When Josh and Allison Lewis got married 17 years ago, they had no way of knowing that their lives would turn out the way they do now.
After five children, the Lewis family is better than any family the couple could have imagined.
Micah was the first of the family’s adopted children to join them after the birth of their biological children Abby (11), Jack (9), and Isabel (8). (5). The couple’s daughter Julia was born then, and Allison gave birth to her (3).
Their hearts were full, but something was missing.
“She said that she remembered us talking about perhaps wanting to adopt again and then revealed that she knew of a birth mom who needed a family for her baby.” “She said that she remembered us talking about possibly wanting to adopt again.”
Allison called her husband with the intention of simply starting a conversation.
“But instead of continuing with the logical and lengthy process of decision-making that he generally used, he screamed, “Absolutely!” This is such a glaringly obvious response to the prayers that we have been offering.’”
After another three weeks had passed, the family got a phone call informing them that the mother of baby Sam was going into labor.
After hastily piling the children and a few pieces of luggage into the van, we set out on the ten-hour drive to the Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina.
While the adoption attorney was out and about, he received a call.
“Does Josh have both hands on the steering wheel?” she asked.
She went on to tell the Lewis family that physicians had just found out through an ultrasound that there were going to be TWO babies on the way! She said this to the Lewis family. The mother would be giving birth to twins.
“Two newborns. ” I won’t lie… It felt like a lot all at once. We kept reminding ourselves, however, that the Lord had gone before us in this matter, and that although we had no idea what was going on with the second kid, He had been aware of everything from the beginning.
She continues:
“After perhaps an hour or so of processing, talking through the logistics of bringing twins home, and feeling a growing excitement over our growing blessings, the weight became much heavier when the next phone call came,” the author writes. “After feeling a growing excitement over our growing blessings.”
Allison noticed a change in her friend’s demeanor during this most recent interaction. She told the couple, with an audible sense of anguish in her voice, that the physicians were doing an emergency cesarean section on the mother, but they did not have high hopes for the survival of “baby B.”
After two hours, the family finally arrived at the hospital, where they were greeted by a nurse and a little but otherwise healthy baby boy who was being held by the nurse. In the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where his twin sister was being cared for despite weighing only three pounds, Josh and Allison discovered that their daughter did not have a brain when she was born.
They gave her the name Ava, which translates to “brimming with life.”
After 44 days in the hospital, baby Ava was able to return home to her permanent family!
“We have a lot of life and love to pack into whatever time we have left with her; and when the time comes that she breathes her last breath, her body will be made whole—and her name will find its most perfect completion—in a glorious picture of being TRULY filled with life eternal.”
And if asked, they’d do it all over again.
What a remarkable illustration of the love and intentions that the Lord has for each one of us, even little Ava, whose life “was intended to” end before it even began.
Allison mentioned on many occasions that she and her family felt a serenity that could only originate from God despite everything that was going on. One that gives comfort while also being beyond human comprehension.
The Lewis family is an example of what it means to have unwavering faith, strength, and love for one another. And the story of them serves as yet another remarkable illustration of the fact that our father is a good one.