Fickel, Party of Seven

Five kids?! I don’t know how you do it...The answer? Not well.

I never really wanted kids. I wasn’t even sure I ever wanted to get married. When I was younger, and people would ask me if I wanted to get married, I’d respond, “No, I’ll just get a dog.” I mean, I think I was on to something there. Dogs are a lot less work than a healthy marriage. I was about to go a little further exploring the comparisons between a wife and a dog, but that will probably land me in the dog house. And we don’t have a dog, or a house for said imaginary dog.

So...no wife meant no kids. I knew my mother would personally hang me by my toenails until death if I ever had a child before I got married. No excuses. When Angie and I got married, she was the one who wanted a lot of kids--well, what I thought was a lot. I wanted two. I would have preferred one, to be honest, but I was worried that having any only child would cause that one child to be antisocial or spoiled or not have someone to play with. I wasn’t going to play with the thing.

Angie came from a big family that was and still is really close. She and her sisters grew up in RV’s and busses traveling around with their family singing Southern Gospel. Think Partridge Family but with bigger hair and lots of church potlucks. Angie wanted a family like hers: full of love and laughter.

I wanted order and control. Darned if my kids will ever act a fool in public. I’ll tan their hides. I’ll make them regret the day they were born. I am father, hear me roar!

And then Kelly came along. She cried for the first three months of her life. In public. In church. In the car. Everywhere. Every. Where. She was the exact opposite of order and control. And I loved her. And I would do anything for her.

Before we had Kelly, we struggled a little to get pregnant. We even had a miscarriage. Not so many people know that. We were about a month along. The experience tested my faith. It tested my ability to hope and dream for a future for my family.

After we had Kelly, I wanted another. We tried. And tried. And tried. Nothing doing. It was heartbreaking watching others get pregnant. We were thrilled for them, of course. But with each announcement, each shower, each birth, we were brought face-to-face with our infertility. I questioned my manhood, Angie questioned her body. It did a lot of psychological damage--at least to me anyway.

And then, Archer. He was dropped off at our house on Halloween night, 2017. He will remain the best “treat” in place of the trick of infertility. We fought for a long 12 months in court to make sure that he stayed with us. We saw our first glimpse into the broken world around us. Our eyes were truly opened to the pain and hurt and suffering in our own backyard. In the midst of all this was our laughing boy. He struggled with his health, ending up in the ER many times because his lungs were so bad. Archer taught me how to love again. He taught me how to let down my guard and open my heart. He helped me believe in my own ability to love.

Archer gave me the confidence to say yes to fostering. I had always wanted to foster, but Archer helped me believe I had enough love, enough heart, to share. We invited R into our house just under a year ago. She was very delayed because of her neglect, and we set to work ensuring that she made up that deficit and knew God’s love. When we were asked to take her older sister in October, we felt like we had to say yes. How do you turn away a sibling. So we became a family of six.

Just about a month later, we learned that A was born, Archer’s brother. We had to say yes, of course. When we learned the news, it felt as if we found out that we were pregnant ourselves. Baby A has been such a joy.

While I love my gigantic family, I must admit that it’s very difficult. We struggle to have a clean house. Ok, we struggle to have a decent, not completely filthy house. We struggle to get laundry done. Dinner consists of microwaved food or a random assortment of foods way too often. I am always second guessing if we are doing the right thing. We ask ourselves if the girls would be better off with another family. We question if we are damaging our other kids by having so many kids.

In the end, we trust that God has given us this family for a reason. I’ve come to learn more and more about God’s love for me through this process. I’ve learned that fathering and fostering are simply a representation of God and His great love for us.