There is no waste in God's economy. ever. There's no waste in God's economy ever. What does that mean? He will use everything together for good.
And when you know that's true, no matter what you're going through and no matter what you have endured in the past, God can use that in a beneficial way if you're looking forward instead of focusing on dwelling backward. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
So isn't it interesting? We're sitting in a studio in Family Life Today studio with a couple. That didn't want to have kids. And they have more kids than anybody I know. And grandkids.
They had 12 children. And 37 grandchildren. Yeah, seriously, Bill and Pam Mutz are back with us. And I really want to know, do you know every single grandkid's name and birth date? We have those all on a chart, and that's why you use Excel.
One of the reasons that we can do Christmas is because you only get assigned two people over the entire family that you give gifts to. And so you're only buying gifts for two people every year, and it's randomly sorted so that doesn't happen within a 10-year period. We should do that with our seven grandkids. Do you guys do that too? You don't buy a presentation.
We don't do a present. No, we don't even do birthday presents. What we do is when we're together. We're not going to be poor and living on the streets. What we do is we just do something special when we're with that family the next time we're with them.
That's a good idea. And listen, if we go back even in training with our own kids, we never focused on fairness. Because life is not fair until we get to heaven.
So, our reality was that if I would see something I'd want to purchase for one of the kids when I was somewhere else and bring it home, I didn't worry about then having to buy something for everybody else. We didn't worry about the amount of money we would spend equally at Christmas for a year. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, this is mind-blowing right now.
Okay. Honestly, because it's all about fairness. Like, I used to even count the number of gifts for each child. And I know a lot of parents do that, or you're spending the same amount. But we didn't have 12.
But you're at the airport, you have children, you're like, oh. Carrie would love that. And so you would just get it for Carrie. Bring it up. And if somebody's upset, you say, you'll have yours.
Just relax. And that created a tone where there was an absence of expectation. And my mom would do it to a penny.
So for Christmas, she spent exactly the same amount of money first. And I always thought that was a little weird.
Now, I will tell you, there were some places we missed it sometimes. I remember Ozzie saying to me, one of our children, fifth child, said, You know, I've just been getting underwear the last three years for Christmas. Heck, we got up my girlfriend. I wonder. Like, if you miss somebody, like, they're like, well, yeah, everybody's gotten something, Dad, but I haven't for three years.
So we work on it, but then that's a fun way.
Well, because you have to do necessities, like, okay, who needs shoes? We'll make that a Christmas present, or who needs underwear. But I think we set ourselves up poorly when we think that life is going to be fair, or as parents, we can make life fair for our children when, in fact, there's going to be nothing but disappointment in that regard, because there's lots of inequity in life.
So it's what do you do about seizing moments as you grow and mature to be able to be available to volunteer, to be able to be available to help someone else, even when other people aren't doing that, even when your family members aren't doing that? And what jobs can you seize in the house that you could get done that would help everybody else out? even if you're not being charted the same in terms of the zone that you're responsible for this time, maybe you could pick up that area too. If you didn't listen to yesterday's episode, go back and listen because we ended at a point where you guys got married. Pam, you didn't really necessarily want to have kids.
You didn't think about it much because it would be an interference for the plans that you had kind of made from yourself. Yeah. Had it mapped out. But then you got back from your honeymoon, and a month later, you're pregnant. You also made a decision that wasn't easy, but you went to Jesus, you prayed about it for a while, you surrendered this, and you decided.
We're not going to use birth control. We're going to trust God with our future and the amount of kids we have.
So, when you say that, too, and I just want to have a caveat of saying. Every person is an individual. Every person has their own relationship with Jesus. And I would say the one thing that is the must is that you go to Jesus and just ask him. Because you're not saying everybody has to do what you did.
No. But asking Jesus, if you don't want to miss out on God's best, Than ask him. In any area of life. Yeah. So he might have a different plan for you.
In fact, he probably has a different plan for you than he does for me. And that's the beauty of having a relationship with Jesus. I think it's too that there's God's permissive will and there's God's perfect will. And We don't always lay into the area of seeking God's perfect will, but if we Want to know it, we have to yield completely to what he will show us. And so that's part of the balance of life.
