Top Questions Asked of a Mother of 9

How do you do it? Are they all yours? You have your hands full! I cannot even handle my two! Are you going to have more? Did you give birth to all of them? I am glad it is you and not me! Do you get any time for yourselves? I don't believe how thin you look for having 9 kids. These are the questions asked of me.

Questions to my husband are not that sympathetic. Don't you know what causes that? Are you going to get fixed? Are you planning to have any more? I hope you aren't planning to have anymore? Haven't you heard of birth control? Don't you have a television? You look so young; did you start when you were 12? How can you afford having so many? Do you drive them around in a bus?

And, those people reserved enough not to ask the above questions will continue with their jaw-dropping stare at our family.

If I am going to statistically measure the number of times people would ask us these questions, I would have a batting average of 99%. We have a standard polite response. Just as we have answers in our head that we wish to say. We always have a dilemma to push the conversation further but we ask ourselves, do they really wish to know and do we have time for this?

Are they all yours? Our polite response is "Yes and their ages are from 1 to 18 years old." Our not-so-polite response is "We really don't feel any difference. They are all our children." The response that goes to our head is "Stop it, obviously some have Asian features and others have blue eyes."

Don't you know what causes that? Our polite response is "Ha, ha, that is funny. I haven't heard that before." What we want to say is "Of course, the Lord only gives what we can handle. He knows!" Our rude response is "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know what I mean? Say no more."

You have your hands full! I can't believe how you do it. I cannot even handle my two! I always say, "If you don't want yours, I'll take them." Or I tell them, "They are the sweetest children." and I get brownie points from my kids listening close by.

Don't you have a television? "Funny you should say that, we cut off our cable three years ago". What we want to say is "Yup, no TV. We'd rather spend time raising our kids than letting the TV babysit them."

Are you planning to have more? Our very polite response is "You're asking me?" I shake my head. I hesitate to give a witty remark and settle for the safe one, "It's all up to God." What we want to say is "We decided to keep them. They seem like good kids. We don't think they'll do well in foster care."

And the top most-asked question is "How do you do it? Do you mean to say, "How can we afford so many?" God has provided us not everything we want but all that we ever need. It will include though eating an occasional "humble pie".