I am blessed to have so many special people in my life. My sister (Sarah) and her husband (Anders) are two such people. At age 22, they might have been two of the least likely people you could have imagined to be where they are today: homeschool parents of eight kids. Both coming from families of four, Sarah was enrolled in medical school on the way to becoming a doctor. It seemed as likely they would hit the lottery than they would choose the path to become the family they have become. I had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah and Anders and listen to the story of how God led them to choose to have eight kids.
I hope as you read this you might consider where God is calling you and where he is asking you to trust him in your life right now. Where is he inviting you into deeper faith?
Tell me the story of how you two fell in love.
Anders (A): It all started at your (John’s) wedding. We had a lot of time to talk and have fun together. We clicked and deeper conversations were natural. I left that week feeling like Sarah was somebody I really wanted to get to know more. We emailed for six months until I graduated. Then, I moved out to Phoenix to be near you and Angel. I was shy and didn’t want to put any pressure on Sarah, but I wanted to be closer to her. We got to spend a lot of time together that summer and I got to know her really well.
Right before she went back to Stanford in the fall, we finally had our first date.
Sarah (S): Well, I thought it was a date, until Anders’s friend showed up and I then wasn’t sure if it was a date or not [laughing].
A: After Sarah graduated from college, I decided to move to wherever Sarah went for med school. So, when she chose Wash U for med school, I moved to St. Louis. After we had been there for six months, I proposed. We got married another six months later. Those were sweet years.
What expectations did you have for your marriage and family going into marriage?
S: Two or four kids. We both came from homes with two kids. I thought four would be fun, but I really expected us to do two. Being a doctor is demanding. I thought we would just have two.
A: I was hoping for four.
How did those expectations begin to change?
S: Even in our pre-marital counseling, one of the things I remember was our pastor telling us that the first commandment is to “be fruitful and multiply” and that command was never counter-manded [withdrawn]. I had never thought of that as a command that applied to us.
The pastor wasn’t necessarily telling us to have a big family, but it planted a seed. Med school opened my eyes to the science behind birth control. The primary way birth control pills work is great and fine. The problem that began to nag me is that every hormonal birth control has a secondary mechanism that prevents implantation. It felt too close to abortion to me. We went ahead and did it, and I just ignored my conscience. I let practicality win out and I figured, what else are we going to do?
Even when I left medical school, we still hadn’t changed our decision for our family size. We just didn’t think much about it.
My excuse in medical school was that I couldn’t get pregnant right then with my career, but once I left medical school I realized that now I could. But we still weren’t planning on having a big family.
Having Jake (our second-born) was a faith-changing event for us.
How did Jake’s birth change you?
S: Jake’s infancy was really, really hard and really scary. At about two weeks he started a slow progression of throwing up more and more. I would nurse him and he would spit up more than I would expect. At Jake’s 2 week appointment our doctor had said that he looked good and that he was a happy spitter. I came to hate those words. I only had one other baby to compare Jake to, and when I had concerns, Anders would repeat the doctor’s words back to me. I would nurse him, go to burp him and my whole shirt would be drenched with spit up. He would projectile vomit multiple feet. But it was a slow build-up to that point, so it was easy to miss that it was getting worse and worse because you just get used to it.
I kept feeling like something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure. When I would finally call the doc, I only asked about the most recent concerning symptom and they would tell me that those things can happen normally. Anders would try to help and repeat the doctor’s words to me, but I just knew in my gut that this wasn’t normal. I would cry most nights at my helplessness. It just felt like, “this can’t be right.” But maybe it was just bad reflux. I tried putting him in the swing. I tried smaller, more frequent feedings. Nothing I did helped and it just kept getting worse. Then, we had a family vacation. I didn’t think we could get through an airplane ride without him covering the seat in spitup. On vacation everyone asked, “is he okay?” I had a total unease and couldn’t enjoy a minute of it. I just wanted to get home and get him checked out. This whole time, my prayer became, “He’s yours, God. You have to take care of him because there’s nothing that I can do.” It was good in teaching me that our kids are not ours. As much as you love them, there is just so much that is not in your power. We can’t control everything that happens to them. I had to give him back to God again and again and again.
We finally went to his 2 month appointment and the doctor realized something was wrong with just a glimpse of Jake in the waiting room. He was taken to the hospital, where it took a week to get his electrolyte levels stabilized before he could have surgery. The surgery was supposed to fix him immediately, but it was two months before he could sleep for any length of time at night.
We never had a conversation after that about whether or not to have another child. But we both knew. We are not ending with that horrific experience. Having the third was a no-brainer.
A: That was my husband and parenting fail. God showed me later. At the time I wasn’t as in tune with Sarah. I should’ve gone with her intuition even though the doctors were saying things were fine. But I should have listened to Sarah more.