He'll bless positive decisions we make, leadership decisions we'll make. But if you want to have the zero center, you have to give everything up and have to open-handed heart before God to let him put in there what he wants to bring in. My heart's exploding with multiple things that I want to say. And I want to go back and to the discussion that we started to have, which is our oldest daughter, Carrie, who couldn't wait to have kids. Was having such difficulties getting pregnant.
And Carrie had had endometriosis growing up, had terrible periods. And if you have a daughter who's going through that, please go to the doctor to get her help because it's really painful. Anyway, and so Carrie got pregnant. She was so excited, looking forward to this baby. And she was just home vacuuming the carpet when her mother-in-law came in and said, Carrie, your legs look so swollen.
I think you better go to the doctor.
So she goes to the doctor that day, and they said that she had preeclampsia and it was so bad that they took her by ambulance to the hospital. How many weeks pregnant was she? She was 21 weeks.
So halfway through. Yeah. So she was living in Indiana. And by then, we had moved to Florida. And so we hopped in a couple cars and drove back up to Indiana.
And when we got there, the doctor said, Hey, you know, this is not looking good. I think we're going to have to take the baby because either Carrie's going to die. Or the baby's gonna die, or both. And so that was like so heartbreaking, especially. We just want you to know: those of you that are listening that have gone through the heartache of not being able to get pregnant or getting pregnant and losing a child.
It's so huge. And so we want you to know that we're feeling that with you right now. And I'm sorry. And what has happened with Carrie since? They ended up adopting two kids from Russia.
And my name Isa. Which comes from, I said, What's the name of the grandmother or the grand queen in Russia? Zaris. I became Zaza, which is short for Zaris, the grand, the grand queen of Russia. And so all the kids call me that.
I was going to ask, all of them call you that. They all do. I mean, there's a couple rebels in there that call me other things. Anyway. And so Kate and Hudson were our two from Russia.
And then Carrie had two others. She had twins through a surrogate. Carrie and Phil did. And then 10 years later, after they were working through some things, they used their last embryo, which was Jack, that they've had. And they had two other embryos that were not good.
So they ended up using all their embryos, which was awesome. But so they had five additional children after Gracie. That's sweet. And Gracie was our first grandchild we lost. But you lost the child yourself, Jonathan.
Yes. Take us away. Walk us through there.
So in 1980, we I was pregnant with our second child, Jonathan. And like I told you, we were childaholics. We were so crazy excited about these kids. And so here we had a girl, then we had a boy. And then Jonathan was seven months old.
Women. Men, I'm telling you, when your spouse gets home and they go, what have you been doing all day and the house is a mess? It's like I was playing and just taking care of our two kids because that was a big deal. Two kids is busy. It's busy.
And so sometimes if I meet somebody, they'll go, hey, we only have one child or we only have two. And like, that's a gift from God.
So just know that's really super important. And so I just want to go back to, you know, those my years in the 20s where Jonathan, I would come home and Bill would say, Pam, what have you been doing today? The house is a mess. I'm like taking care of these kids. But it's been such a joy.
And I'm so grateful for the time I spent with them, taking them both to the playground, you know, going on book dates with them to the library and all those kinds of things. And so one weekend. We went to Lake of the Ozarks actually for weekend and with another couple and They had a concern the entire weekend. They had a daughter. Jonathan's age that a baby was drowning.
And talked about it throughout the weekend. And we, but she could not see the face. These were our best friends that we spent time with. What do you mean? They had like a.
Premonition. And so she was very concerned about it being her baby. Throughout the course of the weekend, this is my best friend and who is a resident physician.
So we were with Lynn and Warren and we came home from that weekend. We had just moved into a new house and we were doing some remodeling. The bathroom at the current stage was by the front door. We had picked up someone on the way home who had some dogs to bring home with us. Pam had led the dogs out in the morning and while she had just started a bath with Carrie and Jonathan in it, about an inch of water in the tub.
And she went to get the dogs because it was by the front door to get them back in. And in that period of time, Jonathan fell in the water. The dogs were barking and I was like, oh my goodness, we've just moved here. I don't want our neighbors to be mad. I'll just quick go call the dogs.
Called the dogs. They didn't come. And I could just tell.
