You Can Do Hard Things
What Having a Dozen Kids Has Taught Me About Love and Resilience
It’s been years since my youngest brother first dubbed me with the nickname “Cheaper by the Dozen,” but it was only five weeks ago, with the birth of our twelfth child, that I legitimately lived up to my moniker. Somehow - unbelievably, inexplicably, even miraculously - my husband and I now have twelve children: six sons and six daughters. If you had told twenty-year-old Megan that she would someday be the mother of a veritable swarm of children, I believe she would have vacillated between hysterical, incredulous laughter and looks questioning your sanity.
Yet, despite the improbability of it all, after almost two decades of marriage, we now have a dozen children…and it’s wondrous to consider how we arrived at this point. I vividly recall the teenage girl, who forswore motherhood, wincing as she binge-watched episodes of “A Baby Story” on The Learning Channel and wondering how anyone could possibly suffer the agonies and indignities of labor and childbirth. I remember staunchly believing that some things were simply not to be endured…
But then, I fell in love. I fell in love deeply and completely at a time when I least expected to do so. Suddenly, I found myself in a romantic relationship that literally swept me off of my feet, rapidly carrying me through a whirlwind wooing, proposal, and engagement to the altar for the Sacrament of matrimony in just thirteen short months. Rather unsurprisingly, I swiftly became pregnant. Though my family rejoiced at this news, they couldn’t help but be concerned: after years of hearing me lament over small bodily discomforts, my younger siblings incredulously wondered 1) how on earth I was going to be able to handle motherhood; and 2) what kind of a life awaited the child of such a hardship-adverse mother. Yet, despite my bleak prospects - or perhaps, because of them - Providence intervened.
My youngest sister, Lauren, attests that the moment my son Jack exited my body, a mysterious change occurred. Almost immediately, I became someone different: someone equipped (however feebly or imperfectly) to embrace the challenges ahead with a new sense of fortitude and resolve…someone transformed by love. I don’t know if it was the strength gained by facing and overcoming the crucible of labor, or the tidal wave of love that swept over me as I cradled my tiny child (the physical manifestation of the love my husband and I share), or simply a flood of God’s grace extending from the Sacrament of Marriage, but I was changed. Love - specifically, the love that flowers in suffering - was transforming my heart, not only for that moment in time, in which I was taking my first baby steps as a wife and mother, but for a future filled with joys and laced with challenges. An interesting, circular dynamic had emerged: love had prompted my willingness to endure suffering, and suffering had, in return, intensified my love.
“You can do hard things.” This is a phrase I find myself constantly reiterating to my children, as they question why they face difficulties or hardships - everything from the “daunting” task of putting away dishes to learning how to live peaceably with a horde of irascible younger siblings. “You can do hard things.” It’s a hard truth that I continually have to remind myself, because life is certainly filled with challenges, and all too frequently, these challenges can feel insurmountable. It’s a mantra that is further difficult to embrace in a world brimming with convenience and extravagance - a world that elevates personal fulfillment and isolating autonomy over expectations of duty and responsibility toward our children, our spouses, and our neighbors. But the truth remains: “You can do hard things.”
When confronted by the reality of my unusually large family, one of the more amusing responses now offered is that this freakish anomaly must be the result of my inborn gifts in child-rearing or my natural inclinations towards children. After so many babies, after so many births, one might imagine this is so - that I am simply a “baby person” and that the strains of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood are simply instinctual to me. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My siblings will happily validate this point. While I certainly love my children, my natural preferences eschew the messiness of motherhood: the frequent interruptions to plans, the struggles to maintain order, the painful lack of quiet and solitude. While I delight in the baby resting upon my breast, the engaging antics of toddlers, and the thoughtful conversations with my adolescents, I have often grieved the loss of predictability and peace that used to be so easily obtained. It’s painful to continually let go of more of the things that I appreciate - unblemished furniture and unmarked walls, clean countertops, and opportunities to pursue my own passions and interests.
Though these things pale in comparison to the worth of the people I share my life with, the loss is no less painful. I wish I could say that I have reached a height of spiritual maturity that finds sheer joy in the suffering, but alas, I am still traversing the “purgative path,” begrudgingly accepting the difficulties and sacrifices before me. Even during my most recent delivery, I found myself engulfed by feelings of near despair, as the pain which surged through my body felt more than I could possibly endure. But even in the suffering, love calls us to greater heights of devotion, of self-denial. Writhing in my bed between contractions, waves of doubt and fear crashed over me. But then I heard my midwife saying, “With everything you’ve got,” and somehow, I summoned up my last vestiges of strength, and my littlest son came into the world.
My story isn’t unique. It’s something that motherhood - when women open themselves up to its magnificent fullness - offers: the ability to couple joy and pain, beauty and sorrow. And labor, the act of physically bringing a life into this world through bodily suffering and anguish - sometimes coming to the precipice of death itself - mirrors the spiritual transformation motherhood requires. That outpouring of self, that death to one’s comfort and ease, which characterizes labor in all its raw intensity remains a constant and powerful feature of motherhood as a whole. Daily, mothers are asked to offer themselves fully and completely for the sake of those entrusted to their maternal care, and ironically, by giving up their very selves, mothers are given new lives.
Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once reflected, “Not only a woman’s days but her nights, not only her mind but her body, must share in the Calvary of Motherhood. That is why women have a surer understanding of the doctrine of Redemption than men have. They have to associate the risk of death with life in childbirth and to understand the sacrifice of self to another through the many months preceding it.” The only way to reach the joy of new life is through suffering; the only way to obtain Eternal Life is through the Cross. How well motherhood helps us comprehend this reality. Not only are we mothers asked to give of ourselves through pregnancy, labor, and delivery, but also through the trials of post-partum recovery and the sleepless nights of the newborn and infancy stage. We are asked to stretch ourselves further than we ever thought possible through the daily grind of responsibilities and trials: the “catastrophic” messes, the fitful toddlers, the unruly children, the wayward teens, the adult children leaving our homes. The joys are many, but the pain is often acute. It is the pain of surrendering our whole selves and our entire hearts.
One of my favorite cinematic scenes is from The Sound of Music. Sister Maria, distraught and fearful, is called into Mother Superior’s office to discuss the emotional turmoil she faces over her blossoming love for Captain von Trapp and her worries over what that love will ask of her. We sympathize with Maria’s dread as she wonders if she can possibly face the situation before her. How often do I ask myself this very question: how can I face the demands of love? Mother Superior’s response is, at once, both perfect in its simplicity and excruciating in its command: “You have to live the life you were born to live.” And what does this mean, to “live the life you were born to live?” Again, Mother’s words encapsulate what it will take to live one’s path, to fulfill one’s “dream”: “A dream that will need all the love you can give, Ev’ry day of your life for as long as you live.” With “all the love [we] can give,” for every “day of [our lives]” ...this is the cost of fulfilling the singular role to which each of us are called. But while I once would have wondered how this demand could possibly be lived, my older, (slightly) wiser self knows just how much can be borne for love. Motherhood is teaching me that.