Joy and Stephen had their dream family, a perfect little girl and boy… until their eight-month-old son suddenly passed away.
The couple’s hopes and dreams of having their perfect family died that day with him.
Through their pain and grief, Joy and Stephen began to realise their dreams were shifting. They wanted a house full of children. However, there was one problem: they could no longer conceive biologically.
This led the couple down the beautiful road of adoption, where they would adopt five children within a few years. With a family of six healthy children, Joy and Stephen agreed that they were done.
One day, the whole family decided to go to the adoption agencies’ picnic. On the way there, Stephen told Joy, “We are not adopting again.”
“Oh yeah, we’re good. We’re in the thick of it. We are not adopting again,” she responded.
But God had other plans.
The adoption coordinator explained that while healthy infants are usually easy to place, there just aren’t families stepping up for older kids with special needs.
“What do you mean you don’t have families? There is no unadoptable child,” Joy replied
That’s when the coordinator told her about a two-month-old baby girl in hospice care, given just two days to live at birth, who desperately needed a family.
“Hey, there’s this baby. We don’t want her to die without a family,” Joy told her husband at the event.
“This makes no sense. We don’t have anything we need to adopt this baby,” he replied.
After listing his reasons, Joy replied, “We can’t make any of this happen, but God can. All he needs is a yes and a willing heart.”
Just eight days later, they brought home their precious baby girl, Asher—two months old and only five pounds.
Doctors kept warning Stephen and Joy that they didn’t fully understand what they were getting into. They said Asher would need more care than they could ever imagine—and that she’d never be able to see, hear, recognize anyone, or even feel emotions.
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However, they were completely wrong. “People saw things in Asher. She reached the core of them in ways that other people couldn’t,” Joy recalled. “She was just love, and so we found that every member of our family, when experiencing grief… went to Asher when they were happy, mad, sad, for all the emotions, because she just loved.”
“Some people say it takes a special family to raise a special needs child. And it’s not true. We’re not special, we’re not anything wonderful or different. We make mistakes like everyone else… The reality is, we need the special that they bring into our life– like we are all better for having known Asher and for having her in our family.”
Reflecting on Asher’s beautiful life and their family’s adoption journey, Stephen said:
“It’s my challenge to all men out there, that, you know, we need to stop just thinking about our late stage in life to retire, play golf, go fishing. These are all fun things, but what’s your purpose in Life? What kind of legacy are you going to leave behind? Even the impact of one child, bringing one child home and changing that child’s life, that is so important.”
Even when Joy and Stephen had their own plans—first for a small family, then a large one with only healthy children—God was gently guiding them toward something far greater. In the end, through Asher, He revealed His perfect plan. As Joy beautifully said, “There is no unadoptable child.”
Join us in prayer for every child still waiting for a family—that God would surround them with comfort and hope. And we pray for the hearts of future mothers and fathers, that they would be open to the gift of every Life and the incredible blessing of giving a child a loving home.
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