Richer by the Dozen: Bill and Pam Mutz

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Richer by the Dozen

Guests:Bill and Pam Mutz

From the series:Richer by the Dozen (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:June 10, 2025

Bill:There’s no waste in God’s economy, ever. There’s no waste in God’s economy, ever.

Ann:What does that mean?

Bill: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.

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:Isn’t it interesting? We’re sitting in a studio—in FamilyLife Today studio—with a couple that didn’t want to have kids, and they have more kids than anybody I know; and grandkids!

Ann:They had 12 children—

Dave:—and 37—

Ann:—and 37 grandchildren.

Dave:Yeah, seriously. Bill and Pam Mutz are back with us. I really want to know: “Do you know every single grandkid’s name and birthdate?”

Bill:We have those all on a chart; 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, you give gifts to. You’re only buying gifts for two people every year, and it’s randomly sorted. So that doesn’t happen within a ten-year period of time.

Dave:Hey, we should do that with our seven grandkids. Let’s just do two.

Ann:Wait; do you guys do that too? You don’t buy a present for every—

Pam:We don’t do a present, no. We don’t even do birthday presents. What we do is—when we’re together—

Ann: Because you’d be poor and living on the streets.

Pam:What we do is we just do something special when we’re with that family the next time we’re with them—

Ann:That’s a good idea.

Pam:—for the birthday child.

Bill: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. 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 having to buy something for everybody else. We didn’t worry about the amount of money we would spend, equally, at Christmas. We would just do—

Ann:Wait, wait; this is mind-blowing right now.

Bill:Okay!

Ann:Honestly, because it’s all about fairness. I used to even count the number of gifts for each child. I know a lot of parents do that, or you’re spending the same amount.

Dave:But we didn’t have 12.

Ann:You’re at the airport—you have children—you’re like, “Oh, Cari would love that”; and so you would just get it for Cari; bring it home.

Bill:If somebody’s upset, you say, “You’ll have yours; just relax.” That created a tone, where there was an absence of expectation. My mom would do it to a penny; so for Christmas, she spent exactly the same amount of money. 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—

Pam:He was our fifth child.

Bill:—fifth child said—”I’ve just been getting underwear the last three years for Christmas.”

Dave:It’s like, “We got up our game with Ozzie.”

Pam:We had to—

Ann:I wondered, “Did you miss somebody?”—they’re like, “Well, yeah; everybody’s gotten something Dad; but I haven’t for three years.”

Bill:So we work on it. But then, that’s a fun way to be able to—

Pam:Because you have to do necessity, too: “Okay, who needs shoes?”—“We’ll make that a Christmas present,”—or “Who needs underwear?”

Bill:I think we set ourselves up poorly when we think that life is going to be fair. 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 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.”

Ann:If you didn’t listen to yesterday’s episode, go back and listen. 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 for your life.

Pam:—for myself, yeah! I had it mapped out.

Ann:But then, you got back from your honeymoon; and a month later, you’re pregnant. You also made a decision that wasn’t easy. 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.”

Pam:When you say that, too, Ann, I just want to have a caveat of saying, “Every person is an individual. Every person has their own relationship with Jesus.” I would say, “The one thing—that is the must—is that you go to Jesus and just ask Him.”

Ann:Because you’re not saying everybody—and you said this yesterday—has to do what you did.

Pam:No,—

Bill:Correct.

Pam:—but asking Jesus. If you don’t want to miss out on God’s best, then ask Him.

Bill:—in any area of life.

Pam:Yes! He might have a different plan for you. In fact, He probably has a different plan for you than he does for me. That’s the beauty of having a relationship with Jesus.

Bill:I think, too, there’s God’s permissive will; and there’s God’s perfect will. 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. 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 an open-handed heart before God to let Him put in there what He wants to bring in.

Pam:My heart’s exploding with multiple things I want to say. I want to go back to the discussion that we started to have—which is our oldest daughter, Cari, who couldn’t wait to have kids—was having such difficulties getting pregnant. Cari had had endometriosis, growing up, had terrible periods. 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, Cari got pregnant. She was so excited, looking forward to this baby. She was just home, vacuuming the carpet, when her mother-in-law came in, and said, “Cari, your legs look so swollen. I think you better go to the doctor.” She goes to the doctor that day; and they said that she had preeclampsia. It was so bad that they took her, by ambulance, to the hospital.

Ann:How many weeks pregnant was she?

Pam:She was 21 weeks.

Ann:So halfway through.

Pam:Yes; she was living in Indiana. By then, we had moved to Florida. We hopped in a couple of cars and drove back up to Indiana. When we got there, the doctor said, “Hey, this is not looking good. I think we’re going to have to take the baby; because either Cari’s going to die; or the baby’s going to die; or both.”

