An adoptive father with a large number of children with special needs is grateful, eternally grateful, for the family that God has given him and his wife after their three natural children died.
I look at the beautiful, multicolored faces of my rainbow children, and at once my heart fills with joy and my eyes fill with tears of gratitude towards a Loving Father up in Heaven. It is because OF God that I have been blessed with children that society abandoned, and He rewarded my wife and myself with their care and well-being.
The first time we heard about Johnny, a tiny, two-pound premie from Germany, and then a one-and-a-half-pound premie in Louisiana named Ronee', we cried tears of joy, and we immediately set out to get the required paperwork to get the pair. We couldn't imagine what hell the two little babies must have been enduring, but when we first saw their pictures, we immediately imagined them as our own already, and we set out to get our nursery ready for the two children. We got baby clothes, diapers, formula, and all the other trappings that go along with having a baby, and we counted the days to when they would be ours.
Johnny came first, a tiny, frail, pink boy with a fringe of pale, pale hair and wide, blue eyes; and we now had a son. A few weeks later our first daughter came, along with oxygen and breathing equipment, medicines, and uncertainty; but despite her sickness, Ronee' was a lovely little Cajun lass with fuzzy, kitten-soft, black hair that stuck up from her round little head, black eyes that were dull with ill health (but later would turn bright and full of life), and dimples that would flash in her cheeks whenever she laughed or cried. We now had two children; and we immediately fell in love with them; and we did all we possibly could to give them the love and nuturing that they so desperately lacked and needed. Almost immediately, Johnny responded; but old Little Miss Sourpuss (Ronee') took longer; but eventually, she came around, and she soon turned into a (reasonably) happy baby who just happened to suffer some serious respiratory crises that kept us in a constant state of worry and fear.
All seemed well with the world with our two new children; and we were at long last a family; but then tragedy struck, not once, but twice. Again, death came calling, and Death threatened to snatch both Johnny and Ronee' from us; but God somehow intervened, and He delivered the pair through heartbreaking disability and brain damage; and after months of recuperation and rehabilitation, our two children, now left with permanent reminders of their ordeals, returned. They were no longer the same children we had prior to them getting sick (Johnny: he had meningitis) or injured (Ronee' had been injured in a serious bus crash), but we were determined to pick up what was left of their shattered lives and help them along in their recovery and rehabilitation.
Johnny and Ronee' grew into beautiful, well-adjusted children with opposite personalities; and we couldn't have been any happier. Johnny was shy and awkward in new situations, but Ronee' was a complete extrovert with a winning personality and signs of being a gifted performer and showed signs of having a very high I.Q. Yet they were children first, and people were soon enamored with them. They were our first adopted, and as much as I hate to say this, they will always still hold a very special place in a piece of my heart, more so than the other children that followed. Now they are 11 1/2, growing rapidly towards becoming teenagers, and life has been absolutely wonderful for them. They are living Miracles, and they are a living testimony of God's Mercy and Grace because He has brought them through unbelievable tragedy and disability.
After Johnny and Ronee' came seven more children, instantly swelling our family from four to a family of eleven. Gemini, Jodie, Michael, Stephanie, Richard, Anh, Porter, Dwerlina, and Melizza came next, and all proved to be quite challenging yet loving children with a variety of disabilities and needs. Some, like Jodie, Melizza, Anh Kim, and Richard, all had specific special needs that warrented daily attention and care, yet others carried no outward sign of anything was wrong with them (but Gemini and Michael did have seizures from time to time). We were now officially a "big family": our days as a small family were behind us for good, and time would only bring us more children that we were unaware of until God intervened, and one by one (or even two by two, three by three, or four by four), they snuck into our lives in a big way, and we now had more mouths to feed and more bills to pay.
We now find ourselves being the parents of an unbelievable 50 children. Our children resemble a patchwork quilt: different shades of brown, pink, tan, yellow, even red, with hair of black, brown, red, orange, blonde, white, and all shades in between, and eyes of brown, green, blue, violet, grey, hazel, even black. Yet, despite differences in mannerisms of speech, skin, hair, or eye color, racial backgrounds, or ethnicity, they are tied together by adoption, and they are now officially brothers and sisters, and they are now part of a "forever family" that will never be broken. They are ours forever, and nothing (or nobody) can never change that. EVER.
We also find our children rapidly growing up. Those who were once babies are nearing teenagerhood or have already entered it in a big way, and our older children, one by one, have since left our nest, and they are busy with their own lives, living on their own, attending college, or as in Lightning's case, raising a family, making us official grandparents now to five lovely grandchildren (four boys and one girl). We are not as young as we once were, and age has snuck into our bodies; but our children (and now grandchildren!) keep us both young and fancy free, and it has gotten to the point to where we can't imagine our lives without ANY of the children that have come into our hearts--and our home.
But what all this boils back to is this: when we first saw their pictures that the adoption agencies sent us, we just couldn't say no. We knew that these special children were meant to be ours, and God was telling us to take them; which is exactly what we did; and we haven't regretted one minute of it. We are a happy family, a big family, yes, a very big family; but we are happy, and it is because of our Loving Father who saw to answer a brokenhearted couple's prayer of having children after unexpectedly losing their three natural children.
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Reviewed by Norma OGrady
9/2/2004
There are still wonderful people in this seemingly devoid of humane feelings world!
It's a blessing you have being able to write such great stories.
Thank you
This is such a touching write... Keep up the great work!
BTW, I don't really FEEL like a cheetah today.. I just happened to be online when you posted this one!
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I look at the beautiful, multicolored faces of my rainbow children, and at once my heart fills with joy and my eyes fill with tears of gratitude towards a Loving Father up in Heaven. It is because OF God that I have been blessed with children that society abandoned, and He rewarded my wife and myself with their care and well-being.
