Giving Up Joshua

It was a day in June, 1978 when the call to Martha from our church came. They wanted to know if we were willing to temporarily care for a new born baby boy, just a week or so in age, by the name of Joshua. Would we ever, yes oh yes! Martha called me at my work and I agreed without hesitation. Joshua's mother was a druggie and a partier and she had simply handed him over to strangers and walked off. Over the years of our marriage both Martha and I had gone through medical testing and we had found that she was allergic to my sperm, Allergic to the point that it was killed on contact with her body. According to medical science there was absolutely no chance that Martha could become pregnant by her husband. It was devastating, especially since she had been longing for children all of her adult life. For men it's a little different but I too wanted children.

Joshua was less than a week old when we brought him into our house. That first day I came home and saw him I wondered how anything so small could possibly survive, let alone thrive. To a six foot three man he looked like a little doll on a store shelf. Joshua was real enough alright and the sequences of diaper changing, middle of the night feedings and all the rest quickly molded us into parents. The church we attended was happy for us to have this baby and even though there was no paper work, no official sanction or blessing, we were considered by everyone as his parents. His mother, Emily, was still hanging around and drifted into church from time to time - sometimes drunk - but she showed no interest in her baby.

Joshua was a chunky little fellow with black hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion. His chubby cheeks were a light shade of red and he was forever smiling and laughing since we handled him so much. When we got him we also got some food stamps that had been given to his mother and although we were often strapped for cash we never used one penny of his money for ourselves. It was all spent on Joshua and for his personal needs. We dipped frequently into our meager funds for doctor's fees when he had ear infections and other ailments. I was the only one working and Martha was happy to stay home with "Josh" as we had come to call him. I had become a Christian several months before and we had come to know that God was going to send us a child. There's a book in that that is not written here. We would have been overjoyed to have Josh as our son but we knew in our hearts that it was not to be. I often asked God to let us keep the boy but I always felt a "no" in my stomach. One day after church while we were eating lunch in a restaurant, the Lord impressed me with a verse of scripture, Genesis 17:18, 19; Abraham was speaking and said; "And Abraham said unto God, Oh that Ishmael might live before thee! And God said; Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

I understood that Josh, like Ishmael for Abraham, would not be ours but that Martha would bear our own son. Even though we knew what we had to do it didn't hurt any less. Just because God tells you to do something doesn't mean that it will be easy. Martha began to know that a childless couple at our church was to get Joshua to raise as their own son. She began talking to them but I was not so sure. I didn't realize how Joshua had become a part of me and that I really didn't want to give him up to anyone. After awhile though we both knew what we were to do. The couple tracked down Emily who was living with an attorney in Denver, Colorado. They bought a plane ticket and we agreed that I was to go to Denver and get Emily to sign adoption papers granting the couple legal right to adopt Josh.

It was cold in Denver when I arrived and they were trying to get over a blizzard. The temperature was only about five degrees and snow was piled up everywhere. I took a cab to the address I had been given and when I knocked at the door the woman that answered looked at me like I was a mass murderer. It seems that Miss Emily had been up to her old tricks, telling the couple, whose children she watched while they worked, that we had stolen her baby and cast her out in the cruel world. The man, who was a lawyer, was away at a funeral and his wife would not even let me in the same room with them. Emily must have been pretty convincing in painting us as contemptible and I'm surprised I was even allowed in the house. Sometime a few hours later the man came in and I was able to sit with him and tell him the true account of Joshua and his mother. He astounded me by advising Emily to sign the papers. Lawyers never tell anyone to do something right now. It's always "wait while I examine all of the facts". I knew that I was witness to a miracle. They asked Emily to leave since she was no longer welcome around their small children. Emily, we found out, had once considered drowning Joshua just after he was born, and I knew that it was not a good idea to have her care for any child.

