The Miracle of Zeke

People who know us well, know the miracle of our son Zeke.  The miracle of a dream the Lord gave me to know that we were supposed to, without a doubt, take him home with us as our son and not be afraid of his mothers diagnosis or for his future.  This was a time in my life when I was saved and we felt we lived for the Lord.  But God was growing us and pulling us totally out of our comfort zone by showing Himself to us daily. In big ways He has continued to do so as we obeyed and followed His will thru the years, even up to now.  Even when those things seemed to make no sense.  We obeyed and followed.  Even though we were shunned, talked about, disowned and gossiped about by so many.  We learned to listen to God, follow Him and rely on Him. No matter what.  God is so good and faithful.  It was the beginning of the budding of true faith and reliance daily in God for all things.  I will never forget.  

I am writing todays post, to join with others, in sharing Gods faithfulness and miracle ways He has moved in our lives.   Sharing for Memorial Box Monday on Linny's blog over at A Place Called Simplicity.  To bring encouragement, and give testimony of Gods perfect timing and hand in our lives.  Retelling the times He moved mountains and answered prayers.  God is so good and we all go thru things in life where we need our faith boosted by stories of Gods faithfulness and miracles He has done for us and others.  We are told in Gods Word to rehearse our past victories in Him.  I always am so encouraged as I leave reading all the miracle stories that others share on this day on Linny's blog.  Praise be to God always and forever for His mercy, grace and gifts of miracles when we need it in life.  I am forever grateful to Him now and always.

    

In 2001 Tim and I had went thru a stage where we decided that we didn’t want to take in any more babies for a while and had just donated all our baby things.  We had decided with how much work Antonio (our 7 year old son that was wheel chair bound with spastic CP and a feeding tube) was and with Carolyn (1 year old with fetal alcohol syndrome) being so clingy that we needed a break from babies for a while.  So we could devote more time to there's and our other children's needs.  

There was a case worker at our DFCS that had tried for years to have a baby and could not.  After  many years she and her husband had just adopted a baby.  Every time I went in to DFCS I would stop by her office and get an update on how her new baby was doing.  One night I had a dream.  The dream happened like this….

I walked into DFCS to turn in some paper work and this case worker said to me…”do you and Tim want my baby”.  

I said. “ I can’t take your baby. You have waited for years to have a baby and now you have adopted”.  “I can’t take your baby”.    

She said.  “There is something seriously wrong with this baby. “ 

And I reiterated that I could not take her baby.  That she loved her baby.  Then the director of DFCS walked up behind her and said to me. “ You will be really blessed if you take this baby.”    

Then I woke up and thought, that was a strange dream.  Dreams are strange some times.  So I thought no more of it.  BUT….the next day.  I did drive over to DFCS to turn in some paper work and as I walked by that same case workers open office door, she hollered out to me.  “Susan!  Do you and Tim want a baby.”   I said “No.”   “ Tim and I talked about it.  I just got rid of all my baby things because we decided that we were not going take in babies at least for a while.”  She said “Susan, you and Tim would be perfect for this baby.”  “There is something seriously wrong with this baby.”  I froze.  Then the director walked up and patted me on the back and said.  “Come-on,  you will be really blessed if you take in this baby.”    My mouth went dry.  I could not believe what I was hearing.  So I said…”Ok….tell me about this baby.”  So they told me how they had a new born baby that they had been trying to find a home for, for 8 days and no one would take it.  The hospital wanted it moved and it was not in our county.  The baby was born to an HIV positive mom who didn’t take her meds thru the whole pregnancy or go to her health appointments or prenatal visits.  She didn't tell the hospital staff about her HIV status and they didn't take any of the extra precautions that would help prevent the spread of it to the baby.  She had all of her previous children taken away for one reason or another.  

The first person I called was our pediatrician to find out what I needed to know about HIV.   Then I called my husband.  I started to tell him about the dream and didn't even get to what the pediatrician said and Tim said go bring that baby home.  So after a series of events (running around buying and borrowing baby stuff) we went and picked up Zeke and brought him home with us.   He was a medically fragile child (lots of breathing and feeding issues) and was a lot of work but oh the sweet cubbiness of his adorable self.  

The cuddly hours of holding and loving on him.  Made it all worth it.  Eventually they did terminate the parental rights and we adopted him.  

We were told that he had a 70% chance of being HIV positive because of all the things that were not done to help prevent it.  

Praise be to God the HIV antibodies washed out of his system at 18  months old completely!!!  

He still has a lot of things we work with him on from day to day as his diagnoses are autism, asthma, trachealmalacia, audio processing disorder,  floppy tone cerebral palsy and pica. 

We have him on a special diet and if he gets into something he should not eat he starts having all his severe autistic behaviors return and he becomes aggressive.  He just can't control his feelings to hit or act out if he gets exposed to his trigger foods. 

When he is eating exactly right he is a kind, gentle, sweet, funny little guy.  So we watch his diet like a hawk. 

Zeke is a child that is a miracle to me.  He learns at his own sweet, slow, pace and there is no hurrying him.

There is no pushing him into anything.  He is delayed in his speech and in learning.  He has never progressed past the first grade level of learning. (so far!  We pray daily for his progression and see progress all the time.)  

But we work at it daily and he is progressing.  Just very slowly with lots of repetition.  

He is a great kid.  

Obedient, sweet to his siblings, caring and loving with animals.  

He works so hard at all he does.   He is a wonderful son and God was right!  We have been very blessed to take this child into our hearts and lives.  He is 11 years old now!

He loves coffee so I bought him a Dunkin Donut cup with 99 cent refills.  After I gave it to him he came to me like this.  So I took his picture.  :)  This is his excited look.  His face is, believe it or not, flacid with no expression most of the time.  We have to take 20 pictures or more to get one good one of a real smile.  This was pretty good. 

1 Corinthians 2:5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

 May God give you the gift of faith that you need to believe for the miracles you need in your life.

Blessings, 

susan