[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, friend.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Welcome to Perspectives into Practice, a place where life's stories meet practical wisdom. Together, we'll explore how faith filled perspectives can transform the way we live, love, and grow.
So grab a seat, settle in, and join us on this journey to turn inspiration into action.
Let's dive in.
Hey, friend. Welcome back to Perspectives into Practice. Today's conversation is tender, yet powerful, and one that I believe will stay with you. I'm sitting down with my new friend, Carol, a mom whose faith was stretched and deepened as she walked through a final season of her son Moise's life. This part of Carol's story is filled with moments of surrender, quiet strength, and a hope that doesn't depend on an outcome.
My prayer is that as you listen, you'll be reminded that even in the hardest places, God is near and he is always faithful. Welcome, Carol. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yes. This is going to be good. All right, so before we go too deep, y' all know I love a good fun fact, and Carol's fun fact is that every year she does a sprint triathlon. And I just love that. And of course, we have to know, how did that even start? And what made you say, yeah, I'm gonna swim, bike, and run all in one go?
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So I am.
I'm pretty fitness minded. I. I was a runner my whole life, like, since, like, grade school. I started running and I ran for the most part. I've done some half marathons.
Never done a whole marathon. Marathon, yeah. But I did some half marathons. And as I have gotten older, I'm in my mid-50s now, I started having a lot of joint pain.
In many ways, fitness is. I call it kind of like my antidepressant because we've just had hard things in life.
And I believe in taking care of your body and staying healthy. And fitness has been a part of that. And so when I started having joint pain, I decided I needed to switch it up a little bit. And so I started. It was kind of like right after Covid when, like, only one person could be in the pool at a time.
I started going to fitness center and swimming laps. And I thought that I was in shape because I was a runner until I started swimming, and it literally kicked my butt. So. But that fact that it was really hard kind of, I don't know, kind of drove me to, like, I was like, I'm going to conquer this. I am going to become a swimmer in order to keep myself Motivated. I signed up for a triathlon.
It's a sprint triathlon, so it's not the full blown thing.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: What's the difference?
[00:02:55] Speaker A: So a sprint triathlon is a lot shorter. So it's a 400 yard swim, a 17 mile bike, and then a 5K. And so it's just a lot shorter. And I can usually do it like within two hours.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: I sign up for one a year. I know it sounds kind of weird that I only do one, but first of all, I don't really have time for more than that.
But I do love fitness, but also I hate fitness.
And so having that one thing a year just keeps me like motivated and like, I'm always like, I gotta do this triathlon. So I have to get out there and swim and I have to get out and run occasionally and I have to bike. So it's just a motivator for me.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: I love that. I mean, that's a great goal.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: I tell myself I'm gonna do it until my grandkids can remember that Grammy does this because it is a hard thing. And I want my kids, my grandkids, to know that we can do hard things.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And it's such a fun peek about who you are, but also just beyond that caregiving role that, you know, we have to set goals for ourself and have something to look forward to. I love that. And I feel you on the fitness. You know, I feel like a lot of us have a love hate relationship with it.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Yep. For sure.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: It's also being in shape was also really important to me because of my parenting journey. Hasn't been a typical parenting journey, and it was actually a very physical parenting journey. And so I have needed to stay fit in order to parent one of my children.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: I can't wait to dive into that. You know, this story gives us a glimpse of what it's like to be in your heart, willing, open, and obedient to God's call. And so I do want to go deeper into that journey and. And can you take us back, Carol, to when you first met Moise and share how his story became interwoven with yours?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Sure. My husband and I, we had four biological kids. And I like to say we were living the typical American dream. You know, we had just built a new home and, you know, we were running, owning and operating our own business. And we had four. Two boys and two girls. Doesn't get any more perfect than that, does it?
And life was really good.
And then one day I got A call. It was kind of like a friend of a friend of a friend saying, someone who had given my name about a baby that was being brought to the United States for life saving surgery. He had a critical. He was critically ill with a heart condition. And so we got this call and this woman says, you know, would you be willing to host this baby from Haiti who needs open heart surgery? And he's going to come and he's just going to have this surgery, and then once he's healthy, he'll go back to his biological mother in Haiti. And he was going to be arriving in two days. So we didn't have a lot of time to think on it.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Surprise.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So in hindsight, we did not think a lot about it and we didn't pray a lot about it.
We just were like, how hard can it be to take care of a baby? For sure, a few months.
