David and I met in 1991 at First
Baptist Church in Frisco, TX through David’s sister, Cindy, who was my Sunday School
teacher during my sophomore year in high school.
I grew very close to Cindy and her husband Randy as I became active in
the youth group at FBC Frisco. It was only
natural that I began babysitting Cindy and Randy’s son, Aaron. A short while later, Cindy gave birth to
their daughter Kelsey and I was privileged to be at the hospital “as family” to
celebrate the birth. Over the next few
years, I continued to grow closer to David’s family as I spent more and more time with Cindy, Randy, Aaron, and
Kelsey and also spending hours talking to David’s and Cindy’s mother, who
was serving as a missionary alongside their dad in New Mexico, on the phone.
Initially, David and I were only
family friends; only seeing each at church when he came to visit his family
because, at the time, David was in college at East Texas Baptist University and
I was still in high school. Once I graduated
from high school and began college, our relationship forged into a friendship
where we occasionally met up to hang out.
However, all of that changed in November 1996 when David’s mother was in
the end stages of terminal cancer. I
immediately rallied around David and his family – “my family” - and became a
strong support and source of comfort to David.
It was during this time that God made it abundantly clear that David’s and
my relationship would become more than just friends. In the month that followed, we began to pray
and seek God’s will and timing for our new dating relationship. A month following that, in January 1997, David
and I became engaged to be married. (When
you’re sure, you’re sure!!) Over the
next eight months, as I finished my senior year at Dallas Baptist University,
we continued to seek the Lord in our relationship and prayed for ways to serve
Him together. In September 1997, we were
married.
We decided that we did not
want to have children, instead focusing on each other and our careers. So, David continued his career as an
accountant and I began my career as a secondary English and Reading
teacher. For the next four years we
happily continued on our career paths and continued to pray that God would open
doors for us to serve Him in a mighty way through our daily lives. In May 2001, my life was shattered when my brother,
Shane, tragically and unexpectedly passed away.
During this time of unspeakable grief, David and I never gave up on our
faith or became angry at God. Instead,
we sought comfort in God and remained steadfast in our desire to serve Him
daily. God, in return, began to change
our hearts in relation to our views on having a family. Within a few short months, I was pregnant
with our first child. What started as an
uneventful healthy pregnancy changed when I entered my second trimester. On December 23rd, during a routine
sonogram, we were informed that our precious baby no longer had a heartbeat and
I was admitted to the hospital. We were
completely devastated and in mourning, but we found comfort in knowing that, without
a doubt, our precious baby was in the arms of Jesus and we would one day be
reunited in eternity. David and I also
found solace as we continued to place our trust in God and believe that, in His
Sovereignty, God still had a plan for us that included children.
Two months later, in February
2002, the Lord led us to begin an apartment ministry and I took a leave from
teaching to focus on the ministry full time.
We absolutely loved getting to know the various apartment residents and cherished
the fact that we were serving the Lord through ministering to this community on
a daily basis. As David and I were serving,
we could not help but feel God using this apartment ministry to prepare us for
a bigger life-changing permanent ministry.
So, once again, we began to pray and ask God to lead us to where He
wanted us to serve by opening the doors “to get there.”
On a Thursday night in April
2002, God widely opened the first door that would place David and I on our life
ministry. I was on my way home from a
ladies’ night out event that I had planned for the apartment community when I received
a call from a family member. This family
member knew of a beautiful blonde-haired newborn baby who needed a family
because his birth mother was unable to care for him. Immediately, I told my family member that David
and I wanted this baby! It was only
after I hung up the phone did the word
“adoption” form in my mind and sear
into my heart. My very next thought was,
“Oh my goodness, I just committed to this baby and did not even consult David!” Oops! When
David got home from work later that night, I informed him that he would be a
daddy in a matter of days. Thankfully,
David reacted with more enthusiasm over adopting our son than I did! A few weeks later, we became parents to this
perfect sweet little baby through the beautiful world of adoption. We named our precious gift from God Copeland
Shane after David’s grandpa, Copeland, and my brother, Shane. It was at this moment we knew our family
would be built through adoption and not biologically. David and I could not believe that God would
bless us in this way and could not wait to see how He would continue to grow our
family!
