Number eight

Like clockwork, one month before my due date I began to worry.

I wasn’t concerned about our newest child’s health, or the delivery, or whether or not I was prepared.

I was worried about the chaos I was bringing this sweet little one into. After all, he or she was–by no fault of anyone’s–the youngest in a long line of siblings. This one wasn’t the first. Or the second. Or even the fifth. This was our eighth child. Three older sisters, four older brothers. A whole lot of noise. A whole lot of busy. A whole lot of personalities vying for dominance on a moment to moment basis. What on earth am I doing? I wondered.

Let’s be honest: people feel sorry for the youngest members of a large family. They’re never the first to do anything. They usually wear a lot of hand-me-downs. They’re rarely the focus of the pack. They never get the library story times or the Mommy and Me gym classes.

I grew up hearing from my mother the woeful tale of being the seventh child. Her own mother was, she said, tired. By the time her youngest daughter came around, the dynamic of a family centered around young children was gone. The oldest sister was on the verge of getting married; most of the family conversations centered around sons wanting to enlist in the army and pre-teens staying out of trouble in a small town without much to offer.

I wanted something different for my own expanding family. I wanted each individual child to feel as celebrated and as special as the first. I knew it was a tall order, but my gut told me it wasn’t impossible. After all, while neither my husband nor myself had purposed for this latest model to be in line behind seven older siblings, someone had. And that someone was God.

This is how I comforted myself in those last weeks on pregnancy, when the hormones surged and the strangers going wide-eyed at the size of our family threatened to drive me into a a stance of fear. God planned this. It will be fine.

And it has been.

Simon is 16 months old now, and rather than being an afterthought, he is a vibrant, lively part of our family. He may be in tow for a whole host of ortho appointments, algebra problems, and driving lessons, but he is not forgotten. Not only does his personality not lend itself to slipping beneath the radar (no chance of that!), he is simply too much a part of us to be pushed into a corner or swept aside. Simon is his own person. And we adore him–even en route to AWANA Bible Quizzing.

With the addition of each child, I have learned more of the mathematics of family. One more member means more interruptions. More divided attention. More moments of cacophony when everyone speaks at once and the phone rings and the dog barks and “Momma, he hit meeeee!” But no matter how many times I worry and fret over whether this one, this new person will be the tipping point, the sure ticket to Too Many …

It’s not.

Instead, each one teaches me that the balance of love that I love to achieve is not impossible. That the gift of my mother’s not-so-rosey experience has been a more mindful parenting that reminds me, always, that this moment before me is another chance to connect. That I can’t do it all, but I can do enough. And what I can’t do, well … the family unit, as a whole, can supply it.

Ten people working toward one goal may not walk in lock step, but they always walk together. A skinned knee that a Momma misses might be soothed by a brother before a parent gets the chance to kiss it. A preschooler struggling to master a scooter will most likely learn not from Dad, but from the next-oldest sibling who can give instruction. Two older kids might cheer each other on in a private victory long before Momma and Dad hear about it. Books are read. Dishes are washed. Pictures are colored. Hair is brushed. Songs are sung. Always, always there is someone with a hand, an eye, an ear. We throw in together, the lot of us. And between us, we don’t just “get by.” We love one another through.

Clearly, God didn’t plan this path for everyone. Some children are, by God’s design, being raised quite happily in 3 member families and thriving. They have every ounce of attention that their parents can spare, and they are all the better for it. But for those of us for whom this wasn’t the plan, feeling our throats tighten at the realization that we can’t give undivided attention to any one of our children for more time than it takes to select a name and run a solo errand is counter-productive and dangerous. At best, it devalues the rich community of relationships that our children will recall as their childhood. At worst, it calls into question the wisdom of a sovereign God who didn’t just hand-pick the members of each family, but created them specifically to fill this space in His Kingdom.

Simon is every bit as much a blessing as our other children. And, if we were to be blessed with more, well … those precious babes would be blessings, too. They would add to the color, the cadence, and the crazy. We would welcome them with open arms and wonder, just a few weeks after our first meeting, how on earth we had managed something as simple as planning a birthday party for Daddy or a trip to a museum without the knowledge that this little person was part of the collective we. We would find our tent pegs enlarged, and we would flourish. We always do.

There are moments in straddle parenting– usually those steps just before the big jumps– where you hold your breath before you dive in. And that’s o.k. God’s big enough to prove Himself trustworthy in our weakest moments. And He will. He planned your family. He knows the needs. And He will provide … even for the least of these.