They expected it to be around four months. And so we did it and it was awful.
He was very sick. And four days after he arrived in our home, he stopped breathing in my arms.
And, you know, I had to save this baby's life. And he had his open heart surgery. And after the open heart surgery, I realized there was still something wrong with him. And we were getting to a place where he was needing to go back to Haiti. But I did not have a good feeling about it. Of course, we had fallen in love with him and in these four months that we had him. And so a CT was done and he had severe brain damage as a result of a virus that had attacked his brain and just attacked his body in utero.
And that began a brutally painful journey of deciding whether or not we would adopt a baby with severe medical and developmental needs.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So what was it like to make that decision?
[00:07:33] Speaker A: It was a very, very difficult and painful decision because we knew.
So he was deaf, he had cerebral palsy, he had his heart defect, he had a vision impairment. He could see at that point, but he definitely had a vision impairment. And then he had an intellectual impairment also. And so we had been told that he would probably never walk and maybe never be able to feed himself and very possibly never even lift his own head. And so, I mean, there were so many, you know, we had to think about, like, financially, could we do it? Because he was a. It was a private adoption because of the way that he came into the United States. It wasn't like a foster parent situation. And so he wasn't going to come with benefits. Basically, he would be on our insurance and we would be Financially responsible for all the medical bills. So from a financial perspective, just thinking about my kids and how it would disrupt their life, just knowing that our life would never be the same.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: But then ultimately it came down to our. Our two choices were we adopt him and that's the life we live, or rescind him back to Haiti, where, I mean, Haiti would be a death sentence for him. And so we adopted him. Wow.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: How old were your kids at that?
[00:08:55] Speaker A: My kids at that time were 3, 5, 7, and 8.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: It kind of came down to there really wasn't a choice.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: We knew that God was asking this of us, and we had to surrender our own will.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: It was very, very painful. Very painful. But my husband and I were absolutely on the same page.
And we knew that we were going into this and we were going to do this together, and we knew that we were going to have a lot of hard times ahead of us, but we also knew that God was going to provide. And that was the point in my life where I really started to understand the grace of God when he asked something of us. And when we take a bold step in faith, we're setting us up for ourselves, up for a lot of trials, but we are also. That is where we're going to learn just that grace. We're going to see that grace poured out upon us, and we're going to feel that, and it's going to take us to a different level of spirituality than honestly we ever thought possible.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So as. As he grew and the challenges increased, because obviously we knew they weren't. You knew they weren't going away. What were some of the hardest moments that your family faced?
[00:10:11] Speaker A: So. Well, actually, we ended up adopting two more children. Moise was seven when we adopted Jelaine. She had down syndrome. And then she actually passed away when she was two and a half from a tragic accident. And that was horrific. And at that time, my kids were, I'm gonna say, 11 to 16.
And it was very traumatic. Walking through that grief was really difficult. We were focused on our kids, navigating, helping them navigate it. So that was definitely one of the most difficult things. After she passed, we adopted another little boy, Cruz, who has a genetic disorder. Also, when on Cruz's first birthday, something weird seemed like it was going on with Moises Eye, and it turned out that he had lost his vision. And so when he lost his vision, we also lost communication because we had used sign.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: So we lost our communication. We lost our. His vision. And then around that same time, he Was using a walker at the time. But he, because of his loss of vision, he ran into a door and that knocked him out of his walker and dislocated his hip to the point that he was wheelchair bound from there on. So that all happened within a few months time.
And that was a turning point for him. He got angry and at this time he was 13.
And we did end up having to go the route of medication to manage his depression and his anxiety and his fear because without his vision, he had a lot of fears and he was non verbal. So that was a very difficult thing. And then when he was around 17 years old, I kind of have to say, all hell broke loose in our home because he got very, very angry and he became very aggressive and extremely, extremely violent. Cruz, our youngest one, who was about 7 at the time, and Cruz has, is very. It's part of his genetic disorder. He's very short in stature, very small. And so like right now he's 13, but he looks more like about an 8 year old. So at 7, he's this tiny little guy and he has a severe bleeding disorder. So with always being aggressive and like as in throwing furniture, My body was covered in bruises during this time.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: And then we have one with a severe bleeding disorder. We had a deadly combination in our home. And during that time he was going to. He was going to a school for kids with severe and profound disabilities. And it got to a point where his aggression and behavior was so extreme that they denied in person services.
