Confessions of a Mother of Seven

Hello blog world! Long time, no blogging! We have been busy adjusting to our new normal at my house. John took two weeks off work after Journey was born, and it was amazing! I was very nervous about him going back to work. The big kids are amazing! They are good to take care of themselves and Callie and Paizley are even good to take care of Journey when I need them. But then there is Baby Girl. She is VERY busy! She did amazingly well with the addition of a new baby….until John went back to work. Then the behaviors came out! So we are loving on her a ton and things are getting better! But she is still a very busy and strong-willed toddler. Great traits for later in life as long as we get them headed in the right direction….challenging behaviors for a mom determined to nurse a newborn while taking care of all the other kids and house as well!
The reality of having seven kiddos has definitely settled in. The realities of it financially are definitely setting in. As we look at back to school with five of the seven now in school (clothes, school supplies, back packs, lunch boxes, etc), I can’t say that I haven’t had a few bouts of anxiety about paying for it all (without going into debt!). I am exposing one of my big insecurities, battles, struggles right now. I’m not positive where this is coming from (other than just pure greed, entitlement and selfishness – not my most appealing qualities!) because I really haven’t struggled with this issue in the past. I’ve never been a name brand shopper or over indulged in fads or trends. However, over the past few months, I have had to really fight against bitterness over the things we can’t do because we are a large family. Part of this is probably me coming to grips with the reality that we ARE a large family! We can’t operate like a family of four - and that has implications on many levels. We had looked into a trip to Disney for some time this year, and there is just no way we can afford that right now. We had told our kids that we would try to go this year (but that was last year before we knew we were adding three family members in a year!). You know when you want something but can’t have it, you notice EVERYONE who has it? Well, that is how it has been with Disney this year! It seems like EVERYONE we know has gone to Disney this summer. Obviously, as we tell our teen and pre-teen when they make statements like that, EVERYONE did not go! But the enemy was sure to use every FB post made from Disney to taunt me with the fact that we couldn’t go…but he didn’t stop there! He made sure to remind me that the reason we couldn’t go to Disney was because we have seven kids. If we just had two, there would be no problem going to Disney! And that is just somewhere you can’t go!
The kicker was when I was sitting in the doctor office for Journey’s two week checkup. A mother came in with her teen daughter. They sat down. I glanced over at them and saw they were both viewing their iPhone 4’s (did I mention I don’t even have an iPhone 4, much less my teen or pre-teen daughter???!), both were texting with their sculptured nails and the daughter was wearing her Sperry’s at the end of her obviously tanned legs. I had a wave of guilt hit me. Sitting before me was the embodiment of what my girls want. This girl had all the worldly possessions and things money could buy that my girls want. Let me stop here and say that I am not saying my girls would have these things even if we could financially afford it. But watching my children struggle because of decisions we have made is still one of the hardest things for me personally. Both of the oldest girls are quick to point out what we could have if we didn’t have as many children. I immediately repented of my feelings and asked God to help me deal with the bitterness over the things we can’t have that we used to could afford even if we chose not to have them. I was reminded that God promises to provide for our needs and not our wants and most definitely not our worldly desires. I was also reminded of the blessings of having these children who call me mom! We are in a hard season right now, but the lifelong and more importantly, the eternal implications of having the seven children we have is where my focus needs to be – not on what worldly possessions or fads we have to deny ourselves of right now. And when my focus is there, my daughters’ and rest of my family will hopefully follow with their focus as well!