Hi, this is Joni Eareckson Tada with a special interview today.
And here we are smack in the middle of our busiest season of Family Retreats and I have a couple I’d like you to hear: Michael and Jan and their adopted son who has multiple disabilities. How he was adopted is quite a story, and I recorded their comments right on the campus of our Family Retreat…
Joni: Jan, you and your husband have quite a story to tell about how Joshua came into your life, right?
Jan: We do! Joshua was a baby that was born with some problems and he was in a neo-natal intensive care unit in Virginia …
Joni: …and you were working there as a nurse.
Jan: I was a nurse and so I took care of him for the first week of his life and found out that he had a really bad heart defect. And he had an infection that made him have to have surgery and he wound up with an illiestomy, so we became his foster parents because we didn’t want him to be floating through the foster system with all his medical problems.
Joni: So his birth mother couldn’t keep him and so he would have just been shifted from one pillar to the next post, but you stepped into the gap, right?
Jan: She had given him up for adoption before he was even born, so we knew that he was adoptable but just concerned about all of his medical problems. So we became his foster parents when he was two weeks old; he came home to us—never went anywhere else—and now he is 27 years old and he’s ours.
Joni: And you have all come to Family Retreat as a family. What does Joshua like about Family Retreat?
Jan: Swimming. He likes to be able to be free to be himself where sometimes in society he has to be quite, he has to not hug everybody he sees—that’s his favorite thing. So he gets to hug everybody here; he gets to say “hello”; he gets to go swimming; he just gets to have fun.
Joni: Now there might be some friends listening who are considering adoption of a special needs child. What would you tell them?
Jan: I would tell them to pray about it, to trust God, and to go ahead and do it. It may be a little bit extra work, but the rewards are so much greater and they will be happy that they did.
Joni: Coming from you that means a lot because what our listeners can’t see is that you are in a wheelchair too. You have this little three-wheeled scooter that you have been running around Family Retreat campus in due to a back surgery recently, right?
Jan: Yes!
Joni: How can we pray for you and your family?
Jan: Just for ongoing health and that we get to come back next year. We leave here ready to come back because it is such a wonderful experience.
Joni: A refreshment for you and your husband?
Jan: Definitely a refreshment—a renewal, rededication—you just don’t know how relaxing it is to come here and meet other families from all across the country who have children or loved ones with disabilities and see how they cope. If God has ordained it, when you come there is going to be a special short term missionary that has been chosen just for their child that is going to meet that child’s needs, regardless of what their special needs are. Everybody here is just so relaxed and so accepting and so wanting to help that Family Retreat is the best place that anybody with special needs could come to.
Joni: Thank you!
Jan: Thanks!
Joni: So glad you could hear this story from Michael and Jan. And bless Jan’s heart – a little boy with multiple disabilities is in critical care in the neo-natal unit … a child that the mother wants to give up … and God moves on Jan’s heart (a nurse in that unit) to make a difference. There are so many stories and sounds and sights of Family Retreat I’d like you to hear, so take a minute and visit my radio page today at joniandfriends.org. There’s a fun video about Family Retreats I really don’t want you to miss!
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