In 2004, David, Copeland, and
I moved to San Antonio. We all began to earnestly
pray that God would once again open the doors to bring home another child. By then, I had returned to the high school classroom
and, in 2005, met a teenager with Down syndrome at the high school where I was
teaching who changed my life forever. Although
he was not my student, this amazing boy, who called me “Mrs. Barn,” attached
himself to me and asked me to help him with his homework each morning. As I tutored him each day, I could not help but
fall in love with him and marvel at just how perfectly and beautifully God had created
him. So, for the next three years,
David, Copeland, and I prayed that God would bless us with a child with Ds whom
we could adopt. In 2008, our many prayers
were answered when God blessed us with a beautiful blonde-haired hazel-eyed
newborn baby boy with Down syndrome! God
had now wonderfully added the words “Down syndrome” to the word “adoption” that He had initially given us in 2002 as He started us
on our journey to build our family. We
named this precious bundle of joy Silas Eli.
In the New Testament, Silas was one of the first Christian missionaries
who served beside the Apostle Paul. So,
it was only fitting that we chose this name because this was the missionary
journey that we had been praying for and that God had placed us on. Eli was David’s grandpa Copeland’s middle
name.
From the moment we brought
Silas home, he absolutely rocked our world.
Copeland, especially, was so excited and proud of Silas that he told
every single person he came in contact with that God gave him a new baby
brother “through” Down syndrome and that Silas had “adoption.” We still laugh to this day that Copeland, in
his sweet innocent love for Silas, got the two words confused. This proved to us that Cope saw Si Si as his
brother and only his brother – no labels required. From that moment on, David and I knew that
God would call us to adopt more children with Ds.
In 2010, I happened to be
reading my weekly People magazine when I came across an article about Reece’s
Rainbow and how Andrea Roberts was inspired to start it in order to save the
lives of orphans with Down syndrome.
Andrea named her ministry after her biological son Reece who was born
with Ds. I learned that Reece was only
two weeks younger than Cope and I felt an immediate connection to Andrea and
her ministry. My life was forever
changed as I learned more about RR and the plight of orphans around the world
with Ds. I was absolutely devastated and
my heart was broken when I found out that special needs babies are abandoned at
hospitals as newborns and then sent to mental institutions by age three or four
to live out the rest of their lives, with a large percentage of them dying
within the first year of transfer as a result of malnourishment and
mistreatment. When I shared this news
with David, he was equally devastated. We
could not believe that the majority of people in this world could not see just
how worthy and capable children and adults with special needs are. David and I immediately realized that God was
calling us to show the world just how wonderful, worthy, and capable those with
special needs are, specifically those with Ds.
We had living proof: Silas Eli.
Over the next few months, David
and I found ourselves once again praying that the Lord would grow our family
again through “adoption” and “Down syndrome.” During Thanksgiving week 2010, I reached out
to RR for the first time. I emailed Andrea
and implored about the possibility of adopting ONE boy from Ukraine. Over the next couple of weeks, God made it
clear to us that we would be bringing home TWO boys from Ukraine as He led us
to Igor’s and Tihon’s pictures and profiles on the RR website. The boys were at the same orphanage making it
easier to adopt them at the same time.
As David, Copeland, and I prayed over our two boys’ pictures on the RR
website each night, we could not help but scroll past the picture and profile
of a tiny little girl with both Ds and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Leeza’s pitiful picture unleashed a gut-wrenching
thunderstorm of emotion. I quickly found
myself literally knocked to my knees late each night for almost two weeks sobbing
as I begged God to bring Leeza a mama and a forever family. Little did I know at the time that I was
actually praying for myself, David, Copeland, and Silas! Through a series of miraculous events, the Lord
completely opened the doors for us to bring home THREE children. A few days after Christmas 2010, David and I
officially committed to bring home Igor, Tihon, and Leeza. In October of 2011, David and I landed on US
soil with Igor (whom we named Teague Josiah), Tihon (whom we named Trenton
James), and Leeza (whom we named Maclayne Faith – Mackie for short). The Lord had now graciously added the word “orphan” to the words “adoption” and “Down syndrome” as He continued to grow our family.
Throughout our beautiful
journey to build our family, we have relied wholeheartedly relied on God and He
has repeatedly given us verses from His word to direct our path and answer our
questions. Proverbs 3:27 is especially
close to our heart:
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When
it is in your power to do it.
You see, because God has
specifically called David and I to do good by growing our family through “adoption,” “Down syndrome,” and “orphan”
and has given us the power to do so, it would be a sin for us to say no – OUR sin – and who are we to say no to
God after He has beautifully shown us His beauty and grace time after time with
each of the five miraculous additions to our family? THAT is why we have willingly chosen to grow
our family through adoption. We faithfully
and humbly choose to remain “Obedient 2 His Command.”
No comments:
Post a Comment