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A truly amazing adoption story

April 19, 2010

Thirty eight years ago on April 24, 1972 a nineteen-year old teenage girl turned to my wife, Violet and handed her a three-day old baby boy. We were standing outside Fairview Southdale hospital in Edina, Minnesota where Jessica, her mother and a nurse carrying Jonathan, had just walked out of the hospital. They came to where we were standing, waiting beside two parked cars. The nurse proceeded to hand Jessica  her new born baby boy and  Jessica  in turn placed him into the waiting arms of my wife Violet.  Jessica  and her mother then got in their car and drove away as we got into ours. Violet and I drove to the parking lot of our local bank and then unwrapped this special "Gift of God" (The meaning of the name Jonathan) while we wept together over God's goodness to us. We had just witnessed the miraculous culmination of an amazing answer to our prayers.

Violet and I entered marriage on July 26, 1966 with all the hopes and dreams of a dedicated Christian couple. We looked forward to serving the Lord together and raising a family that would honor him. In fact, our wedding cake was made in the form of an open Bible with the scripture Joshua 24:15 inscribed on the top, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." We wanted our family to live for the Lord. Little did we realize that within two weeks of returning from our honeymoon our lives would change forever.

Violet had been having some pain in her abdomen prior to our wedding which intensified during our honeymoon. She scheduled an appointment with the doctor upon our return home and, upon examination, was told she needed immediate surgery. Some very large growths were discovered on her ovaries which turned out to be cysts. The on site decision made by the surgeon was to remove both of her ovaries. Of course, this resulted in Violet never being able to bear any children. In that hospital room, my new bride and I wept before the Lord at the loss we were now unexpectantly having to embrace. It was the shattering of a dream we had talked about many times during our year and a half courtship. We lost all our biological children in one heartbreaking moment.

Why had this happened we wondered? Was this the judgment of God for some sins or failures on our part? What should we do now? Should we adopt children? These and many more questions would rise and fall in our hearts over the next five years of our marriage. Every time one of our friends would announce she was pregnant or a baby shower would take place, we would have to go before the Lord and bring our tears and questions to Him again. Eventually, we concluded that we should not pursue adoption through the normal channels, but rather trust the Lord to clearly direct our steps. We had left our professions and educational pursuits after our first year of marriage and entered into Christian ministry. We considered the possibility that God wanted us to remain childless in order to free us up to serve Him in ways that were impossible if we had children. So we decided to leave this decision in the hands of the Lord and let Him clearly open the door if children were to be in our future.

In July of 1971 we were ministering at one of the family camps that our ministry conducted each summer. During one of the evening sessions, the speaker was encouraging everyone to exercise faith and to believe the Lord for impossible things. During the meeting he quoted the scripture Matthew 18:19 (KJV) "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven."

When Vi and I returned to our room later that evening we were surprised to discover that each of us had been given the same impression that we should "agree" together for a child. So we got down on our knees by our bed that night and agreed together in prayer for the child that God wanted to give us. Of course, we had prayed many times over the previous five years for a child, but this night something was different. Our hearts were so filled with faith and with the presence of the Lord that we "knew" we were going to have a child. We just didn't know how it was going to take place.

Little did we realize that just a day or two prior to our prayer on that July evening an unmarried, teenage, college student had conceived a baby boy after a one-time lapse in moral judgment. She was the oldest daughter of a single mom who was on staff of the same ministry we were. This teenage girl, her two brothers and her mother had lived at the family camp we were working with. She had actually been part of the youth group that my wife and I led a couple of years earlier so she knew us.

Several weeks after our "agreement" prayer, the leader of this camp ministry approached us and asked if we would pray about adopting the baby that this girl was now carrying. The Lord had been working in this girl's heart, she had made things right with the Lord, and she wanted this child to grow up having a father. She had grown up in a single-parent home and saw first-hand the value of a child being raised by both a father and a mother.

The Lord eventually confirmed to both of our hearts that this was His answer to our prayers, so we said yes. We went through the pregnancy with Jessica  and arranged for her to stay with some of our friends until the baby was born. Jonathan was born on April 21, 1972, nine months after the Holy Spirit had led us to pray together in our room at the family camp. We went to the hospital and saw him on the day of his birth, and three days later he was placed into our hands as I mentioned in the beginning of this story.
The adoption was legalized six-months later according to the requirements of the state of Minnesota, at which time he officially became our son. His birth-mother went on with her education and eventually married a young man a couple of years later. The Lord blessed them with two precious girls. I had the privilege of dedicating her first daughter to the Lord after she was born.  For personal reasons, Jessica and her husband decided not to tell their girls about Jonathan. So her daughters grew up not knowing they had a half-brother.

