When people hear that I have 11 children, the responses vary. Sometimes people want to know how I do this, that, or the other thing. Sometimes they want to know what I drive or what my husband does. Sometimes, however, it’s much simpler than that. It’s just….”Why?” or, more accurately, “Why, for the love of all the fluffy puppies on God’s green earth, would you have so many children?” with the implied after-thoughts of “…when you don’t have to?” or “…unless you live on a 500 acre ranch and need lots of free farmhands?” or “…when you look so normal from where I’m standing?”
I don’t think my answer to the *Why* question is all that complicated, but in the interest of keeping interest, I’ll try to spice it up a little. First, some history. I got married at 18. I always wanted to be married and have children. I was one of those girls who had the names of her kids picked out in high school (don’t ask what they were…suffice to say that thankfully I outgrew them before I actually stapled one onto a real child) and sized every male creature up according to what sort of husband material he might become. I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m just keeping it real.
By the overriding grace of God and a hefty helping of His unrecognized (at the time) providence, I managed to wind up with a man who was not a troglodyte. It is only with the passing of many years that I have begun to realize how rare this is. Not that he never has a troglodyte moment, just that they are the exception, not the rule (I hope the same can be said of me). As we navigated the first couple of years of marriage, we had one daughter, and then another. At this point we thought “Wow, that was easy. Maybe we should do something to keep from having more than we want to have.” Which led to the question “Hey, how many do we want to have, anyway?” My husband was still in school, and money was an issue. We were already feeling the worldly pressure of “two is enough” and so we decided that yes, we would draw the line at two.
However, something happened. A book came our way. I won’t tell you what it was. Okay, I will, but only because you asked so nicely. It was called “The Way Home” and it was written by a woman named Mary Pride. Mary Pride had, what was to us, a revolutionary attitude towards family planning. She believed that God, who spun the worlds into existence, could be trusted to give her as many children as he wanted her to have. Stunning. We sat in disbelief. I felt deep conviction spreading over my heart in a great unstoppable wave. Then my husband said “put that book down and don’t read anymore of it to me.”
And so I did. But I prayed. And I prayed hard. I prayed that if this was the path we were to take, that He would give my husband the same conviction. The next night my husband said, with a deep sigh, “what else does she say?” And so I read all her reasons. We pored over the Bible, looking up scriptures and debating the difficulties inherent in the prospect. Then we got on our knees and prayed together. We placed our fertility in His hands, and we felt an abiding peace in doing so. While we were praying a picture popped into my head of a family portrait. In the portrait were my husband and I, our two daughters, and then, surrounding us, were something like carnival cut-outs. The kind that have bodies and then cut-out ovals where the faces should be. And there were lots of them, all around us. Maybe that sounds kind of creepy written out (okay, so yeah, it does), but it wasn’t at the time. At the time I started to laugh and I turned to my husband and said “honey…we are going to have a LOT of children.”
Looking back, I wonder why I didn’t stop to count just how many open ovals there were before I opened my eyes. At any rate, we’re expecting #12 in April of 2008, and we have never once regretted the decision. We have seen God’s provision in ways we never could have otherwise, and He has grown fruit in both of us that goes far beyond our corporeal fruitfulness. It has not been easy, and even now it is cripplingly humbling more often than not, but it only makes me hold to His hand more firmly every day. And that’s always a good thing.
