Dawning Dreams

It's very hard to believe, but this last September we celebrated 20 years of marriage. As we exchanged our vows before God and our assembled family and friends, if we'd had any inkling of the Lord's plan for our family, we probably would have both run screaming from the altar. (just kidding Ü )

All joking aside, our eight precious children are treasured gifts from heaven, and we are humbled and honored that we were chosen by God to be their parents...six through the miracle of birth, and two through the miracle of adoption. And to help you fully understand how adoption has touched our lives, we feel we must, as the lyrics of a popular song instruct, “start at the very beginning”.

During the first 15 months of our marriage as we experienced the heartache of infertility, the Lord laid a burden on our hearts to minister His love and hope to women facing a crisis pregnancy who might be considering abortion. We had also begun exploring the possibility of building our family through adoption, but our plans had to be put on hold when the Lord unexpectedly gave us the best Christmas present we could have asked for -- a positive pregnancy test. Ü Our first son, Jared Paul, was born the following summer.

Our second son, Jason Daniel, arrived a mere 16 months later, and when he was a few months old, we began attending counselor training classes at a crisis pregnancy center in Colorado Springs. But the Lord had other plans for our family, and in 1991, before we were able to complete our training, we felt His leading to relocate to Kansas.

Over the next seven years, the Lord blessed us with four additional children -- Janae Alyse, Jalyn Nicole, Jamye Chanielle, and Jacob Seth -- and we were very content with our "perfect family" of three boys and three girls. In the busy-ness of our lives, we thought our burden to counsel women facing crisis pregnancies and abortion was just a "pipe dream" destined never to be fulfilled, but we can see now that the Lord was just biding His time.