I mean we were like prisoners in the home. I was making police calls. I couldn't go out of the house because if I would put him in the car and he'd be in the backseat, he would grab me from behind. Or if I put him in the front seat, he would grab the steering wheel and like pull the car off the road. And. And all of this was stemming from just extreme frustration.
We had taught Moise to be respectful and to have good manners, but it was almost like something would take over his body and it was just like this out of other worldly thing that would happen. I was like, he kind of like turned into the Incredible Hulk. Remember the Incredible Hulk? It was like this man. And then he would turn into this beast. And that's kind of like what I felt like Moise would do. He would be so happy one minute and then it was like somebody would flip a switch and he got really angry. So this aggression, this went on for 18 months. And during that 18 months, I became very aware that there is a Tremendous lack of services and supports for adults with developmental disabilities.
And we were making police calls. We were taking him to the emergency room, and there was nobody who could help us. He couldn't be admitted to a medical floor because he really didn't have anything going on medically. He couldn't be admitted to a psych floor because he was non verbal. So they just would send us home. And we had a crisis support team through the state. They were looking for residential placement for him all throughout the state of Illinois. And no one would accept him because of his aggression. It was either they could handle his aggression, but they couldn't handle his medical needs or vice versa. And so there was no one that would even consider him. And we had been told by his crisis team that what we would probably have to do is go to the hospital and refuse to.
And I, you know, my husband and I were like, that is never going to happen.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: But after about 18 months, we had an experience in our home where Cruz was very much at risk. It was very eye opening that, you know, he really could do some serious harm to Cruise. And at that point, it felt very much like having to choose between our children.
And then there was a man that, a very wise man that we sat down and talked with. He was very, very familiar with the special needs community. And he said, you know, Maurice at This point was 18 years old and Cruz was 10 maybe. And he said to us, you know, yes, you're responsible for both of these boys, but Moise is an adult, and so your primary responsibility is to Cruise.
And there was something about that that just kind of helped put it in perspective for me. He was a very godly man. And so that put it in perspective for me. So Tim took Cruz to church, and shortly after he left Moise, I could hear him screaming and banging in his room. And I went into his room and he took after me.
And I called 911 and he was taken to the hospital. It was the same thing. They ran a few tests and then came in and said, you need to take him home. And I said, I can't. What I had not bargained on was that they were going to have us police escorted out of the building. Oh, by this point, you know, we'd been at the hospital all day, and I called my husband and my husband says, carol, you have to walk out and leave him there. And I'm like, I cannot do that. Yeah, I was hysterical. And I kept saying, he's going to kill my little boy at home. They were like, I don't know what you want us to do about it. And I'm like, someone has to help me.
And so when they came back in, I told them, I will leave, but I can't take him with me.
And they. They, like, ran after me, telling me they were going to call adult protective services. And I said, well, everybody in my home needs to be protected right now. So, yeah, that was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
But what ended up happening, he actually laid in the hallway of the emergency room for five days. They called it the hall of shame because homeless people would come in to get out of the cold. It was in December, and that's where they would put all the homeless people. And my son was put in there with him. They did let us come up and take care of him, but they, like, couldn't take care of him because ultimately, to get help, Moyes had to be declared homeless. And so as long as he was in that hallway, he was homeless. Yeah, if I took him home, he was not homeless. If they admitted him, he was not homeless. And so that's ultimately what happened. So for five days, he was in that hallway.
Finally, a state representative got him placed in a state operated developmental center. And while we were thankful for that placement, it was not a good placement. It was two hours away from our home, and the care there was not great. It was supposed to be a stabilization facility.
He was there for four and a half years.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: So it was not. They didn't stabilize him at all. So one day, my daughter and I go up to get him to bring him home for his appointment with his cardiologist. And I noticed something really bad with his eye. It turned out that he had suffered a corneal abrasion.
And they had not noticed it, in spite of the fact that they were supposed to be putting drops in his eyes twice a day. Ended up losing that eye.
But there was a little bit of a blessing in that because once that eye came out, we actually, for a while, saw a shift in his behavior, and he became much more calm. And I jumped on that opportunity to reach out to a facility that is literally seven minutes from my home.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: And I reached out to them and I said, hey, I begged them to give him a chance. And they did.
And so in April of last year, we were able to move him seven minutes from our home. And it was just a beautiful thing. I had prayed for four and a half years that my. My three prayers were Covid happened in there, too. Yeah, My three prayers were a Get him out of this place. Get him out and closer to us. Because in my mind, I couldn't imagine how this could be best for Moise in it, because I couldn't reconcile that what was best for Cruz was not best for Moise. Yeah, don't let him die up there without his people.
