“‘Bless your heart.’
‘I can barely handle my two. I don’t know how you handle 9.’
‘Better you than me.’
‘你知道有一些方法可以防止这种情况。’
“为什么要将更多的生命带入这个糟糕的世界？”
‘I guess that’s the way you want to live your life…’
上面列出的是陌生人和家庭成员的共同反应，当我们谈论家庭中的儿童人数。除非您住过它，否则我想很难理解一对31岁的夫妇不仅可以有9个亲生孩子，而且可以不被机构录取。
This was never the story I imagined for myself after I encountered my first boyfriend at 14. That experience drove me into a self-hate spin of depression, where I made a few more questionable choices in boyfriends before being accidentally introduced to the man who would change my heart regarding love. And who would, ultimately, become my husband and the father of our wonderful, spunky, passionate, and very loud children.
差不多12年前，我从我打字时，我是一个非常坚定的年轻女子，最近毕业了高中。我有计划。我被一所私立大学入学，我的计划是成为室内装饰者，与我的男友理查德（Richard）建立长途关系。我有成绩和学术大脑，我知道我要去的地方。
我很想带您回到那个秋天，靴子下面的叶子嘎吱作响，清脆的空气充满了凉爽温度的承诺，足球头盔的声音使我们所有人都想起了我们所有人我们最喜欢的密歇根州季节。那个季节只有一个小小的打ic。
Unlike ever before in my life, the smell of stadium popcorn forced me to snag a bag during each game while I watched Richard play every Friday. It was a very confusing craving I couldn’t trace until one morning, scared beyond my wits, I stared blankly at a positive pregnancy test. All of the thoughts of failure raced through my mind. I had no clue how I was going to successfully move away from the father of my baby, pursue my career dream, cheer for the college, and continue on the path everyone expected of me.
One thing remained true for Richard and I; we were keeping and raising our child, no matter what the sacrifice. Before conceiving this child, we had both come to know Christ and knew letting go of this baby wasn’t on our list of to-do’s. We would raise him together, no matter what it took. That meant I would redirect my plans and no longer head off to a college so far away. Instead, we started our life together in the basement of his parent’s home.
第一年是财务斗争，人际关系障碍，争论比赛和许多痛苦。我们毕业后一直在参加我发现的一座很棒的教堂，但是在混乱的时刻，其中一位工作人员向我们讲了一些残酷的话。这使我们质疑我们在那个身体中的存在并离开。后来，我们会发现他们的感受并没有反映出牧师的主要工作人员，并代表他们道歉。但是，在我们新的育儿旅程的早期，我们在没有教会的帮助的情况下独自一人做。
说实话,我们是天生的时候瞧ving on our son and taking care of him, but we were young and selfish, which led to most of our struggles. From a personal stand point, I was terrified of love. Due to my experience being sexually abused and then entering into sexual relationships very young, I had a very confused picture of love. By the time I met Richard, I had vowed to never date another guy seriously again. My plan had been to become a career-woman, where I would eat Chinese take-out every single night. Should I have wanted a child, I assumed I would waltz into the nearest doctor’s office and demand he grab a turkey baster and get the job done, so I could bring forth a child on my own without the burden of a male partner. Obviously, that plan never prevailed, and I thank God for it.
As you might suspect, this new journey as a mother opened my eyes to a world I had forgotten existed, a life I had dreamt of as a small child. It began to awaken the desire in me to become the mom and teacher I imagined from the days of my youth, the days before bad men tainted my world view.
At one point, I left Richard due to our excessive fighting, but we worked through those struggles and a new piece of our story was forming. I began to feel a strange sensation in my womb building, a sensation I had felt only once before. Only this time, we already had a child who was 6 months old. My now fiancé was working hard to provide, while also going to school. I was working a full-time job at an apartment leasing company, and I was shocked to tears over that positive pregnancy test with our second child.
Excitement was nowhere on my list of emotions. I was broken. Once again, we had conceived a child outside of wed-lock and I was terrified of how we would provide for two children who would be 14 months apart. It also didn’t help that our second pregnancy came with some complications; ones that threatened my life and terrified both Richard and I. Armed with the scary diagnosis of complete placenta previa, I made the choice to head back to church. It was there I found hope and peace when everything was uncertain. Soon Richard would return with me, and we would be compelled by God to set a date and get married, instead of keeping the money in the savings account in case I had to go on months of bedrest.