It was growing late in the day now and the Denver afternoon temperature was dropping quickly as Emily and I headed out the door then down the sidewalk. We couldn't get the cab company to respond so we took off on foot. Snow was piled alongside of the streets and ice coated parts of the pavement as we headed out to a major street a few blocks away. We managed to hop an open air city trolley car that was filled with other frosty travelers, and we all shivered together as the car rattled along the iron rails in front of the capitol building. I was concerned about being late for my flight as we left the trolley behind. It would not go all the way to the airport and cabs would not stop at all. We hitched a ride with a stranger and I paid him twenty bucks for a ride to the terminal. Emily and I got some food and sat waiting for my flight. When it was time to leave I gave her some money and she cried, but I knew she had friends to stay with and was not concerned about her not having a roof over her head. We had done the best we could to try and help her but she was not tired of living in the pig pen yet. Until a person gets tired of wallowing in the mire it is useless to try and clean them up.

The cabin of the jet seemed cramped and small those hours of flight back to Little Rock. The day had begun at about three am when I arose and drove the fifty miles from our home to the airport. My flight was at five am and it was eleven pm when I disembarked the plane back at Little Rock. I had been running full speed under great pressure for nearly twenty four hours over several states. The young couple was waiting there for me and I related to them the exhausting events of the day. Martha and I were going to pack up little Josh and all of his small things then surrender him the next morning. It was about one am or after when I finally reached home and I was totally exhausted. I had only been asleep for a few hours when they called early next morning wanting to know when we were coming. I could understand their excitement but we were already grieving our loss.

That last morning Martha dressed him in a nice little outfit with his small blue coat since the December weather had really turned cold. All of his things were packed and I snapped a picture of him on the couch as he sat quietly waiting to begin another chapter in his brief life. It's not that we wanted to let him go but God had directed us to do this thing and even though we had been married for fourteen years, more years than Joshua's parents to be, the Lord still saw fit to place six month old baby Joshua in their hands. The weekend before the three of us had taken a long drive in the mountains, sort of a farewell trip. Most of that drive was punctuated by intermittent downpours of tears from the both of us. We had known that soon we would be giving up the only child we had ever known and that there was no chance of claiming him for our own. We took him, our beloved temporary son to the home of his new parents and left after praying for everyone. We went to church that night and sang praises to God. We were heavy of heart but living in hope that we had really heard from the creator and that we would have our own children. We knew that we had done his will but it seemed that we had been run down by a train. How empty our house was with just the two of us. I would look at the picture of him in that little blue coat and weep. Now the two of us just had to stand, continue to stand on what we were sure that God had spoken.

It was ten months or so, October 1979 that is, before the word came. I was home on vacation and the good shepherd spoke to me and said that he had done what he had promised and that the mouths of the scoffers would be shut at the telling. Everyone that we had told that God had promised us a son either laughed in our faces or looked down at their shoes, pitying these poor fools that believed God actually speaks to men and would really do such a thing. We went to a lab for testing and the attendant there announced "It's a nice positive result". We launched out to tell all of the scoffers and truly their mouths were shut, and some of them actually flew open in amazement. Martha went out that same week and bought a baby book wherein she wrote the name we had decided on, Nathan Matthew. He was born on June 25th, 1980. Joanna Lee was born on March 23rd, 1982 and then our last little handful on purpose - Laura DeAnn - was born on March 16th, 1988. Martha was thirty seven when Nathan was born, thirty nine when Joanna arrived and forty five when Miss Laura, alias deedle, came. Does God answer prayer? Can he still accomplish miracles and creations in this day and time? You decide. At this writing Nathan, now twenty nine is attending Oral Roberts University and Laura is twenty one a senior honor student at an Arkansas university. Joanna was killed by a drunk driver just after she turned fifteen and part of our heart went with her.

The children are grown and gone now. Joshua, whose name was changed by his newly appointed parents, is grown and has a life of this own. We have never seen him since the day we bundled him up for special delivery. We were determined to stay away and not meddle. Martha and I are now alone once again, but we got to see God do some things that many people only dream of seeing. At this writing we have been married over forty three years and the storms and miracles have only drawn us closer together. Our life has been a peculiar one, one that it is impossible for me to describe, but we saw God open a closed womb and create life when man said it was impossible. Never stop trusting in him.