Nine Kids and Misunderstood
This is one way to live, and it is good
I think one of the hardest things about living counter-culturally is being constantly misunderstood. I feel this in a lot of areas of my life—homeschooling, the decision not to give our kids smart phones, choosing to live on a modest income so that my husband and I can both be home to raise our children and to do the work we feel called to do, etc. But I feel most misunderstood when I am having conversations about being the mother of nine children.
The script goes along with the eyes widening, sometimes jaws-dropping, a look of mixed shock and confusion on faces. How do you do it? I wouldn’t want to see your grocery bill. Are you going to have more?
The typical response is negative, a sort of chiding reprimand, a slightly-veiled sigh of relief that they have escaped the life I was foolish enough to choose and am paying for with the cost of groceries. I know it isn’t intentional and that most people are unaware of the way it comes across, but the small-talky way people approach large families is centered around how hard, how exhausting, how much a life like this must cost me. There are also a few insensitive jokes about if I know how this happens (ummmm…do you really want me to fire out answers to this one???) and if I am ever going to stop having kids. Sometimes people insinuate I am throwing away my gifts, my career, and/or my life. When they imply that I should have stopped a long time ago, I want to line up all my children and ask which ones they prefer not exist. There is, however, one consistent positive response I get, and that is that now I can start my own baseball team.
I can’t deny that I dislike being misunderstood. Having these nine children has cost me. It’s true. It has been the hardest choice of my life to have each one of them because it is harder work than I could have ever imagined. Pregnancy, birth, opening myself up over and over to the unknown. Getting into realms of faith I never knew existed because I literally am in so deep over my head that I am daily dependent on the mercy of God. But each time I made a decision because I believed, and still believe, it has been God’s will for me. And I can say with 100% honesty that it has been the most meaningful, profoundly rewarding decision of my life to say yes again and again and to let these children come into the world and be a part of our family. Look at their faces and try to tell me they shouldn’t be here.
I think we tend to think of easy-now and lose sight of the long-term. I’m the youngest of nine children. When my parents died—my mother four years ago and my father two months ago—I was so grateful to have eight older siblings to walk alongside me in grief. This is a side of big families I had never thought to consider. I am immensely grateful for the wide range of lifelong friends my parents gave me when they blessed me with a large family. All my life, I have had siblings who invested in me, loved me, and wanted the best for me. I’m sure it was hard for my mother and father, and many times they felt, as I do, that they were not sure how God would provide all the resources—physical, mental, emotional, financial—to get them through some of the difficult and exhausting seasons of raising children. But looking back at the end of their lives, we were the greatest joys they recounted, and they never once regretted having any one of us. They knew it was the work God put them here to do. And they saw our lives as irreplaceable gifts.
When I see my children love one another, I see that they are giving each other gifts that I could never provide for them. No amount of money, time, or energy on my part could give them the relationships they are building with one another. They are learning so much that will be useful in their lives just by living together. When I see the work of their hands—the music, the art, the words, the rushing river of creativity that flows day in and day out, I feel that I have made a heroic contribution to the beauty of this world, and that the possibilities for what their lives can mean is endless.
It looks like I am trying to make a statement with my life, I suppose, when we all climb out of our 15-passenger van and walk into the grocery store, a stair-step promenade of red-heads and brunettes, and one golden-haired boy. There isn’t a way to quietly and inconspicuously have nine children. Everywhere we go, we draw stares. I can actually see people doing math in their heads, counting kids and years, dividing it up by my life and determining the probability that all of these children came from my body. But the only statement I am trying to make is this is a kind of life that one person can have, and it is beautiful, and God is good, and He is here with us in it. Children are a blessing, not a curse. Yes, it is hard work. But God equips us for the work He calls us to do. And he gives joy as a reward.
At the deepest level, I don’t want an easy life. I want the life God has called me to live, whatever it looks like. For me, it has been seventeen years of holding on with a death grip to my own plans and ideals, my own desires and ambitions, and slowly allowing God to open my hand in surrender. In my personal experience, this surrendering to the will of God looks like a million humble daily acts of service. Waking to a newborn baby’s gentle cry for milk, early risers who want bread and jam, the meals, the messes, the gathering around the table, the thinking and rethinking routines, the conversations late into the night, the sharing of our lives and stories. It is adapting to constant change, holding tightly while holding loosely, moving on and letting go. It is the desperate prayers for vision, seeking God daily for the plan, living an unscripted life and learning to be okay with it. There isn’t a textbook that tells you how to do this, so you keep going back to God, over and over again. And He is truly with us. We see it over and over again. He cares. He provides. He is pleased to give us all we need if we seek first His kingdom.
I know that most people will never know all of this about me. They will see me as a woman who made a series of wild, impractical choices. Someone who is making her life harder than it needs to be. I will be misunderstood.
I have to remind myself that it is not my business what other people think of my life. I am seen by God. He knows my heart. He is the only person who can tell me how to do this. And I have to keep pressing into his voice, living as he directs without caring too much if my life goes unappreciated and uncelebrated by most of the world. I will appreciate the redemptive work that motherhood is, how it has transformed my life. I will celebrate the lives of these nine lovely people, unique in all the world, soul and spirit, flesh and bone with ideals and hopes and dreams of their own. I rejoice that we have made it this far. They are here. In the world. Their presence changes it. They are eternal beings who are affecting the kingdom of heaven, and their lives have significance I cannot yet begin to fathom. So what if I am misunderstood, I tell myself again. I answer to God. I belong to Him. I am loved by Him. He knows me better than I know my own self.
In Him alone, I seek to understand and be understood.
Dear friends,
I would like to say a heartfelt thank you for allowing me to send you these letters and for opening up a space in your life for the words that rise up in me. I feel seen and heard here, and your presence is such a gift to me. If you would like some real encouragement about being seen and heard by God, I encourage you to open up your Bible and read the tender words in Psalm 139 today.
Sending love,
Mackenzie
From the Family Archive:
The womb becomes a world, you are the sole inhabitor
The soul begins to grow, my heart divides and multiplies
It’s a mystery beyond anything I ever studied in school
It breaks every mathematical rule
Two become one
One becomes three
Three becomes a family
Where love grows exponentially
Three becomes more
A family of four
And we have all been waiting for
Beautiful You
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