Adoption changes families in a myriad of ways. For the past two days, Sue Badeau has been sharing the story of how adopting 20 children. 3 of those children had terminal diagnoses, changed their family. In Part 1, you met Sue and her husband Hector and heard their adoption story. In Part 2, she focused on the experience of adopting children with special needs. Today, in Part 3, Sue shares lessons they learned as they grieved for their sons.

Adopting Terminally Ill Children: One Family’s Story, Pt. 3

Three Lessons Learned

1. Everyone can heal and grow. Healing and growth may look different for each individual. We may never see the wholeness we are hoping for, but we can continue to work towards it. I learned this lesson at an early age from my grandfather as he showed me how he cared differently for the various plants in his vegetable garden so that each would have the best chance of growing and bearing fruit.  I have come to understand that this analogy also applies to children—they are not all easy to grow, like zucchini, but then, what a boring garden it would be if we grew nothing but zucchini!
2. There is as much value in the journey as in the destination. I know, I know, it sounds like a worn cliché, but we have found it to be true.  Years ago, we went on a family hike and this message came home to me in a powerful way as I saw my small son Raj, who had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and told that he would never walk, clambering along the hiking trail with his brothers and sisters.  Years later as we experienced everything from teen pregnancy to a son in prison, I have had to remind myself again and again of this important lesson.
3. While God does not “fix” everything in the sense of removing all obstacles, curing all diseases, or unlocking all disabling conditions, He does, indeed, make all things new. I learned this after experiencing a car wreck—I still have some scars and there are things I cannot do, yet I was changed by the experience and “made new” in important ways.   And as I think about some my children viewed as most “damaged” by the world—whether physically or emotionally “damaged” by all kinds of brutal early life experiences, turning to drugs, early pregnancies or other outlets for their pain—I know that some people look at them and only see the wreck. But I like to look at them and see them as survivors.  And I am always amazed how, in spite of the “damage” they have sustained, they, through God’s grace and healing power, are able to find amazing new ways to do old things that many of us take for granted—communication, relationships, eating, moving, getting through the day.

Toolkit for Parents Caring for Terminally Ill Children

If I were to try to offer words of encouragement to parents caring for children with severe special needs and terminal illnesses, I would urge them to create a toolkit for themselves to help them make it through the dark times.  Into the toolkit would go at least the following tools:

• Knowledge – Get as much information about your child’s condition, current state-of-the-art research, and treatment options as you can.
• Self-care – When on an airplane, the safety instructions include these critical words, “When traveling with a child, put your own oxygen mask on first.”  While this initially seems counterintuitive to parents, it is essential.  You cannot care for anyone if you are out of oxygen yourself.  Feed your soul—make a personal self-care plan and follow it.
• Intimacy and affection – Nurture your relationships with your spouse and other people in your life that are important to you.  They need you, you need them, and together you will create a strong team (the cord of 3 strands in Ecclesiastes 4:12) to meet the needs of your special child(ren).
• Anger management techniques – Don’t deny anger when it comes—and it WILL come. Whether you become angry at the disease itself that plagues your child, the health care system, the schools, strangers on the street, yourself, or God, there will be times of anger.  Learning to manage it in ways that are safe and healthy is key to coping with both the life and the grief you will experience on this journey.
• Play – I can’t say enough about the importance of laughter, silliness, and play with your children, the one who is dying as well as the others.  “Laughter is the best medicine” may sound trite, but it is the gem of a significant truth.
• Pray – God the Father had to bury his only begotten son.  Surely, he understands and knows our grief.  Talk to him.  And listen to him.

Your Thoughts about Adopting Terminally Ill Children

Now that you’ve read the final installment in this series about adopting terminally ill children, what thoughts do you have? Leave your insights and comments below. To keep up with the Badeau’s future adventures, visit their website at www.badeaufamily.com.

Adopting Terminally Ill Children: One Family’s Story, Part 1
Adopting Terminally Ill Children: One Family’s Story, Part 2

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Badeau family at daughter SueAnn’s wedding.