Our son, Jonathan, grew up knowing the story of his adoption since we told him the story when he was quite young.  He was aware that we knew his mother and that she had two daughters. When asked if he wanted to pursue a contact with her, he usually responded with "You're my mom and dad" and "I don't have a need to meet her." He seemed to be settled about his past and was satisfied with the information that we had given him.

We maintained periodic contact with Jonathan's biological grandmother since she had been a coworker with us for many years, but our contact with Jonathan's mother was minimal. She had not seen her son since that day she handed him to us in front of the hospital. In January of 2010, I was thinking about our son's birth mother and wanting to make sure we had a current address and phone number since her mother was getting older and was in poor health.  I didn't want to lose contact with  Jessica  in case something happened to her mother. One day when I opened up my Facebook account, there she was! I immediately sent a message to her asking if she was interested in connecting with us. I knew her husband had passed away four years ago from cancer and I was interested to see how she was doing. I also knew her daughters were unaware of Jonathan's existence so I approached her with caution.

She responded very positively and was highly interested in further contact. At her request, we sent her pictures of Jonathan and his family and gave her some updates on his life. Amazingly, my wife and I were scheduled to be in Minneapolis about four weeks after I saw her on Facebook, so we arranged a dinner meeting with her at that time. It was a special time from the Lord catching up on each other's lives and reminiscing about the events that brought us together thirty eight years ago. We all sensed that the Lord had something special in mind by bringing us back together again. We asked her if she was interested in meeting Jonathan. She expressed a desire to meet him if he was open to such a meeting. She was anxious to know what he thought of her and was unsure of how he would respond to such a request. We agreed to pursue this with our son.

Upon our return home, we approached our son with this surprising news, and gratefully his response was positive, as well. The Lord had been preparing his heart and he was now in a place to pursue such a meeting himself. He said he wanted to meet her, give her a big hug and say, "Thank you for what you did." When we conveyed Jon's response to his birth mother, she was overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude. Thus, began the process of setting up a reunion with our son and his birth mother. She proceeded to share the news with her two married daughters and they began e-mailing our son, as well. They, too, wanted to meet him as soon as possible and to connect with the brother they never knew they had.

Jon had a business trip planned to Eau Claire, Wisconsin in March, so it was arranged that  Jessica  would travel there and meet him and his wife. On March 20, 2010, Jonathan and his birth mother met for the first time in thirty eight years. His wife, Shelly, was with him for the first two hours and then they were joined by Jonathan's three children (Jessica 's grandchildren) for lunch. They brought pictures, shared memories, asked questions, and spent over seven hours together. It was a special time of healing and joy.

Two weeks later (Easter weekend 2010), Jonathan and his family traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota to spend the weekend with Jessica  and her family. Jon met his two half-sisters and their families for the first time. All the children (7 cousins) got along very well since they were in a similar age range (2-8 years old). They spent Friday afternoon until Sunday morning together having barbeques, eating out, bowling, swimming and sharing stories and pictures together. Jon's half sisters came over to the motel where Jon's family was staying on Saturday night before Jon left on Sunday morning and talked with him until 1:30 in the morning. It was quite a remarkable weekend. Upon the conclusion of their time together, Jon's biological mother sent the following message to us on Easter Sunday.


Larry & Vi:

I hope you are having a blessed Easter!  As they were leaving this morning, Aby and Todd mentioned excitedly that they were going to have dinner with Grandma and Grandpa when they got home.

I had a wonderful weekend with Jon and his family!  I hope you know how much this has meant to me and to my daughters.  Thank you again for the generous way you brought Jon back into my life.  I knew 38 years ago that I was doing God's will, but it has been so exciting to see the proof that it was the right thing to do, and you were and are the right parents for him!  I feel like a new person...100 pounds lighter.

I'm sure Jon and Shelly will share their pictures with you, but I thought I'd share the attached one of Jon and my daughters, and of their children with you in the meantime.  God is so wonderful!!!

Love,
Jessica

As you can imagine, this has been an exciting and emotional journey for all of us. We have the sense that God is doing something extraordinary again. He brought us together in a remarkable way thirty-eight years ago and He had done so again to complete what was begun back then. It has been quite a story! Who knows where it may yet end up. Thanks for your prayers for our family as we continue on this journey in the future.  

(Jonathan's biological mother's name has been changed in this story to protect her privacy)

Larry Ballard
Director U of N Family Resource Centre

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