S: We weren’t fighting. In your defense, you were echoing back the doctor’s words. But you weren’t compassionate at all.
Once we had three, the fourth was easy, because we didn’t want a middle child.
How did it go from four to eight?
S: I was pregnant with Becca (our fourth), and reading a book. We weren’t doing much birth control, but a little bit. I still didn’t feel comfortable with the secondary effect of the birth control that prevented implantation. I was also doing my first year of homeschooling. We had trusted the Lord to provide when I stopped working in order to homeschool, and he had abundantly provided all that we needed.
I began to ask, “Why are we taking birth control?” And I knew it was because I didn’t fully trust God. God had just showed us his faithfulness in this drastic way with my staying home to school the kids. He showed us he would provide. And yet, I still wanted to call the shots.
It was as though God was asking, “So why don’t you trust me? You followed me giving up your career. You followed me in choosing to homeschool. Why don’t you trust me with this?”
So then after Becca was born, we chose not to go back on birth control. We were ultimately choosing to trust God. We chose to let go of our control over how big our family would be. We trusted that he would provide the energy. He would provide the strength.
A: Sarah was convicted early on. But I recognized the control thing in my heart. My tendency is to want to have control of things. If we are going to give God control of one part, we need to give him control of all parts. It was our last pocket of holding out.
S: It was the last pocket, but it felt so daunting to release. That’s why we held onto it for so long.
How did you know that eight was how many God wanted you to have?
S: All of my pregnancies were fine. We always said if there were any medical complications, then we would stop. But I never had any issues, and I actually always had very easy pregnancies. Learning of each new pregnancy, especially the seventh and eighth babies, it was always emotionally challenging for the first few weeks. Then I would get excited, but it was hard to just be coming out of sleep deprivation and the first nine months of infancy then learning that I was pregnant and about to do it all over again. I would finally be getting into a rhythm of good sleep, and then I had to struggle with the reality that my first trimester was starting, which was always that most tiring season of pregnancy for me. It was a challenge for me emotionally every time to trust the Lord to provide the strength.
Anders began to have conversations with me that he felt like it was time for us to stop.
A: Sarah was homeschooling. I would come home after work and Sarah was exhausted. Things were hard for her and I was at work for most of the day and there was so much I couldn’t help with.
At least in my conscience, I felt at peace with having eight kids. I wanted freedom to be able to coach, freedom for Sarah to be able to do something outside of the house. Sarah was so swamped and I felt the responsibility to care for her.
I had this inkling that we should stop. So my prayer became, “God, if you want us to continue having kids, then tell us and we will continue.” But at that point I was convicted to stop unless God said otherwise.
S: Anders honored my convictions for a long time. When he felt convicted to stop having kids, I felt like I needed to honor him in that. It’s hard to have the time to pour into each kid. There are sacrifices your kids make that they don’t choose to make. For example, it was hard for me to have Anders coach Little League, even though he and our kids loved having him do it. But him coaching would mean that he wouldn’t be around to help as much.
Now that we don’t have an infant, it’s nice to not feel totally depleted every day. I can leave the house for three hours and its not a big deal.
That being said, I would have more if he would let us have more kids. Each kid is such a blessing.
What is the best thing about having a big family?
S: There are so many fun things. Quarantine was not a problem. It’s always fun in our house. There are lots of games and sports we can play with lots of kids. We can play a full soccer or kickball game with just our family. In terms of developing character in our kids, especially our older kids, it has forced them to develop character traits I don’t think they would have learned otherwise, or at least not as quickly. Selfishness has been worn off in ways it couldn’t have been otherwise.
It has grown my own character. I was overwhelmed with three. For a long time I would wake up each norming and think “I can’t do this. I don’t have anything in me. God, I need you to carry me through today.” That kind of trust, that kind of relying on God, day-in-day-out, that developed patterns that wouldn’t be there otherwise.
A: I love seeing Ellie cook with the girls. I love seeing Jake play flag football with the younger boys. There are things we can’t do for them, but they do together. It’s fun making memories. People think we are crazy doing road trips, sleeping together in a tent with the ten of us. But we love it.
S: The other fun thing is that you learn things as a parent. You get eight practice tries. You improve as parents.
A: We have parented our younger kids better in some ways. For instance, our older kids missed out on us practicing Sabbath, which we started later.
What is the hardest thing about having a big family?
S & A: The exhaustion.
A: The running. We have teenagers and a three-year-old. It’s a challenge to balance how much you do for each child. The older ones were able to do more than the youngers. We have to say no to a lot more than other families.
It is a challenge to parent different personalities. There are some similarities, but every child is unique. You have to dig differently into each child. They get to see that in each other. They get to deal with conflict. I’m sure there are times Jake and Ellie [our eldest] wish we only had two kids.
