Testimony Part 2
God is Good
So much has
happened since the Spring of 1995, which is where I left off in Part 1.
Through 1995 to 200, I continued to work at CAB Health and Recovery
Services as a detox nurse.
Eventually I wound up being the admissions coordinator.
Lots of challenges! Our
family continued to attend Community Church of East Gloucester and we were
thriving. In the fall of 1998, I
was running the detox admissions when the director of the agency told me that in
order to keep the Detox solvent, we needed to maintain a 115% occupancy rate.
I told him that this was an impossible task, that he was not staffing the
detox properly for level of client treatment, and that he did not have the
admissions staff to accomplish this.
He said that it didn’t matter and that was what I needed to do.
So that is when I felt the Lord leading me out of the nursing profession.
Karry and I were doing Nursery duty at our church one Sunday
when a good friend of mine suggested
that I look into the computer field.
I have always had a computer and was always the geek who people came to
for computer advice. Could I really
make a career out of it? I
investigated Clark University and found that I could go to school for 24 weeks
and get certificates in PC Service and Support and Windows NT Administration.
I attended Clark, got the certificates, and my last day as a nurse was
Christmas day 1999. Since then I
have worked for MyWay.com,
Alliance Consulting, and Groove Networks.
In March of 2005, Groove was bought by
Microsoft.
I have been working for them since.
In 1996, the five
year anniversary of my last bout with Hodgkin’s disease, Karry and I decided
that it was time to think about having another child.
The first thing we had to do was determine if I was truly sterile from
the chemotherapy. Through an
embarrassing series of events (suffice it to say that the sample had to be less
than 20 minutes old and I live 40 minute away from the lab), we did determine
that I was indeed sterile. I also
had the annual gallium scan and check up with my oncologist.
When I had the scan, they noticed another anomaly in my neck area.
Was the cancer back? We
quickly set an appointment for a CAT scan.
This was very
scary. But, unlike the last time, I sought refuge in my God, my wife, and my
pastor. We prayed throughout the
afternoon that whatever God’s will was – whether or not I was to endure cancer
again – that we would be strengthened by the Holy Spirit and that this would be
testimony to God’s love and grace.
We were ready, because we had our eyes and our priorities straight.
The CAT scan
revealed that there was nothing in my neck and that the cancer had not returned.
I was very relieved, but also encouraged in the way God had led us
through this time. After my
oncologist delivered the news about the CAT scan, I asked her about the future.
“Am I in remission?” I asked
“Yes, you are officially in remission.
However you still need annual Gallium scans.” She replied
“Why? Why should I have to go through this every year?”
You see, Gallium scans are when they inject a radioactive
isotope into your blood. For the
next 5 days, you go into the hospital and lie on a bed and are scanned.
The scan takes about 2 hours.
No fun.
“Well,” she said, “We need to make sure that the Hodgkin’s
doesn’t come back.”
“OK, so let me ask you this.
If I check myself and I find a lump and that lump turns out to be
Hodgkin’s, would the treatment be any different?”
“No, it would not.”
“OK, is there any difference in survival rates between those
caught by Gallium Scans and those caught otherwise?”
“No, there is not.”
“Doctor, it has been nice knowing you! Goodbye and thank you
for all you have done.”
And so ended my
yearly oncology visits. What was up
next was the process for adoption.
Now that I was officially in remission, we felt the Lord leading us to adopt a
girl. We needed a daughter and Ian
needed a sister to complete our family.
We started the process by researching the laws in Massachusetts.
We discovered that in Massachusetts, adoptions are done through certified
agencies only. No private adoptions.
Also the laws around domestic adoptions were not very strong – meaning
that if we were to adopt a girl, there would be a risk that another family
member could sue us for custody down the road.
Not cool. So we started to
investigate agencies and international adoption.
The first agency
we went to seemed to be really cool.
We went to a seminar held by the agency to find out more.
They had a number of mothers who had given up their children for adoption
as well as several adoptive parents testify as to what their experiences were.
Karry and I had a really good feeling about this agency until the next
day. That was when we turned on the
news only to see the lady who was in charge of the agency (and who gave the
presentation the night before) being hauled off in hand cuffs being accused of
fraud and extortion. OK, so maybe
that agency was out.
Then we discovered
Wide Horizons for Children.
This was an agency that specialized in international adoptions.
We did our research, prayed a whole bunch and decided that this was the
agency to go with. Looking through
the different countries, each one had its own process and criteria and cost.
My parents gave us the gift of paying for the adoption, so money, thank
you Mom and Dad, was not a problem.
But we had some other criteria:
1.
We needed to have the child escorted – this eliminated Columbia (2 week visit to
work in orphanage, go back home, then return for 3 more weeks), China (receive
your child and then go on a 2 week vacation around the mainland), Russia (up to
7 week stay in country) as well as some others
2.
