself. I can see this happening, season by season, year after year, as this family continues to change and grow. Truly, we did not understand what we were building when we were saying yes to this kind of life.

But here we are, saying yes to this kind of life, making statements everywhere we go. Little by little losing ourselves but finding true life, and finding God always faithful.

Dear friends,

I have been a little slow to write, and will be slow for a couple more weeks as I am making my way through the last few weeks of my first trimester. We are also about to take a long-anticipated trip to see the ocean, so I will be taking a small break from my weekly posts for a couple of weeks. I will miss being here.

Thank you for celebrating a new little life with me, and for giving me a space to share what is on my heart.

Sending Love,

Mackenzie

From the family:

Our daughter, Rosie won the music competition I’ve been sharing about! Here is a clip from that night of one of her original songs, Is this the Real Thing? (I looooooove this song.)

The grand prize is a full show at the Fender’s Alley (stay tuned for the date!) as well as generous studio time in a fabulous recording studio that just opened down the road. This is a huge answer to prayer. So proud of our girl. You can hear more of Rosie’s songs and thoughts on her substack at

Rosanna Chester

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Also, gotta share this fun clip of Randy and Rosie throwing around some ideas on this song. Total queen vibes on this one. I love watching them collaborate.

Upcoming:

Local Homeschool friends—Our family will be giving a performance at White Creek Christian Academy in Cleveland, GA next Wednesday the 14th at 1:00. They are opening the show up to homeschool families, and we would love to see you there!

Also, we are having a family show at the Clarkesville Library on Thursday, June 5 at 11:00 a.m. This will be a fun show with lots of instruments and different kinds of music. All ages welcome.