And then ultimately I started just asking the Lord to set him free, whatever that might look like.
And it was a really, really hard four and a half years. But that is where I really started to realize that the Lord was there in that waiting period. He was. Was there. And he.
Now that I look back, he was doing something there. He had a purpose for that. So In April of 24, we were able to get him out. Moise was living the dream that I had for him. He was at this beautiful facility, and we were able to see him. His behaviors had be. They had figured out kind of why he was having behaviors, and it was just beautiful. And he was happy. And we brought him home a couple times a week.
They called me and said he had had a fever and his. His oxygen saturations were bad and he was struggling to breathe, and he was taken. They asked me to meet the ambulance at the hospital. And I walked in that room a year ago today, and I knew when I looked at him that we had come to the end. We had come to the place that I had prepared myself for. His whole life, he had so many medical complexities and so many things going on medically. I always knew that we were going to come to a place where we would have to make some really hard decisions.
Later that day, they came and said that he needed to be put on a ventilator. We had had a do not resuscitate order drawn up on him several years before and had decided that we would never put him on a vent again because it was very hard to get him out. Yeah, I'm thankful that we had that order drawn up, because I don't know that I would have done it, but my family was very much on the same page. That we know we're not going to vent him.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: And three days later, on November 9th of last year, he was set free, and the Lord took him home. I just did not see it coming. You know, we were in, like, one of the best places in his life, and I didn't see it coming. But when I look back at it now, I can see that God was in this story. I believe that his being. Because the care was not great. His muscles atrophied, which, you know, his Neck muscles around his esophagus had atrophied, so he was aspirating. And so it was an aspiration pneumonia.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: And so we were looking at having to take his food away from him, which was, like, the one thing that really brought him joy.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: All this time of waiting, My three prayers were, bring him home. Don't let him die without us, and set him free. And he did them all. Yeah, the Lord did all of them. He brought him home to us. Luis was surrounded by his family when he passed. We had brought him home on hospice, and we had had him home for about four hours, and the whole family was around him. And as he took his last breath, we saw the tension leave his body and the tension leave his face in, like, peace that we had never really ever seen on him.
Just took over his face, and he was set free.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: That's such a powerful moment in your story that you have to reposition your prayers, change your prayers. Asking God for something I don't know if you even realize that you would be prepared for. But you knew not my will, but yours be done.
And that he ultimately did. He took care of all of those things. And I love that God gave you guys a glimmer of who Moise was in true form. His joy, his happiness, and all of this surrounded by family before setting him free. And I just. I love that picture that God gave you.
He didn't let him go two hours away. He didn't let him go when you were so exhausted and still healing from the pain. And, you know, physically and emotionally.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: He.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Wrapped it all up, and he gave you exactly what you had been asking for. And that's just.
That's beautiful. And it, you know, it just. It's our God, right? He is.
He loves us, and he is faithful. And even when we don't know what it looks like, he always does. But he gives us exactly what we need. And I love that he did that for you.
So on the other side of that, what does life look like for you guys after Mois passing?
[00:24:11] Speaker A: It's been very hard for me.
In many ways, my identity was wrapped up in Moise and being his mother, we, you know, I mean, pushing a wheelchair everywhere that I went, and I still have Cruz at home. His developmentally delayed also, but he doesn't require near the extent of care that Moise did.
Even when he wasn't living at home. My whole world, every thought revolved around Moise, like, when are we going to see him next? What doctor? Because I still managed his doctor's appointments and all of that. And so what doctor's appointments, appointments does he have? And how are we going to do this with Moise? And how are we going to do that with Moise? And so when he. He was gone, I. You know, I had lost a child before. You know, there was so much trauma surrounding her death, and it was just so sudden and so devastating.
And I kind of. I always kind of prepared myself for Moises death in my heart because he suffered so much. I didn't really think that his passing would be as hard for me as what Jelaine's was, but it really has been. And the difference between them is when I look back at Moisa's life, I grieve his whole life because it was so wrought with suffering and pain and frustration and anger. He was joyful also. I don't want to make it look like it was all bad because we did have some beautiful moments, but there were so many, you know, like, when you're going through those things, you don't have time to grieve all those losses. You're in survival mode.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: And. But now as I sit back and I look at all of the suffering, I feel like I'm. I'm grieved. His whole life.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: And so it has been hard and definitely, like, I have more time on my hands than I've ever had in my life, but I don't really know what to do with.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: But, you know, I know God is doing some things and because of Moises Story, and so I am excited to see what God has for us. Just excited to go out and be hands and feet of Jesus in many ways and to share Moises Story. It's very much a story of trials, suffering, and redemption. And, you know, I look back at my life and I know that this is a season in my life and. And it was a season that God used to radically change me.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah. How has your faith grown or changed through that experience.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Before Moise? I don't think I really. I knew God and I had accepted the Lord, but I did not have a deep relationship with the Lord.