We had Ian already - this eliminated China again
3.
Were not Catholic - did not eliminate the Philippines but would make it harder
4.
We wanted a girl - that eliminated the Philippines, Columbia, Ecuador, and a
bunch of others who do not allow sex selection
So that left us with South Korea.
We applied to the Korean program, went through the all the paper work,
home study, and interviews, and were accepted into the program.
Now was the time to wait. We
started this process in fall of 1996.
We were accepted into the program in the spring of 1997.
The waiting began through the summer.
In the middle of the summer of 1997, we were contacted by the agency to
see whether we were willing to consider a special needs child.
Special Needs could mean near sightedness or it could mean severe brain
damage. We always had the right of
refusal, so we said that we would consider special needs.
Within a week of that agreement we had our first referral.
This was a little girl who had been born a couple of weeks premature and
was jaundiced. We received some
pictures (they were faxed so a bit blurry – remember this is now 1997 when faxes
were still a fairly brand new thing) and fell in love with her.
We said yes.
But it was not to be.
There was a family in line ahead of us that decided to take her.
This was unbeknownst to us so we had a week of joy thinking that we were
going to finally have our daughter come home, only to have that taken away.
Karry and I were really disappointed, but we persevered forward.
The next little girl that came our way was born with some potentially
severe brain injuries. It killed us
to do this but we said no. It just
wasn’t the right thing. Ian would
already be a bit displaced with the whole adoption thing.
Having a brain damaged child would further displace him.
I think about that little girl, where ever she may be.
I pray she found the right home.
God is good.
But we had no idea how good God is until we received our third
referral. This little girl was born
a couple of weeks premature (no problem, so was Ian), was jaundiced (again, so
was Ian, stick him in the sun for a few minutes each day and that goes away),
and had a very odd finding. She has
six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.
We received the blurry faxed pictures and completely fell in love.
She was our daughter. She was
our Abagail (which means father’s joy – we added an “a” instead of an “i” to
accentuate Abba which in Aramaic – the language Jesus spoke - means father).
We said yes to the referral.
Abagail was born July 29, 1997 and given the name Lee Jung Sun (Jung: Honesty;
Sun: Goodness; Lee: common family name, sort of like Jones or Smith).
We said yes to the referral in November of 1997.
So now it was time to…
Wait again…
Every few weeks we would receive updates from the agency in
Korea on Jung Sun’s progress. What
started to unfold as the weeks of waiting went by was that there was some
concern over her development. It was
around Christmas time that Karry went through a major depression.
She missed and wanted to hold her daughter so very much that it brought
her down emotionally. She cried many
times over the loss of not having any more children on her own and deeply longed
for her little girl to come home.
Her depression was deep and it was profound.
So it was in between Christmas and New Year’s that I received
a phone call from the agency. The
counselor stated that the most recent medical evaluation of our Abagail Jung Sun
was that there was a suspicion of Cerebral Palsy.
I was devastated. How was I
going to tell Karry? She had been so
down and out emotionally, was this going to send her over the edge?
I prayed hard, asking God to bless her and prepare her spirit for the
news.
She had gone out that night with some friends and was
returning home when I prepared to tell her.
She was praying with her friends about her emotions and the adoption.
As soon as she went up our front steps and right before she went through
our front door, she spoke out loud without any provocation:
“…greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world”
(I John 4:4)
And
“…no weapon forged against you shall prevail…” (Isaiah 54:17)
God prepared her heart for what I was going to tell her.
When she came through the door, I hugged her, and then told her the news.
She told me that God was in control, and that all will be alright.
As we hugged and cried, we knew that God was going to take care of this.
We told family and friends that there was a possibility of CP,
and some of our dearest friends and family even advised for us to stop the
adoption. However, little Jung Sun,
our little Abagail, was our daughter.
Even though we couldn’t hold her and care for her, we had already bonded
with her. She was our daughter – end
of story!
Finally in March (1 ½ years since we started the whole
process) we received word that Abagail Jung Sun Johnston was coming home.
Our little family was complete.
Through physical therapy and some investigation, it turns out
that Abagail does not have CP. We
suspected that the problem was she was held in a papoose like contraption for
most of her days in Korea. Her
foster mother was in her 60’s and did not let little Jung Sun down to play.
However, as soon as Abagail got with other kids, she had a rugged
determination (her physical therapist called her “motivated”) to catch up.
And catch up she did! She is
now a happy and healthy six toed (we had the extra fingers removed as they were
impeding her fine motor development) beautiful girl.
Praise God for he is good!
