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How did a country gal from rural Indiana end up in Kitchener, Ontario with a wonderful husband and two boys with the extra cuteness gene on their 21st chromosome?
Well, I was born in 1956... no just kidding! I won't start back THAT far....I was a nurse working in Columbus Ohio when I met the neatest, nicest guy who lived in Ottawa, Ontario. We met through a Christian singles group online and knew we had found what we had been waiting for. Getting engaged on Labor Day and getting married in early December was challenging. My house sold quickly, I packed my things, quit my job, got married, said goodbye to my family and friends, and moved to Canada.
We knew we couldn't have children, and so even though we were 37 and 41, we decided to explore adoption. We decided to look for older children, perhaps a sibling group who would be about the age of the children people our age would have. We did a home study, moved to a big house in the country and bought a van. And we waited.
We tried public adoption, but for reasons beyond ourselves, we were not chosen to parent any children available to us. We began to think that God wanted us just to be a couple. We began praying and fasting one day a week to see what the Lord would have us do. In the meantime, we were fixing up the house, painting the '"children's" bedrooms and working on other projects around our house. Finally, one day my husband Alan suggested that I call around to the list of private adopters and see what was happening in private adoption. (Public adoption is free here, but private adoption can run over $20,000. We didn't have the money to adopt privately.)
Six weeks passed.
Finally, my patient husband asked me if I would please call private adopters that day. So, in the morning, I called the lawyers I had on the list. They all said that most people are either keeping or aborting their babies and that not much was happening. At lunch I asked Alan whether I should even bother calling anyone else. He encouraged me to forge ahead.
I called Jewels For Jesus, which is a Christian adoption agency in the Toronto area. We had contacted them initially but we would have had to spend several thousand dollars in orientation, and other initial fees. We are conservative. We look square. Girls in a crises pregnancy could be our daughter because of our ages. Which young girl would choose us to parent her coming newborn? We thought we would pay all this money upfront and still not have a child.
Holly answered the phone at Jewels For Jesus. I told her we were older, were looking for a sibling group and she asked if we would consider a baby. Not only a baby. But, a baby with Down syndrome. When one chooses to adopt, you have a choice about what kind of person you will accept. We decided we would adopt anyone we could have had ourselves...excpet for race. We would take a child of any race.
She took my name and phone number. Five minutes later, the executive director called me and asked if we would take a babay with Down Syndrome. I told her we really wanted a sibling group since you have to wait 18 months between each adoption, if you adopt just one child. (Siblings come together.)
What I didn't know until I was standing in the lobby of the hospital, waiting to take home our little 5 1/2# Andrew, was what had happened the morning I had called.
A couple came to Jewels a few weeks before and were distressed because she was pregnant with twin baby boys. They had a 2 year old daughter, and the mother had planned on staying home from work to care for the three of them. Then they found out that one of the boys had Down syndrome. They didn't know what to do. They were being pressured by the genetic doctor to abort little Andrew. The mother's mother had been put in jail for demonstrating outside abortion clinics and they felt conflicted to know what to do. Jewels staff told them to give them x number of days to find someone to take their unborn baby with Down Syndrome.
They searched all over Ontario. No one knew of anyone who wanted to adopt a child with Down syndrome. Time was running out.
The very morning I called, the exectutive director and program director had come in and said they wouldn't be doing any work that day. They would just be praying and fasting for parents for this unwanted baby. I had been planning to call for 6 weeks. I called just the day they needed us. Not the day before. Not the day after.
Just after my call, the birth mother called Jewels and said the genetic doctor has set up an appointment to abort her baby with Down syndrome. She was weeping. They told her they had found parents for her son, even though they had never met us. We had just talked 20 minutes before the birth mother called.
So, we took little blond Andrew home after he and his twin were born. His twin went home with his parents a day before Andrew was ready to go home. There was still one little problem.
My husband is a self-employed writer. He helps nonprofits raise funds for their causes. Back over 7 years ago, he was just getting started and he didn't always have lots of work. So, the one remaining problem was money.
We decided that we hadn't planned on adopting a baby and that it was the Lord's idea, so we would leave it up to Him to provide the funds we needed. A lot of the preliminary fees (orientation,etc) were avoided since the twins would be born in couple of months, so we thought wow, we are getting a bargain baby! We had enough money initially to pay our installements.
Then, Alan's work slowed down. One day as I got the mail in, I noticed something from Jewels, and something from my 90 something year old grandmother who lived in the US. The money in grandma's letter was for Andrew's adoption, and was more than enough to cover the bill in the other envelope.
Soon Alan's work stopped. Jewels For Jesus moved offices at that point and were looking for someone who would be able to move some walls, build a care cupboard and help get the new space ready. Since Alan didn't have work, he went to their office and worked for a few days. When he left, they told him they would pay the last of our fees that we would owe. The Lord provided funds through Alan's work, and then through other means...it was quite a ride.