And, you know, through so many different experiences, I had nothing else.
I mean, it. We weren't. You know, I learned to not look at the big picture. I learned to take one day at a time because we had to. We would make plans and Moise would just. We'd plan a trip, for example, and Moise would get sick or he'd end up in the hospital and everything. I just had to take one minute at A time. Yeah. Because I never. And then during those years where he was so aggressive, I didn't know what was going to happen from one minute to the next.
So I learned to rely on the grace that he gives me in each moment.
But more than that, I have realized that in the trials is where God does His greatest work in us. And it is there in the suffering that we become acquainted with a man of sorrows. And so I have come to a place where in James, he says, found it all joy when we made trials.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: And I feel like I have come to a place where I embrace that.
That I know that when God brings something really difficult onto my shore, that he is doing something in me and he's changing me.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's a big shift that a lot of people either don't witness in themselves or choose not to change perspective. And see, we go through hard things and it's sometimes just easier to be mad at everyone and everything.
And when you actually say, thank you, Lord, in this situation, what are you teaching me? And changing that, even if it's, you know, after, because sometimes it's so hard, it's difficult to.
To ask in the midst of it. But that's. That's beautiful. So for someone in a season of waiting or surrender, what encouragement would you offer them for their own journey?
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Just to know that God is doing something, just to not lose heart in. In these trials. Don't lose heart because God is doing. He is doing amazing things, and he's in all of those details, and he is there in the waiting in that.
One of the things that really helped me was to view Moise as an eternal being and knowing that the season that he was in was just that, a season and that he did have heaven before him. And so that is one of the things that I've really taken away. My desire for heaven is so great because I have two children there. And, you know, so even when we're going through those seasons, there is heaven, and the season that we're in is not going to be forever.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Moises Season of Suffering was his entire life, but it was not forever.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: That's right. So you said something profound earlier with James, and you said the trials that God allows us are a testament of his love. Can you unpack that for us? What is that? What does that mean for you?
[00:30:04] Speaker A: When God brings trials into our lives, he wants us to become more like Him. He created us in his image.
When we're in those trials, that is when we come to him, and we have nothing. I mean, like, we are just naked before him and we are just broken, and he is there. And like my husband always says, after Jelaine died, it's like he could literally feel the Lord carrying him.
And it was so true. And through these times, you can feel the nearness of the Lord in ways that I don't think that you can. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for people who don't have, like, really big trials in their life because they feel like they're missing out on that personal relationship.
He loves us enough. He loves us so much that he wants to change us and he wants to make us more like him.
And it's in the trials that he does that. So for me, I just am like, he loves me so much because he's brought all these trials to me, and every trial, he changes me a little bit more. There's a verse in Corinthians that talks about something about unveiled. I can't say that for sure. He's changing us one degree of glory at a time.
And that is exactly every little trial, he's changing me one more degree to become more like him. Until he takes me to heaven.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Oh, Carol, this has been such a powerful conversation. I'm so thankful that you're sharing, and I know that it's going to resonate with many, many hearts listening. But before we wrap up, I want to ask you a question that I ask all my guests, and that is what? What is one perspective that you would encourage listeners to apply today?
[00:31:54] Speaker A: In Isaiah 48, verse 10, we read, Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver. I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. That is the perspective that I want people to take from this, is that when we are in affliction and trials, he is testing us, and he is refining his because he loves us so much.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: That's. I got nothing after that. That's perfect. That's exactly it. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. I am so thankful for you and your story, friend. If this episode touched your heart, would you do three things for me? First, share it with a friend who might need this encouragement. Second, follow along so that you never miss these much needed and meaningful conversations.
And third, if you have a story to share, I want to hear it. Reach out to
[email protected] and let me know. I really cannot wait to hear from you. And remember, even small shifts in perspective can lead to big changes. Now go put those perspectives into practice. Talk to you next time.
