My parental 'titles'

I wonder if I'll miss being called "The One with Two Sets of Twins" someday (and yes, it feels like it's said with capital letters), once our kids are grown and away and it's not immediately apparent that we have two sets of twins. I've been introduced as "you know, the one with two sets of twins" to someone who did not immediately know who I was. Which received a "oh, yeah, that's you" response.

Because it often happens that in a small town people don't actually have to know you to know about you.

The two sets of twins thing was so not in the plans. The first set was a complete surprise and who in the heck would even think it could or would happen again? Not me! But it is our family's blessing and it is still my somewhat stupefied joy to have had two sets of beautiful girl twins.

I wonder, too, if I'll ever get tired of seeing the surprise on some faces when I respond "five" to "how many kids do you have?" That surprise often translates into my other parenting title, "The Mom Who Handles Things Well" (see an earlier post about that!).

Having a big family was not initially in the plans for us. Jim and I used to joke (back when we were first in 'deep like' with each other and thought we might get married some day) that we'd have 720 kids. That came from a silly, lovely story that Jim thought up about us that somehow started in Spanish class, I believe, when we had the same teacher for different levels of Spanish.

Anyway, I digress.

When we were first married, two seemed like the number we'd go for. Moriah and Susannah jumped that number, thank you very much. And, having been a fairly efficient pregnant lady, my next pregnancy resulted in another jump to five kids and here we are, to the surprise and (puzzling) admiration of many who meet us and know us. And I'll reiterate what I said in that earlier post, that it's nothing amazing that I (we, really, because I need to include Jim, even though this post is from my perspective) do. Our family is our unspeakably blessed gift and we use the gift as well as we possibly can.

Yet those two titles don't motivate me as a mom. You want to know the title that I yearn for the most? The title that drives my parenting? The title I want more than any other is "The Mom Whose Kids Love and Serve God" because really, that's incredibly more important than being known for having twins or lots of kids.

That's the title I want to be known for.