What happened next?
Last edited by living4him; 10-08-2009 at 07:05 PM..
Reason: added words
Alan decided to work for a nonprofit. We put our house up for sale in the dead of winter with big drifts piled all around and moved to London, Ontario to a small rental. Just as soon as our house sold, we signed the papers for a new house in London, Alan was laid off. Now, we couldn't go back, and we couldn't go forward. It worked out that our new mortgage was modified, and they allowed us to move in, even though we had NO income. (That's another story about God fixing things.) He had no clients. We had no income. Somehow just enough work came in for us to scrape by. We moved in July.
One evening in late September, Alan and I were talking about whether we should adopt again and how we would know what God would have us to do. We agreed that we couldn't afford it....we had little to no income...Alan said that if we don't let Children's Aid (public adoption) or Jewels know that we were ready to adopt again...then it wouldn't happen. We weren't ready to adopt....he was being hypothetical. He said someone woulld have to just 'call us out of the blue.' I said "oh, that'll never happen."
Yes, you guessed it! In a few weeks, the phone rang one Monday evening, the beginning of October. Alan talked for a bit, then called for me to get on the phone. You see the previous Friday twin boys were born in the Toronto area.
The mother's pregnancy had started out as triplets. At six weeks gestation, the little girl fetus was removed surgically from her mother's fallopian tube. The mother developed placenta previa and was eclamptic and was on bedrest all summer. She is a teacher and she and her husband had decided they would not have a child with special needs. However, because her pregnancy was so complicated, they opted to not have an amniocentesis done. And when her twin boys were born, it was discovered that one of the twins had Down Syndrome.
The parents were distressed and heard about Jewels For Jesus and called them on Saturday. (Jewels normally just has typical babies for adoption and it is not real common for them to place special needs children.) By Monday, Jewels staff had decided to call us since this little baby's story was so similar to our little Andrew's story. They gave us until WEd. to decide what we should do. They would have to start a search throughout Ontario again if we didnt' take him. Alan found the verse in James that talks about pure religion is to visit the fatherless. To visit means to take care of. If this little one wasn't fatherless, who is? I called mothers in California and Indiana that I knew that had adopted more than one child with Down syndrome.
We listed the reasons we should adopt this baby, and couldn't think of any good ones that we shouldn't...oh wait....there was the money thing....
During our initial talk about this new little baby, I brought up the fact that we had just moved, and that we had NO income. The ex. director said she would talk to the board and see if we could make payments. "PAYMENTS" i said to my dear Alan when we got off the phone. HOW can we make payments when we have nothing?
So, we lept out in faith once again. We went to meet our little Spencer on Thursday. We spent several hours with him and then we had to go home. He went to a Christian foster home while we were in high gear to get physicals done, police checks and a new home study. Nineteen days after Spencer was born we got a call that we could go pick him up and take him home. We did. We drove for hours and got home at midnight.
It wasn't until several weeks later that we realized that we had gotten both our little boys on the exact same day, Oct. 22!!!! Two years to the day seperated their homecoming and our becoming a family.
(We thought Andrew was our bargain baby! HA! Jewels For Jesus staff decided to do fund raising to pay for Spencer's adoption. So he was FREE!)
So what?
Last edited by living4him; 10-08-2009 at 07:32 PM..
Reason: add forgotten detail
So, here we are to today. Spencer just turned 6 last Saturday and Andrew's eighth birthday will be here on the 21st. We are busy. Alan is again employed by a wonderful nonprofit that has a wonderful cause and he loves his work. I am busy trying to home school two boys with Down syndrome, and trying to keep up my energy in a 53 year old body.
We are seven hours away from our nearest family member. We are considered low income, so we are grateful to receive two forms of government assistance. One pays for therapuetic horse back riding, camps, swimming lessons, dance and music lessons, etc. Another pays for my respite worker that comes and helps me with the boys so I can do doctors appointments, speech and music therapy sessions.
Both boys have been reading since they were two years old. We are driven to help them be all the Lord wants them to be. We are behind in so many ways. They are nice boys. Speech is a challenge. There are other challenges that I won't list....life is hard for them.
Last month after researching something for a long time and seeing changes in other children, I started giving our boys a supplement that is expensive. I started at a low dose, and waited to see what if any changes I would notice.
Andrew started singing. He never tried to sing before. Spencer started going up the steps in an alternating foot pattern and started talking more too. There were lots of changes...more focus....ability to follow instructions more quickly and better, etc. Soon I had to tell my husband and respite person what was going on because they saw changes and didn't know why this was happening all of a sudden.