That was so heartbreaking—especially, we just want you to know—those of you who are listening, who have gone through the heartache of not being able to get pregnant; or getting pregnant, and losing a child; it’s so huge. We want you to know that we’re feeling that with you right now, and I’m sorry.

Ann:And what has happened with Cari since?

Pam:They ended up adopting two kids from Russia. My name is Zaza, which comes from—I said, “What’s the name of the grandmother or the Grand Queen in Russia?”—Tsarina [pronounced Zarina]. So I became Zaza, which is short for Tsarina [pronounced Zarina], the Grand Queen of Russia. All the kids call me that.

Ann:I was going to ask: “All of them call you that?” It’s so fitting.

Pam:They all do; there’s a couple rebels in there who call me other things. Anyway, Kate and Hudson were our two from Russia. And then, Cari had two others—she had twins through a surrogate—Cari and Phil did. And then, ten years later, after they were working through some things, they used their last embryo, which was Jack they had. They had two other embryos that were not good; so they ended up using all their embryos, which was awesome. They had five additional children after Gracie.

Dave:That’s sweet.

Pam:Gracie was our first grandchild we lost.

Dave:But you lost a child yourself, Jonathan.

Pam:Yes.

Dave:Take us back through there.

Pam:In 1980, I was pregnant with our second child, Jonathan. Like I told you, we were child-holics. We were so crazy excited about these kids. Here we had a girl; then, we had a boy. And then, Jonathan was seven months old. And 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!

Ann:It’s busy.

Pam:And so sometimes, if I meet somebody, they’ll go: “Hey, we only have one child,” or “We only have two”; and that’s a gift from God. Just know that’s really super important.

I just want to go back to those—my years in the 20s—[with] Jonathan; [Bill] would come home, and would say, “Pam, what have you been doing today? The house is a mess.” “I’m taking care of these kids. It’s been such a joy. I’m so grateful for the time I spent with them,” taking them both to the playground, going on book dates with them to the library, and all those kinds of things.

One weekend—

Bill:—we went to Lake of the Ozarks, actually for a weekend with another couple. They had a concern the entire weekend. They had a daughter Jonathan’s age. A baby was drowning—and talked about it throughout the weekend—but she could not see the face. These were our best friends we spent time with.

Dave:What do you mean? They had a premonition, or a thought, or vision that—

Pam: Yeah, she had dreams.

Bill:She was very concerned about it being her baby, throughout the course of the weekend. This is my best friend, who is a resident physician. 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 let the dogs out in the morning. While she had just started a bath with Cari and Jonathan in it—about an inch of water in the tub—she went to get the dogs, because it was by the front door, to get them back in. In that period of time, Jonathan fell in the water.

Pam:The dogs were barking. 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. I could just tell—it was like the Holy Spirit said, “Pam get in there,”—I went in. Jonathan had fallen over and ingested water. I immediately screamed. The visitor came down; started CPR. And then, we—

Bill:—you called 911.

Pam:I called 911, and the ambulance was on his way. I called Bill’s work, miss dialing; and calling again. His boss answered it.

Bill:This is a pre-cell phone era. 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.” That’s what I heard.

Ann:What happened in your—

Bill:—just sunk; just sunk.

Ann:—pit.

Bill:Prayed the entire way there that something was misunderstood in the process of that. I turned the corner into our driveway, and there’s an ambulance.

Ann:Pam, when you come back in, and you see him, are you just in an absolute panic?

Pam:Oh, my; yes, yes. You’re shaking, but you move into what you know you have to do. I had run across the street to get a neighbor, who was just studying to be a nurse. They came and got Cari and took her to their house. And then, the paramedics—

Bill:This was after the paramedics were there.

Pam:The paramedics got there and were working on him; and then, they transferred him. You’re like, “Wait; they’re taking my baby away.”

Bill:And Warren is the emergency room physician resident.

Ann:Your friend?

Pam:—in the ER.

Bill:—in the ER at the hospital. He goes, “I know this baby; I can’t do this.” And just think about the 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. 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.

Pam:Whereas, I had also called our church. They’d sent somebody over to pray with me. I was in the corner of the room, just praying; but in my heart, I knew Jonathan was gone. It’s interesting to just see the difference with the two of us.

Bill:In fact, when our pastor came, I said, “You don’t need to stay; this is going to be funny.” He goes, “No, no; I’m staying.”

Pam:We were 26 years old at the time—pretty naive in that—and just believing God for a miracle. It was dreadful; it was dreadful.

Bill:Warren walked in, and said, “We lost him.” I remember having one last chance to just hug him, and smell his hair, and the pain of giving him back. Pam did the same thing.

