Did either of you grow up in a big family?

Todd and Tami | Fall of 1994

One of our most frequently asked questions is, “Did either of you grow up in a big family?” People always seem a bit disappointed when we share that we did not. Tami and I both grew up in the same size family. Both of us have one older brother. However, they do seem to assign a lot of meaning to the fact that Todd’s mother was the youngest of eight children. This fact has little or nothing to do with why we have a big family, but people seem happy and feel they have made sense of it all when they hear this.

I (Todd) grew up in the country while Tami grew up in the suburbs. I grew up on a road called Pennington Road but many people called it “Hair Road” because so many of my relatives lived on that road. My grandparents, great-grandparents, and great uncle all lived on this one road and had been there for a long time. By the time we met, Tami’s family had moved enough times that people had begun to ask if her father was in the military.

I (Tami) was in the marching band and Todd was in a Christian pop-rock band. We met while attending our church youth group. Todd was a senior and I was a freshman. Our relationship officially began at an amusement park called Kings Island in Cincinnati Ohio. During one of our all group check points (which took place a few times throughout the day under a replica of the Eiffel Tower), one of our mutual friends informed me that Todd was interested in me and that he wanted me to come and ride roller coasters with him. I ditched my friends and got on the biggest roller coaster of my life – a relationship with Todd!

Todd endured quite a bit of teasing from his friends and was labeled a “cradle robber” because of our age and grade level difference. For some reason both sets of our parents seemed to accept the relationship from the start. Todd was invited to take trips to visit my grandparents, aunts and uncles who lived in Wisconsin, and I was invited to his family gatherings including the Cox Christmas where I was introduced to the largest family I had ever seen. All of Todd’s mother’s siblings had children of their own (with the exception of one). By the time I entered the picture, many of them had grandchildren. It was almost dizzying to see so many aunts, uncles, and cousins, but there was also so much love. Everyone was so happy to be together. I (Todd) never really thought much about how big or small my own family would be, but I certainly wasn’t afraid of having a big family after experiencing the love and unity of my mother’s family.

Since I was little I (Tami) always said that I wanted a big family. I did a lot of babysitting as a teen and I loved working with children. Because I was always babysitting, people often asked me if I wanted to have a big family when I grew up. I answered, “Yes, I’m going to have 10!” Ten was never a literal number for me. It was just the exaggerated number that I used to describe my childhood fantasy about the family I would one day have. I never believed I would even come close to that number.

Todd’s big family background and my big family day dreams were not significant factors explaining why we now have a big family. But in retrospect we can see that these may have been God’s first hints of what He had in mind for us.