Adoption is a life-changing decision for families, one that required deep thought, discussion, and research. Families that want to adopt children with special needs or terminal diagnoses have even more to think about. Today, Different Dream welcomes Hector and Sue Badeau, parents of 22 children (yup, that’s them in the picture), twenty of them adopted, three of whom had terminal special needs. Over the next three days, Sue tells their family’s story. In Part 1, she leads us through the growth of their family. Part 2 focuses on the adoption of their three children with terminal special needs. In Part 3, she shares lessons learned during their grief journey.

Adopting Terminally Ill Children: One Family’s Story, Pt. 1

My name is Sue Badeau and I am the mother of 22 children.  (It almost sounds like the opening of a joke, with a punch line to come, but trust me, it is very real!)

The Journey of a Lifetime

In 1979 I married my high school sweetheart, Hector, and we began the journey of a lifetime.  He grew up in a blue-collar French-Canadian Catholic family, the 12th of 16 children born to his parents.  Hockey was the center of his life, and because he excelled, hockey provided the ticket out of our small town by way of a college scholarship.  Throughout our dating years we had talked about working together and when we eventually had children, raising them together with equal involvement and participation by both parents.  So, the logical thing to do, of course, was to buy a business less than a month after our college graduations (and a month before our wedding!) The Christian bookstore, Logos, was a wonderful place for us to begin our marriage, grow in our faith, and explore ideas about what we wanted to do in our life.  While still managing the bookstore, we became parents, first to our birth daughter Chelsea, then by adoption when we added our son Jose from El Salvador, and also by foster care when we welcomed a teenage girl into our home.

Life Changing Adoption Choices

Those early career and parenting decisions profoundly shaped our lives.  Guiding scriptural passages during those years included Luke 9:48. “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For whoever is least among you all is the greatest.” And Romans 8:15-16: “ . . . the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”  And of course, I Corinthians 4:10: “We are fools for Christ!”

As we adopted and fostered more children, we sold the bookstore, and Hector became the full-time at-home parent while I worked outside of the home in the field of social services.  The last of our children needing full-time round-the-clock care passed away in April, and Hector recently ventured back into the workforce with two jobs, one as the youth program director at our church and the other as an overnight counselor at a local homeless shelter.

From 1980 when our first daughter was born, to 1997 when the last of our adopted children joined our family, we brought home a total of 22 children to form our “forever family” (2 by birth, 20 adopted) and cared for 50 foster children (half special needs infants and half teenagers).  Since that time, we also served as a host family to refugees from Guatemala, Kosovo, and Sudan and our children have blessed us with 35 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren!

God’s Guidance on the Adoption Journey

God has led us, at times gently and at times quite firmly, along this journey over the years. God planted this motto into our hearts, “Our family would adopt the child most in need of a home, but least likely to get one.”  Initially, we thought that simply meant a child who was no longer an infant (so our first adoption was of a 2 year old boy) but over time, He showed us that this motto included children who had siblings that needed to stay together, children who had experienced significant trauma in their young lives, children with serious health, mental health, and cognitive challenges, children who were already teenagers but still in need of a family.  Through my work, we also helped many children be adopted by other families and part of my work was during the HIV boarder babies crisis in the late 80s and early 90s.  As I placed these terminally ill children into their adoptive homes, I admired these parents deeply but believed in my heart that I could never bear to adopt a child who I would have to later watch die.

Not until a precious little boy named Wayne came along.

What Do You Think of the Journey So Far?

While reading Sue’s story, I have to strong responses. The first is a deep respect for the Christian generosity and compassion Sue and Hector displayed in welcoming these children into their home. The second is a certain knowledge that not all of us—including me—are called or equipped to serve in such a way. But whatever you sense God calling your family to do, please leave a comment about Sue’s story so far. What questions do you have? What encouragement can you offer? What’s been your adoption experience?

If you’d like to read more about the Badeau family, come back tomorrow to meet Hector and Sue’s three very special sons Wayne, Adam, and Dylan.

Adopting Terminally Ill Children: One Family’s Story, Part 2
Adopting Terminally Ill Children: One Family’s Story, Part 3

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop-up box and the second at the bottom of this page.