I am told all the time that I must have my hands full. It’s kind of cliche at this point, but I think sometimes people just don’t know what to say when faced with my strange life decisions.

Honestly, my hands never feel that full. I mean, I guess sometimes they do when I’m holding a squirming baby and also need to make dinner or answer the phone or clean up a mess. But that’s not the fault of 98% of my life. That’s literally just because I’m holding a squirmy baby.

My hands aren’t that full. But my brain….holy cow. My brain is exploding with fullness. At any given moment, I have a to-do list, or a checklist, running through my mind that is no shorter than 30-50 things. All the time. It’s exhausting.

First of all, I’m a control freak. I like to have my say in every little bit of what goes on in my house. In a house of 8-13 people, that’s a lot of things. That’s a lot of places for my mind to be at any given moment. I should let go of some of my control tendencies, but that isn’t likely to happen any time soon. I’d much rather drown myself in stress and know what’s happening than float blissfully away in ignorance, the stress of not-knowing eating me away inside.

Second of all, when you have as many kids as we do, the check lists of what needs to be done on a normal day is just long. No matter what you do. Pile the SYSTEM on top of a normal life with seven kids and you’re bound to get lost in the forests of what needs to be done.

Right now, we’re pretty lucky. We have three bio kids and four kids in care. And honestly, they’re four pretty easy kids. But even easy kids have multiple regular appointments. They see counselors. They have parent-teacher conferences. They are involved in various sports. They have visits with their bio families. They CPS workers and CASA workers and attorneys and sponsors who like to drop in to visit.

Aside from kid-specific visits, as a residential care facility, we have regular visits in our home from Licensing, Contracting, Health Department, Fire Marshal…not to mention just the maintenance workers and such who might walk through our home when something needs fixing or replacing. We living in a pretty old facility and things need a lot of tending to.

When anyone could walk through your home at any time…keeping it looking clean and orderly is a high priority. And believe it or not, but having seven or more kiddos running around being kids means keeping things clean and tidy is a HUGE CHALLENGE. You can hang up signs that say, “Excuse the mess, my kids are making memories” all day long, but when people are walking through analyzing your housekeeping skills, those signs won’t do anything for you.

Last year, I decided to up and have a baby just because there wasn’t enough exciting challenges in my life. So little baby Jo helps keep things nice a chaotic.

If you had asked me three years ago, before I started down this path, if all of this sounded feasible, I would have laughed you out of the house. I think over all of the things I just wrote down and wonder who in their right mind would sign up for this life. People tell me all the time that they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t put up with system. They couldn’t say goodbye to the kids they love. They couldn’t handle the stress….

I can’t either. I can’t handle it. Not alone. I rely so heavily on God (and on my husband, and on my supervisor) that sometimes I wonder how much of my abilities are actually me at all. I spend a lot of days feeling completely incompetent and overwhelmed. But at the end of every day, I send seven kids to bed. Most nights, those seven kids have smiles on their faces. Most nights, those kids give me hugs and tell me they love me. A lot of nights, I sing to them or pray with them and find myself holding back tears because of how much I love them. Some of those kids are going to leave me eventually. And when that day comes, I’m going to have my heart broken again. But I will be sending them on to someone else, knowing that I loved them as best I could while they lived with me.

That’s how I manage.

---

A couple weeks ago I felt especially overwhelmed. Alan and I were on, we were with all the kids and something–I don’t even remember what now–broke the camel’s back. My exhausted, overwhelmed-self sobbed and cried and apologized. I don’t like when I cry in front of all the kids, but it happens sometimes and I’d rather be real with them than try to act like I totally have it all together all the time. So I sat on the couch and cried while they sort of shuffled away awkwardly. Alan took them to the store to give me some space. He left one of the girls behind because she didn’t want to go.

She could have played outside. She could have watched TV. She could have stuck her headphones in and played on her tablet. Instead, she asked if she could hold the baby for me. She and my boys played with the baby. She said she wanted me to have a little time to myself, so I could go make some coffee or something if I wanted (what can I say? My kids know me). I laid on the couch and prayed, sipping at some coffee while my sweet girl played with the baby. When Alan got back with the others, they brought me a real-sugar Dr. Pepper (the only soda I’ll drink), and some fancy chocolate. They also had bought a giant poster-sized greeting card and all signed it. They knew I was stressed and they wanted to make me smile.

They all went to bed like little angels that night–which definitely does NOT always happen. After they were all in bed, Alan said, “I know things are difficult, but your kids love you. You’re an awesome mom.”

Then I was crying, but they were happy tears.

I couldn’t manage alone, for sure. But I also wouldn’t be willing to try managing this life if it weren’t for the lives of the kids we’re touching. Changing. Loving. They make it all worth it.