So it was like the Holy Spirit said, Pam, get in there. And so I went in and Jonathan had fallen over and ingested water. And so I immediately screamed and the visitor came down, started CPR. And then we called. I called 911 and the ambulance was on its way.
And I called Bill's work, missed dialing, and calling again. And his boss answered it. This is a pre-cell phone era. And so the boss came into a meeting that I was in at the time and said, your wife called, your son's drowned, you're supposed to go home right away.
So that's what I heard. What happened in your like just sunk. Just sunk. And the parade the entire way there that something was misunderstood in the process of that. And I turned the corner into our driveway and there's an ambulance.
And so. Like when you come back in and you see him. Are you just in an absolute pain? panic. Oh, my, yes.
Yes. I mean, you're shaking, but you move into what you know you have to do. Yeah. I had run across the street to get a neighbor who was just studying to be a nurse, and they came and got care. Harry and took her to their house.
And then the paramedics were there. Yeah, the paramedics got there and were working on him. And then they transferred him. And you're like, wait, they're taking my baby away. And Warren is the emergency room physician resident, your friend in the ER.
In the yard at the hospital. And he goes, I know this baby, I can't do this. And just think about the problem. Premonition of the weekend before. And so God used him to be a conduit back and forth to us on Jonathan's progress, which continued to erode.
And I think there was, to some degree, I just knew God was going to do a miracle and somehow Jonathan was going to make it. Whereas I had also called our church. They'd sent somebody over to pray with me. And I was in the corner of the room just praying. But in my heart, I knew Jonathan was gone.
So it's interesting to just see the difference with the two of us. In fact, when our pastor came, I said, you don't need to stay. This is going to be fun. He goes, He goes, No, no, I'm staying.
So we were 26 years old at the time, pretty naive in that, and just, you know, believing God for a miracle. And it was it was dreadful. That was dreadful. And Warren walked in and said, we lost him. Ah.
And so I remember having one last chance to just hug him and smell his hair. And um, you know, the pain of Giving him back, Pam did the same thing. And Warren came up to me. After we were getting ready to leave to go home, we had carried our two-year-old with us at the time as well, of course. And Warren said, you know, Bill, Marriages that have A child die.
Are in like the high 80 percentiles of getting a divorce.
So the two things that have just happened to me are Jonathan's loss and that. Warning. And so we drove home, and I decided I really needed to deal with that immediately. And I sat down, I asked Pam and Carrie to sit down. And I picked up a Bible and I said, this book is either true or it isn't.
And we know it's true. That means God loves us and He has a plan for our life even through this. And I want you to know that I totally forgive you for what has happened. And that because I knew that we needed to apply what we know God has sovereign over and the course that is ahead of us as we go forward. And we hugged and prayed sitting there.
And then we had wonderful friends surround us after that. Went to bury Jonathan the net, was it the next day or two days?
So, yeah, so we had a grave side funeral and When we drove up. I was like, where did all these people come from? This is before texting. And I'm like, how did all these people know?
Well, you know, like word travels and so fast. But I was just amazed just to see all the support of people there. But I was numb, actually. I think I was just so numb. Were you beating yourself up?
Yeah. So there were a couple of things that happened when we came back from the ER. Oh, I can talk about this because she's not alive right now. But one of our relatives got on the ground and started pounding the ground and saying, Pam, how could you leave the bathroom? How could you leave the bathroom?
And um Yes, even one of my dear friends too. And I was like. I didn't mean to. I just. He'd been sitting up, and I had hardly put any water in the bathtub at all.
And so I'd never even thought that something like this could happen. And so to me, the greatest miracle Was Bill's acceptance. I was going to say, when he said that to you. What did that feel like? Can you imagine the pain it would be?
No. Blame? You're you know, you're beating yourself up enough. Just saying I can't believe that I left the bathtub. And here you have a husband that says, I love you, support you, I forgive you, before I'd even asked.
And to me, that's the greatest miracle. I think there were gradients of protection of Pam's emotions that I got to observe over the following months because it was kind of easing into the Responsibility level over time. And we had heard a message at our church. several months later. And about God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.