This supplement costs $.60/each. A low dose is 4 each a day. (If I can buy 1000 at a time, I can save $100 buthave to spend $500!) We don't have that kind of money. We have only had a short 3 day family vacation, ever. I am thrifty in the grocery store, we drive old cars, we don't eat out often, some of my sweaters are 20 years old. We are nip and tuck with what we get and live simply. Anything we have spare....is used for things for our boys.
We can't afford this. I say we can't afford NOT to do this!
About four years ago, someone invited a SU demo to come to a mom's group that I attended once a week. All the mom's had a child with a special need and the children would play together and we would get together and do crafts and visit. I remember being annoyed that the demo was there because I had stayed up really late the night before getting things together so I could start scrap books for our boys' life books. (Life books tell the adoption story and I was eager to get these books together so our boys would be able to grow up looking at books with their birth siblings and parents and hear/see their stories.)
What happened was I got bitten by the stamping bug! I knew nothing about scrapping or stamping....I started visiting this wonderful website here when I had time...which was always in short supply....all birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas gifts were always money so I could buy some things I wanted to stamp with.
Two years ago, I made a small stack of cards for my mom and sisters for Christmas. My sister, a school nurse in Indiana, took hers to work and before I knew it, she called with a list of cards that people wanted me to make to sell. So, I made those. I kept on learning a bit more. Always just lurking on blogs and here. Never really findiing the time to post. Always loving the creativity of making cards....late at night when I wasn't too tired.
So, there are more people that want to buy my cards. (They are certainly nothing like the wonderful creations you find all through this website....but, if people want to give me money for them.....OK!)
So, what's the problem?
I
Last edited by living4him; 10-08-2009 at 07:30 PM..
Reason: correcting spelling
I have set up some wonderful tables in our unfiinished basement. I have claimed a couple of small sections of a storage shelf for my inks and supplies. I have positioned the table under the one big light in the room. My dear husband found a small white cabinet with drawers at the side of the road...this is where i have some adhesives, individual stamps, ribbon and pencils. I found a small white cabinet with drawers on the side of the road and that is where I have the few stamp sets I own.
I am grateful for everything that I have. I don't have a lot compared to many, so I consider all my cards "limited supply challenge" cards! I do know a few people that don't have any stamping goodies and I would love love sharing my stuff with them.....but not in the basement....too dark and creepy and cold down there....
The main reason I believe I could use the ScrapBox is because of our boys. I would love to be able to crank more cards out (love CAS cards) so I could be able to continue the supplement I mentioned. I can't be downstairs during the day because the boys can get into things when I am not around. It is too dirty (unfinished floor, spiders,etc) and there are too many things for them to get into down there. If I could have my things tucked away in the sb in the dining room or living room, then if I get a call (and all my dishes are done-usually what I do when I'm on the phone for a bit) I can pull out my card suplpies and work away....every minute counts around here.
I wouldn't have to worry about the boys getting into my stuff and I could feel good about having someone over to share my tools.
Will try and post some pictures. Thanks for considering me. Ruth Sharpe
Photos of my work space and Andrew and Spencer doing therapeutic horse back riding. They love it! They have had Sam and Caspian as their horses over the past year and started this session with them again.
Plus, another photo of my work area in the basement.
This has been a stressful time for me, so I have not been able to really do anything creative for this giveaway. Andrew has just been declared a strept. carrier as we have done three rounds of antibiotics and he still has strept throat. He is finding it hard to swallow, eat and sleep. I have had a sinus infection and may have had a touch of the flu.
We were allowed to gleen organic apples on Saturday and my husband and I managed to pick up around 14 bushels of apples that I have been making into sauce. Our boys take their vit. and supplements (iron, zinc, magnesim,etc.) in organic applesauce since they can't swallow caps with water yet. So, these apples will decrease our food bill over the year by $10/week. Am going to have to share a few 'cause I've only canned 4 bushels this week. Will try and do two more today after we get back from horse back riding.
This storage box will help me get some cards done during my day and will increase my productivity since my stuff will be more handy and I can work in the same room as the boys on our main floor.
Would love to have friends over like I did at our previous home to share the tools and supplies I do have. Thanks for such a wonderful website. I could spend weeks here and have to discipline myself to quit at a certain time which I have to decide before I start. I really enjoy everyone's creativity though I just don't have time to post comments. Maybe in 10 or 15 years.....
Thanks for taking the time to read our little story. Ruth
Thank you for sharing your wonderful story!
What a blessing you are to these beautiful boys... and they to you.
God is good and wonderful.
May your blessings continue!!!!
Thank you for sharing this amazing story with us... Your boys are
handsome little cuties. You are most deserving, I truly hope you get the organizer.
__________________ ~~@Marcia Luisa@~~ Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance. -Bruce Barton
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Down syndrome, a basement and a ScrapBox