接下来是奇迹。我们设定婚礼约会两周后，我去了另一个超声波。令我惊讶的是，我的胎盘不仅动了一点，而且一直向后移动到我的子宫顶部。前洞完全治愈，我们没有进一步的并发症。
It was this event in our lives that shifted our view of God from one where we were testing out this ‘faith in Jesus’ thing to, ‘Yes. We are all in, 100%. We are ready to give our lives to follow Him,’ knowing He was faithful as we walked in obedience.
这是野生的经验之后,我觉得上帝开始to put something so odd and crazy on my heart. When I shared it with Richard, my now husband, he snorted at me and told me it was rubbish. But I knew with every fiber of my being, we needed to say yes to this. We needed to say yes to trusting our fertility to God’s timing and plan. Instead of arguing with him, I left Richard alone to pray over the idea. I knew, in order to take this leap, we would have to make the leap onto the same page together. He hadn’t a clue why I would want to do that. We had a boy and a girl at that point, so ‘we had the perfect family and didn’t need any more children.’
I spent a month praying God would remove the desire from my heart or change my husband’s opinion to align with mine. Thankfully, Richard spent that time praying and digging into scripture. His sole purpose was to find verses to deliver a ‘nope, that’s not gonna happen,’ with some Bible to back it up. The truth was he would come to me and tell me he found nothing in scripture to retort my wild idea, and we jumped in with every part of us and have never looked back.
So, what does that look like over the course of the last 12 years? I don’t have the space here to write out every story of God’s insane and infinite and magnificent power we’ve witnessed through our family.
Our next child would result in miscarriage, which caused me to feel broken and confused. I didn’t understand why God would allow that to happen to us when we were obeying His call. But then, we would conceive our twins, and I would understand a different perspective of God’s that I never knew. Without that heartache, I wouldn’t have my girls, or empathy for other women who’ve lost.
我们的双胞胎将遭受另一个损失。
它打破了我。但是我找到了安慰knowing I wasn’t in control of the plan, and I let go of my expectations and trusted God to reign freely in whatever plan He had.
我们将在永恒的这一边实现的第五个孩子，有足够长的旅程，我希望有一天写一本书。我的水在22周破裂。我在家里呆了2周，有4个孩子，4岁以下。然后，我们花了8个星期的时间与我一起在医院的病床上，乞求上帝将我的男孩带入坚强而健康的世界。结束怀孕的剖宫产使我以我从未想象的方式打破了我，并在我的脑海中留下了生动的伤痕，直到我的第9个孩子才能治愈。那个季节使我真正放开一切，相信上帝的一切都保持平衡，即使事实并非如此。今天，那个小男孩已经7岁了，已经有一个令人难以置信的故事，可以与世界分享关于上帝的善良和忠诚，当一切似乎都黯淡。在玛拉基之后，我们的出生将在没有我们自己的任何帮助的情况下散步。
In time, we would expand our home again. That pregnancy was incredibly uneventful, but my labor was a VBAC, which was hard fought for after 48 hours of labor from the moment my membranes ruptured. By the time it came for me to bring her forth, twirling into this life, I had nothing left but my faith God had promised He would see us through. As Klaira took her first breath, she came into this world with a fist pump, to which I am certain was a celebration of the victory we won together.
After her, we would add singletons, Julia and Stephen, to our family — as lucky number 7 and spitfire number 8. Owen would swing in to become our 9th child, whose birth was a cesarean that helped heal some of the trauma I didn’t know I had from our 5th.
无论孩子们躺在我们的地平线上，我的心都向他们开放。我们的家向他们开放。我们准备对上帝带入我们家庭的任何生活说“是”，因为爱和人们真正重要。我们的家人还不完整。我知道，不是因为我是一个疯狂的女士，有一个孩子们的综合体，或一个有教会要求她有很多孩子的宗教的人。我不是一个年轻的妈妈，他认为我会每18个月育有孩子，直到更年期。
I’m just a follower of Jesus, passionate about proclaiming what He has done in my life through the gift of motherhood. And my goal is always to surrender my life to whatever He has for me, trusting He will close my womb when it’s His time, just as He has always led us in each step of our journey.”
This story was submitted tobeplay网络一直不畅by Diema Roth. Submit your own storyhere并确保subscribeto our free email newsletter for our best stories.
阅读更多这样的故事：
“谁会为他们付款？”这些年来带来了7个孩子。‘你疯了吗？’也许。’：妈妈选择拥有大家庭，“我们的钱更少，但更多的爱”
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