how do you do it? part 3

one thing people mean when they ask 'how do you do it?' is really, how do you afford it. there are several answers, some philosophical, some practical.

first, God really does give us everything we need, sometimes in the most unlikely way. some examples:
clothing: i've stopped being surprised when we get a bag of hand-me-down clothes that is exactly the size of the child who needed exactly what was in the bag. we rarely buy clothing.
food: my next door neighbor has been bringing us near-date bread and produce from a food pantry he works at for a while. just recently that stopped. the following week (no kidding) a different neighbor started bringing us food his mother got from a food pantry at her church.
miscellaneous: my (then) 5 yr old son desperately wanted a bicycle, but hadnt grown into the size bike we had waiting for him. we told him to pray, and sure enough, within a few days or weeks, a guy at my husband's work said, 'hey, i've got this bike . . '.


secondly, we live pretty simply. we are not very stylish, we are not very interesting in what we eat, our vehicles and decor are functional, we take and use hand-me-downs with thankfulness in our hearts. we are not very impressive. we are not trying to be impressive. we say sometimes, we didn't have 10 kids by caring what people think about us, so there's no point in worrying about what people think now. besides, i've learned that there are several very different variations on "normal", so it's not a reliable bar to measure myself by.

thirdly, regarding education, what people want to know is, how are you going to pay for all those kids to go to college? we're not. we will help pay for many of them to go to college. but, again, we are probably not hoping for a full ride to an ivy league school. we don't see getting a good education so you can get a good job and make lots of money as being a Biblical worldview. we want to teach our kids to follow God, work hard, do what they love and live within their means. the american dream and the narrow road are not necessarily the same path. if the narrow road takes them to stanford, we'll help as much as we can. but our goal is children who follow Jesus, not children who make lots of money.