I Just Want You to Know (8 page)

Our family experienced firsthand God’s provision for us more times than we can count—groceries came exactly when we needed them, we had a “shoe angel” who got us through numerous seasons by providing eight pairs of shoes, we received clothing and even Christmas presents from viewers of our show. Everything was always taken care of.

During our first Christmas on Andrew Avenue, we were getting by but didn’t have enough to do anything extra. JoAnn from Georgia sent boxes and boxes of Christmas gifts that she had hand-wrapped for our kids. All I had to do was take them out of the boxes and put them under the tree. JoAnn has sent our kids something each Christmas since—and has since moved on to also helping a quintuplet family. She has never forgotten us and has brought us so much joy as well as relieved so much guilt.

After seeing our first one-hour special, Connie from Ohio emailed
me and said she wanted to send our kids each a pair of shoes! She has no idea how much this helped and what her thoughtfulness meant to me. She was our shoe angel. Each season she would email me to find out the kids’ shoe sizes. She would then ask me to pick out shoes from online or would copy and paste a few options on email and ask me to pick them. And then she would send us shoes. She even started a shoe club at her church, where a group of women would have coffee and then go pick out shoes for the Gosselin kids. They truly enjoyed shopping for them and my kids were elated to open the packages and see what shoe surprise awaited them.

On the way home from church one Sunday, we had planned to stop by a woman’s house. She had seen our hour special on the Discovery Health Channel, contacted me, and asked to meet us; she also said she had a box of things for our family. I checked with Jon and he agreed we should do this. On our way, every single kid fell asleep.

“Kate, are you sure we need to stop by? It’s actually peaceful in here for once,” Jon said.

“I know, but we told her we would.”

“Is it worth going out of our way?”

“It doesn’t matter. We need to go since we said we would,” I answered.

We pulled up to the house and knocked on the door.

“Thanks so much for stopping by!” the woman said. Her name was Denise, and she was cheery and kind. She and her husband were our age and had two little girls. “I have a few things for you.” She pulled out a box of household supplies and then handed us an envelope.

As I looked in, I started to tear up. The envelope was full of gift cards—Target, Walmart, among others—as well as a check. I couldn’t believe it. “Thank you so much!” I said to Denise. “You are our miracle today.”

Truly at that time, it took a miracle a day.

One Sunday night in September 2007, we were eating dinner when Mady bit down on a crouton and said, “Mommy, my tooth hurts so bad!”

I looked in her mouth and was horrified. One of her teeth was black and rotting. I started tearing when I realized how serious this was. It must have hurt her so badly, and I didn’t know how I didn’t see this sooner.

Since it was Sunday evening, I couldn’t do much at that point, except give her a hefty dose of Motrin and put her to bed. I arranged for a babysitter to come the next day and tried to set up a dentist appointment. Jon’s new job meant we had new insurance, plus we had moved away, so we couldn’t go to our old dentist. I had a recommendation for a new dentist from our pediatrician, but we hadn’t seen her yet. So I left a voicemail, letting her know the situation.

The next morning the dentist’s office called back and we set up an appointment for one o’clock that afternoon. Mady would have to miss school, but that was our only option. As we drove to the appointment, I had a bad feeling about it. I hated making Mady the guinea pig to meet the new dentist in this emergency situation. Mady didn’t seem to mind too much. She was just chatting away. At one point, she looked out the window and saw a daycare group pushing a six-seater stroller. “Look, Mommy! They have sextuplets too. Anyway, um…” and she continued chatting.

The dentist seemed competent enough and told us Mady had a huge cavity with an infection, but then she tried to pull Mady’s tooth without Novocain. Mady was up and sitting on the chair and practically hanging from the ceiling in pain! I wouldn’t have reacted any better in her situation. Drilling without pain medication? It’s heart-wrenching to watch your child go through something like that.

At that point, the dentist said we needed to find a pedontist, that she couldn’t help us. I grabbed Mady and raced out of there.

On the way home, through her tears, Mady asked, “Mommy, why was that lady was so mean? Dr. Kristin would never do that to me.” I knew what I had to do! I knew I had to do whatever I could to get her back to our old dentist.

When I got home, I called Dr. Kristin and waited to hear back from her office. I kept playing the situation over and over in my mind: Why did I 1 let that happen to Mady? Both Jon and I apologized to her and she just brushed it off like it was nothing. I am continually amazed by the resilience of children.

The next morning the phone rang early. Dr. Kristin’s office had an opening at three that afternoon. I called Jon to make sure he could take her, and then rescheduled an eye appointment we had. This was an emergency!

Mady did really well at the dentist; she said it only hurt “like two half times and one whole time.” We had no idea what that meant, but she was content and no longer in pain.

Jon was now stuck with the fun job of wrestling with costs and insurance. He managed to pull the dentist aside, and she kindly agreed to work things out with our new insurance. I was so relieved, I started crying when Jon told me. All of our kids’ dental issues would be taken care of, and we’ve gone to Dr. Kristin ever since. Another miracle from the Lord.

I always considered it my job to save money whenever possible, and I constantly used coupons and looked for sales. One way for me to save money was to buy in bulk or stock up during sales. That worked out well, except we were often faced with space issues. We knew an extra freezer would help so much. My surgery was what finally convinced us. I was cooking two weeks ahead in preparation for my temporary incapacitation, and I needed a place to store the food I had prepared. It was a big decision to spend $650 on an upright freezer, but the need had become urgent. We found a great sale for $550. When we came home with the freezer, my brother found a $50 coupon, so we went back and had the receipt adjusted. This thrilled me!

Another big expense for us to consider was rear air-conditioning for the Big Blue Bus. The van had front air, but because these vehicles were primarily used commercially, they weren’t equipped with rear air. For us, this meant the kids in the back would roast if we traveled in hot weather. We bought battery operated clip-on fans, which did pull some of the cool air back, but it wasn’t enough. For a while we attended the early service at church so we’d be home by noon or 12:30, before the heat really hit; but planning trips around the weather just wasn’t practical in every situation. We knew we had to make this investment.

The solution came when we opted to drive instead of fly to Florida for our show-related trip that summer. Even though it took us nineteen hours to drive, it worked out to everyone’s advantage since production picked up the cost of air-conditioning instead of
ten plane tickets, and we had the lasting benefit of having rear air-conditioning in our van. This was yet another example of how the show provided for our needs that we wouldn’t have been able to cover otherwise. All these perks helped us to survive.

I still see the show as a blessing that provided for many of our needs. Plus, because of the show, we pursued opportunities that we otherwise wouldn’t have considered. It was important to me for our kids to be able to experience these trips because I did not have similar opportunities as a kid.

Even with the show, we couldn’t have managed alone. We needed help from others. When help came, I needed to learn to accept it, which was another hard lesson for me to learn. I like to be independent.

As we settled into our neighborhood in Elizabethtown, our community reached out to us. One neighbor loved to bake and used to make us delicious cookies every other week or so—a huge neatly arranged bag of them. I so appreciated having fresh baked cookies in our house. Other people in the community used to make us dinner every so often. We didn’t even know them, but their care and concern was so helpful and important to us. Someone making us dinner
meant that my whole naptime was free to do laundry and catch up on other things.

While our schedule got crazier with the show, our financial pressures eased up because of increasing fringe benefits. Thankfully companies unsolicited started sending us sample product, and our kids were all too happy to open the surprise of the day. We absolutely loved it, as it helped subsidize our living costs. Then companies noticed we ate organically and sent us organic juice boxes and snacks, which was a complete luxury we certainly appreciated.