Abundant Lives: Thoughts and Reflections on a Household with Eleven Children

The home of the Hogues is nestled in one of the foothills fringing ol’ ’78, where Carbon Hill meets Nauvoo. Hidden beyond the thick canopy of trees lie fields, creeks, a house, a garden, horses, cows, chickens—and Daniel and Rose Hogue (my parents), with their eleven children.I know the number “11” sounds huge for the children of just two people. The number provokes smiles or raised eyebrows from nearly every person who hears it for the first time. When I communicate these basic facts of our family to new acquaintances—that I’m one of eleven and that the eleven are homeschooled—the questions “Why?” and “How?” immediately spring into their faces. Why would you willingly take upon yourself the responsibility, inconvenience, and pain of caring for so many human beings? How can you have a life and still manage to provide for them, feed them, and keep them happy?I’m not going to delve into the exact reasons why my parents allowed this posse of children to overrun their lives, but I will say this: that they haven’t regretted the decision for a moment. I speak for my siblings as well as for myself when I say that I wouldn’t have it otherwise for the world.One of the underlying values of our home is nailed down in the words of Proverbs 14:4: “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.” Basically, this verse says that you can’t have abundance of anything unless you’re willing to deal with the mess that comes with it. For us, it means that the frustrations of sharing a home with a dozen other people are worth it for the treasure that those people are. It’d be a lot simpler, a lot easier, a lot more comfortable if we had said no to a large family. The opportunities for chaos, decay and disorder increase exponentially with each child; keeping a clean house is a constant battle; maintaining peace for a single evening seems impossible. However, we can never attain new heights of joy and abundance unless we have the courage to meet the depths of pain and sacrifice that come with it. So, in the daily lives of the Hogues there is a lot of frustration aroused from the conflict of numerous agendas—but there’s also an abundance of joy and growth in learning to bear with the failures of each individual.The elements of Rose Hogue as mother, Daniel Hogue as father, and eleven kids as their children boil down to make a tremendously intense, fun-loving, and close-knit family. So much comes with having a large family— an overwhelming multitude of voices, lots of attitudes, a wealth of personality, plenty of playmates, babies & young adults & everything in between.The intensity of our family is probably due to having thirteen unique and forceful personalities living together in close quarters. Our parents and the baby share a room, six girls share a room, and four boys share a room. There is a wide range of personality and emotions amongst the siblings; we can be reserved and thoughtful, boisterous and reckless, carefree, cautious, or sulky. Each of us are passionate about our opinions, which leads to loud and frequent arguments. Our intensity is not only in our differences, though, but also in our likemindedness and loyalty. We like to stand by each other. We delight in praising our commonalities and our roots. Being constantly around one another causes us to take on some of the quirks and traits of each sibling, leading to one concentrated pool of personality. Guests generally get lots of attention. As soon as they walk in the door, they are greeted with the grinning faces of five little girls. From then on, they rapidly adjust to a deluge of random, bizarre questions and zero personal space. The older siblings are not quite as quick to adopt their guests. However, once the ice is broken, the visitor is surrounded with jokes and laughter, mixed in with sincere, heart-to-heart conversations.And of course, they’re probably blasted with how much we love to have fun. The Hogues really are frolicsome people (if you’ll let me to use old-fashioned lingo). We love to sing and dance and hunt and feast. The impulse to sing the tunes we hear or dance to the rhythms of music is as automatic as breathing. Our home reminds me of a forest of mockingjays (a reference from the Hunger Games series, by Suzanne Collins)— one person sings a tune, and it immediately echoes from ten different voices and keys. Our lighthearted tendencies culminate on Friday night, when Mama makes homemade Pizza (easily our favorite meal) and we jam out to our favorite tunes. Of course, the way we have fun doesn’t always include noise and festivity. On a typical afternoon, you’ll find several children hiding behind books; or clustered around a table with pencils, paint, and a stack of paper; or traversing fields and forest.My house is my absolute favorite place to be— even in spite of the exasperations and difficulties of sharing life with a dozen other people. My house is my home, in the truest sense of the word. My siblings and I know all too well, I’m afraid, what it means to be thoroughly angry with another person. But since we share every waking moment with each other, there cannot be any peace in the home unless that anger is abandoned—so we have to do the hard thing. We have to learn to love and respect our siblings and parents. We have to work through the problems we have with each other. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we’ve unanimously decided to put away selfishness (Ha, that’ll take a while). But it does mean that we genuinely love each other; we are all each other’s closest friends. Ann Voskamp wrote on a social media post, “Turns out it’s not only the blood in our veins that make us family—it’s the blood and sacrifice in our days that makes us family.” That couldn’t be truer. The challenges and struggles that have marked my life as the fourth child in an ever-growing family has only served to deepen my love and appreciation for every member. Yes, I share a room with five girls; yes, I spend my days with a dozen humans in close quarters; and yes, I consider myself wealthy beyond measure. I am wealthy with the love of a dozen precious souls, and with the redeeming power of Christ’s grace in our relationships. 78 Ingrid Hogue is a writing intern for Blanton Media Group and 78 Magazine. She is originally from Jasper, Alabama.