Jerry

My Beloved Husband and his brother are examples of why a bad childhood does not mean a person grows up hating. It would take a book to do justice to their story, and I should take time to write it. No one else will, and the participants are dying - his brother did yesterday.

Born in 1941 and 1942 before their father's draft number came up sending him off to war, their parent's first separation caused their placement in the Maumee Children's Home in Toledo, Ohio. The young wife, oldest of eleven children herself, had lost her mother the year before and was unable to handle two babies while helping her siblings and carrying a third. Unfortunately, the equally as young husband found another, returning to divorce and offering to take the boys. The third son, born in 1943 and only two at the time of the divorce, stayed with their mother.

Within two years the boys were investigated by the state and being declared abused and neglected were placed in Whitaker State Orphanage, Pryor, Oklahoma. When their mother was notified that their father had signed for their care, she was told they were to be adopted in Oklahoma City. Newly married, carrying her fourth child, she felt they would have a better life and also signed for their adoption.

No one was standing by to adopt. For more than a year in that facility, it appeared the boys would remain institutionalized until adulthood. Adoption of older children is rare. Adoption of the two of them together? Their goal was to remain together - the only person they had known all their lives was each other.

That gave them a bond few siblings share.

They were adopted, together, when they were eight and seven. Past the time when so many studies show their personalities are set.

Of course, the story is much longer and deeper, but I cannot do it justice here. This is just a touch on a memory that will be shared this weekend as we celebrate his brother's life - along with that third boy and additional siblings from their mother's second marriage. We were able to locate their birth family and reunite children raised apart.

The one thing the brothers, those little boys, held in common from adulthood, was the love of their Lord, Jesus, the Messiah. We will celebrate his life, mourn his death, all with faith that the resurrection of our Lord fulfills a promise He made for those who love Him:

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. (John 14:1-4)

Like many of us today, Thomas did not know the way:

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:5-6)

Knowing this, we can follow Him in rejoicing:

Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. (John 14:28)

Please know that as we grieve for our own loss of his presence, we rejoice as he joins the Father.