S: There are days I’m really worn out. I spend a lot of time doing laundry, cooking. There are a lot of bodies that require a lot of food and a lot of discipline.
What do most people not know about what it’s like to parent 8 kids?
S: I think the thing they don’t know is that, yes, the transition from one to two is exponentially harder. But they don’t realize that transition from three to four and four to five and so on and so forth isn’t nearly as hard. You have added helpers and you get better at things. It’s not as hard as they imagine it.
A: Even simple activites are challenging. Meal times aren’t just twenty minutes, they’re an hour or an hour and a half. Everything in our lives is recalibrated to take longer.
How has parenting impacted your faith?
S: The more we parent, the more we realize it is not us. We have very little control. Especially after our first, who was very easy, there was a measure of pride. We thought that if you just parent the right way, it’s easy. We had heaping doses of pride that went along with that. And then Jake came.
With each successive kid, there is a recognition that it is not your technique. They’re God’s. At the end of the day, I can’t make them want things or not want things. He is the only one that changes hearts. My own sense of power has been diminished. A truer humility has come. There is very little of this that is me. There are lots times where you are humbled: my child is still biting and he is four years old. I’m doing the best I can, but he’s still a sinner and I can’t change that.
I continue to learn to trust him with strength when I have nothing.
A: It’s hard to get up after a night of poor sleep. I have learned to rely on God to give me the patience I need for the day. I have had to learn to give up control. I can’t make our kids know God personally. We teach our kids the Bible, we teach them to know God, but our prayer is that God would change their hearts. I am continually aware that I can’t change their hearts, only God can.
Tell me about each of your kids.
Ellie: Ellie is a mom at heart. She’s caring, kind, and compassionate.
Jake: Jake is fun! He’s our game master. He’ll make a game with a backyard and a utensil. Whatever goofy game he comes up with the kids will join right in.
Abby: Abby is more independent. She is happy to do her own thing: to be her own person. She is creative and plays really well with her younger siblings.
Becca: Becca is all heart. She wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s all in. She’s full of passion.
Mikey: Mikey is all boy. If there is a tree or a wall to climb, he’s going to climb it. If someone is going to break a bone, it’s him. He will follow Anders around doing projects with tools.
Zeke: Zeke is very, very loving. He gives wonderful, big hugs. He loves to laugh and loves being with people.
Stephanie: Steph knows what she wants. She is a very good big sister to Isaiah. She likes to play with and direct Isaiah. She loves to be with him.
Isaiah: Isaiah is the most outgoing. He’ll say hi to everybody. He just likes people. He’ll play with anyone.
What do you want people to consider when they think about having kids?
S: It should be prayed about. We know people who chose family size based on what is convenient. Things are designed for four, so we are going to have a four person family. But have you sought the Lord? Have you asked God?
Women who struggle with fertility have to do that. But the women who are blessed with fertility don’t think about it. We live in a consumer culture. It’s all about what works best for me. Rarely it’s: what does the Lord want?
The second thing is that it is hard and humbling. We are taught as children, what are you going to do to change the world? How are you using your gifts to grow the kingdom of God? As someone who has been blessed with talents, it’s been a continual giving up of ambition. I spent a decade only really going out to go to church. That’s all I could do. I’ve had to give up ambition of the things I thought I could do for the Kingdom of God. At one time I thought that I would be a medical missionary. Then I thought I would serve people in medicine state-side. Now I’m at home and my only sphere of influence is my children. As much as in our culture we glorify motherhood—and I think people really do appreciate motherhood—but we still swim in the ocean of “how are you changing the world?” Choosing to have a big family is being willing to let your sphere of influence shrink to the size of a pebble. That’s hard.
It’s not giving up your talents, but it’s redirecting them so that they are all in the home. That’s still hard for me at times. There are wonderful working moms who are doctors. When we hear “make disciples” we think of going out, but there is legitimate building the kingdom by building your family.
A: Ask God what he wants. Be willing to change along the way. Be willing to be convicted. Be willing to have God change your conscience. Be open to have him change your mind.
S: If when we got married the Lord had told me I would be a homeschooling mother of eight, I would have bolted. But now I love my life and wouldn’t choose any other place to be. He knew what was best when I didn’t. So just be open to the Lord’s slow, steady prodding and choose to trust him when he calls. He is so very faithful.
A: As a man being willing: how much am I willing to be involved? I have to make sacrifices. If a man is not going to be involved as much at home, you can’t put it on your wife to have a lot of kids. It’s unloving.
S: The only way we can have a big family is because Anders helps so much. There are friends I know who do ten times more than I do because their husbands are not nearly as engaged and helpful.
It needs to be a joint decision. I was homebound for a decade. Anders was pretty homebound, too. He gave up a lot for our family.
