A few folks have asked me some questions which I will heretofore and forthwith answer with all expediency.
Q: What are the ages of your children?
A: 20, 18, 16, 15, 13, 11, 10, 7, 5, 4, 2, and almost-done-baking. That’s today, anyway. These numbers change with a rapidity that frightens me. By the way, there is a woefully out-of-date but hopefully-soon-to-be-revamped family website link over there to the right, underneath my eyeball. If you want more info about myself and my brood, it’s there.
Q: What do you drive?
A: a 15 passenger white Chevy Express known as Moby Dick. White is boring and I would have chosen anything rather than it if I’d had a choice, but I didn’t. At least it has a literary name. I have no idea what sort of gas mileage it gets, but filling up the gas tank is always a walk on the wild side (if you consider passing out at the pump a walk on the wild side).
Q: How do you manage it, financially speaking?
A: This is a potentially long, possibly theological, and quite probably boring-to-many post. It kind of makes me break out in a sweat. At the very least, a light sheen. I’m not certain if the motive behind the questioner was simple curiosity, skepticism, or a desire to have some sort of reassurance as to the security of their 401K as they flung the birth control willy nilly out the window. In any case, I will try to convey something coherent.
We are not independantly wealthy. I’m not about to disclose my husband’s paycheck, so you’ll have to take my word for it. We work with a budget whose categories are severely disproportionate according to any financial plan you could find (our monthly grocery bill is higher than our mortgage, for instance).
Conversely, we are not on government assistance, just in case you were wondering. Not that I think there is anything wrong with government assistance. But I ain’t about to open up that can o’ worms.
The bottom line is, when we decided to give the Lord full reign over our fruitfulness or non-fruitfulness, whichever the case would be (the former, in case you were wondering), we were unemployed, frightfully young (the sum of our ages was less than 45), and already the parents of two beautiful little girls. We were, in the world’s eyes, incapable of supporting, in any form, the children we already had, much less the eleventy-million that were sure to descend from the clouds over the next few years.
We had no answers for the questions. How will you feed them? How will you clothe them? How will you pay for their births? How will you pay for their doctor bills? How will you get them through school? How will you tend to their needs? What about college? What about weddings? What about your brains, which are obviously deep-fat-fried-extra-crispy in bubbly hot fundamentalist oil?
Well.
We still don’t have the answers. We just decided we’d take one day at a time and hold onto what we felt in our hearts the Lord was saying to us, and He’d take care of the rest.
Strangely enough, He has.
I look about me and see eleven children who have clothes on. They have food in their bellies. They have beds to sleep in. They are healthy. They even have some toys (too many, frankly). How did this happen? I didn’t plan for it. I didn’t make a spreadsheet. I didn’t even try to figure out how much it would require. I was too busy just living. But I look over the past twenty years or so and I see nothing but abundant, amazing, and awesome sufficiency.
We don’t have “enough” in savings, according to the world. We don’t have “enough” of a retirement plan, according to the world. We don’t have “enough” insurance, according to the world. The only thing we have “enough” of, according to the world, is children.
We and the world differ in many of our opinions, obviously.
On that note, I would be remiss if I did not mention the issue of giving. Long ago we took the Lord up on His challenge that we couldn’t out-give Him. I’m not in any way a proponent of the “prosperity gospel” but as we pour out, He continues to pour in. It doesn’t make any sense, but once again we are talking about Heaven’s economy, not the earth’s.
Proverbs 11:24 and 25b says There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty; he who waters will also be watered himself.
What can I say but that it has proved true in our lives over and over again? I am absolutely convinced that if we had held on to what He said was His, we would never have made it. It doesn’t make sense. Yet there it is.
In the end, the answer is always the same: it’s Him. His grace. His faithfulness. His word. His ways.
And we’re just basking in the glow of His mercy.
Posted in Family matters, Grace