Warren came up to me after we were getting ready to leave to go home. We had Cari, our two-year-old, with us at the time as well. Warren said, “Bill, marriages that have a child die are in the high 80 percentiles of—

Pam:—85 percent.

Bill:—getting a divorce.

The two things that have just happened to me are: Jonathan’s loss and that warning. We drove home, and I decided I really needed to deal with that immediately. I sat down; I asked Pam and Cari to sit down. 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. 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 sovereignty over—”Of course, that is ahead of us as we go forward.”

We hugged and prayed, sitting there; and then, we had wonderful friends surround us after that. We went to bury Jonathan; was it the next day or two days?

Pam:We had a grave-side funeral. When we drove up, I was like, “Where did all these people come from?” This is before texting. I’m like, “How did all these people know?” Word travels and so fast. But I was just amazed to see all the supportive people there. But I was numb, actually; I think I was just so numb.

Ann:Were you beating yourself up?

Pam:There were a couple of things that happened when we came back from the ER. I can talk about this, because she’s not alive right now. One of our relatives got on the ground; just started pounding the ground, and saying, “Pam, how could you leave the bathtub? How could you leave the bathtub?” And yes, even one of my dear friends too. I was like, “I didn’t mean to. He’d been sitting up, and I had hardly put any water in the bathtub at all.” I’d never even thought that something like this could happen. To me, the greatest miracle was Bill’s acceptance.

Ann:I was going to say, “When he said that to you, what did that feel like?”

Pam:Can you imagine the pain it would be to live through blame? You’re beating yourself up enough, to say, “I can’t believe that I left the bathtub.” And here, you have a husband who says, “I love you; support you. I forgive you,” before I’d even asked. To me, that’s the greatest miracle.

Bill:I think the gradients of protection for 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 heard a message at our church, several months later, about God’s sovereignty, man’s responsibility.

Pam:—out of Romans.

Bill: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?” I said, “Yes.” And then, she just wept. That was really the bottom of getting to it.

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; but 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—

Pam:—or goes through grieving.

Bill:—grieving. You have to be alongside them and enable them; and let God do the work, the Holy Spirit work.

Pam:So just seeing God’s involvement, all the way through the process, was incredible. I talk about this in the book: seven specific things where we saw God prepare us. That morning, we were reading out of Ecclesiastes together—Bill was getting ready for work—and it says: “Death is better than life.” I’m like, “That’s the weirdest verse, Bill.” I read that, that morning, that morning.

Bill:We talked about it.

Pam:And then, of course, having Warren there as a receiving ER doctor, having the best paramedics, who came from two different stations, were working together. 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 losing a son, or a daughter, or a parent, or a best friend.

Ann:—or a grandchild.

Pam:Yes, yes.

Dave: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 do you say?

Pam:Oh, my goodness. You know what? 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 never forgive myself,”—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. 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?”

Ann:I think we all think that. It’s our greatest nightmare and our greatest fear.

Pam:Yes; and those of you moms and dads, who have teenagers who are driving—just starting to drive— do you remember that first time when they drove away with your car? You’re like, “Oh, Lord God, we just ask for protection over that vehicle and that brain,” because you never know. We never know.

But that set a precedence for us, too, 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?”

Bill:“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. There’s no waste in God’s economy, ever. There’s no waste in God’s economy, ever.

Ann:What does that mean?

Bill: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.

Ann:So even after all that, you would both say, “God is a good God.”

Bill:Without any question.

Pam:And you know what, Ann? For me—because I’m more equalized in my emotions—I would say Bill 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; I thought, “Well, I’ll go.” We’re standing at the door. As you’re walking in, they’re handing you Bible verses, and then we all sit down. She’s teaching her lesson. She has this person read and that person. She said, “Okay, who has the story about David and Bethsheba?” Guess who does?—me! It’s 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.” I read those verses; and then, I start crying.

Nobody had ever seen me cry before; because they kept asking, Bill: “Are you sure Pam’s grieving?” “Are you sure?” At night, I would grieve. When I wasn’t with people, I would cry. I started crying, and I was like, “You all know 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.

Ann:Well, I think, as a listener, we’re all encouraged; we’re hopeful. I think the theme is: we can trust Jesus because He loves us; He knows us; He’s with us.

Ann:That was a great conversation with Bill and Pam.

Dave:It always is—

Ann:It is.

Dave:—seriously—whether we’re on a podcast, talking to them—or in their family room; and there’s 15 kids running around the house, and [37] grandkids—it’s always fun.

Ann:Bill and Pam Mutz have a new book called Richer by the Dozen.

Dave:Get it wherever you buy your books. It’s going to literally help you and, maybe, change your legacy.

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