You know, and Pam stood up at the end of that sermon out of Romans and turned to me and said, You think that if I hadn't walked out of that bathroom, Jonathan would be alive today, don't you? And I said, Yes. And then she just wept. That was really the bottom of getting to it. And I think there's a picture in that of giving people time to work through the whole process that I wasn't cognizant of or necessarily nurturing.
The forgiveness gave the plate for that. But the fact is that in watching it, you cannot predict how someone goes through healing processes. You cannot predict how someone goes through grieving. And so you have to be alongside them and enable them and let God do the work, the Holy Spirit work.
So just seeing God's Involvement all the way through the process was incredible. And I talk about this in the book, Seven Specific Things Where We Saw God Prepare. It's that morning. We were reading out of Ecclesiastes together, and Bill was getting ready for work. And, you know, it says, Death is better than life.
I'm like, that's the weirdest verse, Bill. You know, and I read that that morning. That morning. Yeah. And so, and then, of course, having Warren there as a receiving doctor, ER doctor, having the best paramedics that came from two different stations that were working together.
And so there's things that you see, God's hand as He allows us to go through grief and pain in this life, whether it's you're losing a son or a daughter. Or a parent, or a best friend, or a grandparent, a grandchild. Yes. I mean, I'm sure you've sat with many. Couples over the years, maybe that feel like they're responsible for a tragic.
death or whatever in their family. What what do you say? The enemy wants to hold us hostage. He does. He wants to hold us hostage.
When you have that initial thought, oh my goodness, I can't never forgive myself. And I remember thinking: if anything would ever happen to my child, there's no way I could live on. And then here I'm confronted with this. I mean, Ann, did you ever have that feeling with your kids? Did you ever think, oh my goodness, if anything happened to this child, how would I ever be able to survive?
I think we all think that. It's our greatest nightmare and our greatest fear. Yeah. And those of you moms and dads that have. Teenagers that are driving, just starting to drive.
Do you remember that first time when they drove away in their car and you're like, oh Lord God, we just asked your protection over that vehicle and that brain because you never know, we never know. But that set a precedence for us to in our marriage to think about when we're in a fight. And we're separating and we're going our individual ways, you don't know. If something can happen to that other spouse.
So, how are you going to work through or at least hold that argument? And love each other well, even when you're in division. What were your last moments like? Because that morning I told Pam, I've got to get to work, give Jonathan a kiss for me. And I didn't.
And so there's no waste in God's economy. Ever. There's no waste in God's economy ever. He will use it. What does that mean?
He will use everything together for good. And when you know that's true, no matter what you're going through and no matter what you have endured in the past. God can use that in a beneficial way if you're looking forward instead of focusing on dwelling backward.
So even after all that you would both say no. God is a good. Without any question. And you know what? And for me, because I'm more.
Equalized in my emotions, I would say. Bell really feels deeper. That needed to develop in me. And you know what? God used this tragedy to bring me to the point where.
I needed to learn to cry. I remember going into a Bible study, and I was so excited. This one great Bible teacher in our church was going to be teaching that day. And so I thought, well, I'll go. And so we're standing at the door, and as you're walking in, they're handing you Bible verses.
You know, and then we all sit down, and so she's teaching her lesson, and so she has this person read, and that person. And she said, Okay, who has the story about David and Bathsheba? Guess who does? Me. And so it's just, you know, the story of David and Bathsheba are about ready to lose their baby.
They're losing their baby. God says, your baby's going to die. And so I read those verses and then I start crying. And nobody had ever seen me cry before because they kept asking, Bill, are you sure Pam's grieving? Are you sure?
And so at night I would grieve when I wasn't with people. I would cry. I started crying and I was like, you almost. What that verse means to me because I had just gone through the loss of a child. And nothing?
Gives you the ability to comfort others than when you've gone through a tragedy.
Well, I think as a listener, we're all encouraged, we're hopeful, and I think the theme is: we can trust Jesus because he loves us, he knows us, he's with us. That was a great conversation with Bill and Pam. It always is. It is. Seriously, whether we're on, you know, on a podcast talking to them or in their family room and there's 15 kids running around the house and 38 grandkids, it's always fun.
Bill and Pam Mutz have a new book called Richer by the Dozen. Get it wherever you buy your books. It's going to literally help you and maybe change your legacy. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
