It’s a sad reality that in our country, a baby is born to parents hooked on narcotics, every 19 minutes, but it’s a dangerous fact that the doctors are not even alerting social services to these infants, as they face harm from their own families.
Kelly Lively of Kokomo, Indiana, is a nurse, who lost her mother to cancer in 2014, February 8th, which was also the 8th death anniversary of her dad. She felt hollow and horrible knowing that she couldn’t carry her own children, and needed something to restore her joy.
Posted by Kelly Lively on Thursday, September 21, 2017
She said, “I started praying to God to restore my joy, I started praying for God to break my heart for what broke his heart.”
So she began volunteering as a nurse for the Make a Wish Foundation and other organizations, to take care of children who needed the intensive care she was able to provide. She overheard a foster care worker and a caseworker one day,talking about a child who they thought would not make it. So when she saw his photo, she broke down.
She said, “I just started bawling. They said, ‘What’s wrong? He’s so cute.’ But all I could see was that there was no life in his eyes. He was so sick.” Nobody had any interest in the 13-month-old born to and abandoned by a heroin-addicted mother. He’d been born premature, weighing just a pound, with a long list of defects and a 30% chance of making it to 2 years of age.
“They told me that no one wanted him,” She said. “That just broke my heart. These kids deserve a loving home as much as the next. They can’t help they were born with disabilities or born early. I couldn’t allow Marcus to just end up in an institution.”
So she decided to meet him, in early 2017, and her sister, Tammy Lively, posted a picture on Facebook of the two from their first meeting saying, “This was the day Kelly met Marcus…He was born VERY early, addicted to every type of drug you can think of, and being kept alive on a ventilator. He’s a little fighter…all he needed was a mommy to love him and a chance. “I’m so glad God brought them together. ❤️”
Posted by Tammy Lively on Saturday, January 19, 2019
Kelly met the little redhead, and asked him, “My name is Kelly. I want to be your mom. Would you like to come home with me?” She says, “He smiled so big when I kissed his cheek, and I knew I was going to do everything I could to give this baby a chance,” she said. “In my heart, I felt he had just been waiting for me. It gave me chills. I knew he was my son.”
Kelly and Marcus are doing well and the doctors have called Kelly an “angel fallen from heaven” for taking Marcus in, and they’ve told her “Whatever you are doing for this child, keep doing it.”
Megan Deweese, the social service director where Marcus was earlier kept said, “I was shocked, You just don’t have people who want to take on medically complicated children, let alone to love them as your own and treat them as your own. She blew me away quite honestly.”
Our family is blessed with a new little one! My sister Kelly adopted her first child last month, our precious little…
Posted by Tammy Lively on Thursday, January 17, 2019
Marcus cannot speak because of the trach tube, but they have hope that it will be unnecessary soon and they will be able to remove it. He loves books, he signs with Kelly to communicate, and despite the conditions he still faces and will continue to face, he is overcoming all because of the love and hope Kelly showed in him.
She said, “He’s the greatest joy of my life,” Lively admitted. “It’s a lot of tears and a lot of sleepless nights and mixed emotions, but it’s worth it. It’s so worth it.” God gave her a sign, that it was meant to be, because the day she met Marcus was: February 6. “The same day that broke my heart when I lost my mom was the same day I met my joy,” she said. “I know that God brought us together.”