Another huge development for us
after Part 1 of my testimony was the diagnosis of my son Ian’s Attention
Deficit Disorder. This came in
around the first grade when his teacher felt he needed some intervention.
After two psychological evaluations confirmed the diagnosis (one was by
the school and one was from a psychologist that we hired) we agreed that he
needed extra intervention at school.
We had many meetings with his teachers, school counselors, and special education
teachers. We developed an Individual
Education Plan that had measurable goals.
Through out Elementary school, Ian thrived.
He excelled in math and science – he loved to learn.
We asked him once when he was going to stop asking why.
He told us he would stop asking why when he knew everything.
He read National Geographic magazine (yes, he read them), read all of the
instruction manuals for appliances and cars.
This kid is a sponge for knowledge.
It has been a long road with Ian and his ADD, but he has really grown
into his own accepting it as a part of who he is.
At first, we had him taking Ritalin, but the side effects were
too severe for him. We then changed
him to Adderol and he took that up until April of 2006.
He would take the Adderol for a while, and then go on holidays away from
the medication. Each time he started
back on the medication, we (and he) felt as if a little piece of Ian
disappeared. He just wasn’t himself.
That spark of Ian left and we so dearly missed it.
Sure, when he went on a holiday, it was tough for the first two weeks.
But our boy returned, and we cherished those times.
But the Adderol did what it was supposed to do and it worked well up
until the 6th grade. The
dreaded Middle School years.
When Ian entered the 6th grade, everything changed.
The school really didn’t care about Ian, didn’t care about his Individual
Education Plan, and didn’t care if he succeeded or failed.
He was on his own. For the
first time in his life, Ian hated school.
At that time we had just switched churches.
The church we were now going, Grace Fellowship Christian and Missionary
Alliance Church, had a number of homeschooling families.
Could we do this? Would it be
worth the effort and time? One
evening we had a long conversation with a mother who had graduated a son from
homeschool and had a second son entering the high school years.
We talked for a good long time, going over every aspect of how to do
this. Finally, Karry looked at me and said, “I think we can do this”!
In October of 2003, we pulled Ian and Abby out of public
school and started our home school adventure.
In all that we have done in our lives, this has been probably the hardest
and the most fulfilling. Karry is
amazing at it. She has such a
passion for teaching our kids. What
has been most encouraging is the self motivation the kids have developed.
Both of them have their times of rebellion, but they over all treasure
the gift of having their education at home.
In February of 2006, Karry and I were at the New England Home
show investing contractors to do windows and siding.
During that show, we met a chiropractor who was giving free back rubs.
Karry has always suffered from back pains and has had several times when
she has had to go on muscle relaxers because the pain was so sever.
I had wanted our family to go to a chiropractor for quite some time, but
Karry was not yet on board with this.
It was expensive, time consuming, and seemed to be just this side of
hocus pocus. I understood where she
was coming from.
But this chiropractor had a different take on things.
We talked with him about our family and especially Ian.
We told him our concerns about the Adderol and his ADD.
He told us that through spinal adjustments, dietary adjustments, and
environmental adjustments, there is a very good chance we could have him off the
Adderol. I was thrilled, but Karry
was ecstatic! We knew of a
chiropractor in the building where I worked and we set an appointment with
Dr. Steven Franson.
We were evaluated with X-Rays and other instruments, and the results were
very telling.
I had a Stage 2 subluxation (Stage 1 and 2 can be repaired,
stage 3 cannot), Ian had a Stage 1, Abagail had a Stage 2.
Abagail’s X-Rays were interesting because they really showed the trauma
she endured by having to be wrapped up in a papoose the first 8 months of her
life. Karry, before she heard the
news of her stage, had completely convinced herself that she was a Stage 3.
She was in such intense pain; she thoroughly believed there could be no
cure for her. When Dr. Franson told
Karry that she was a Stage 2, she
literally fainted with relief.
In April 2006, the Johnston family embarked on a change in
lifestyle that has only been positive.
We eliminated milk from our diet and cut down on cheese products
dramatically. We have gone towards
more organic vegetables. We only buy
meat that is antibiotic free, free range, and as natural as possible.
We are exercising more, getting regular chiropractic adjustments, and are
taking supplements such as fish oil and greens.
The benefits have been that Karry is virtually pain free, Abagail is
strengthening her posture and repairing the damage done in her infancy, Ian is
completely off medication, and I am slowly but surely getting healthier.
God is good!
Yes, indeed He is good.
I have touched on the major events of my life since Part 1.
ASI write all of this down, I am amazed by how much God has graced me
with blessings that I could not have imagined so many years ago.
One thing that I continually praise God for, but will not detail in this
testimony, is that my father at age 63, finally gave up alcohol and entered a
life of sobriety. That is a tale and
a testimony for him to tell. But
suffice it to say…
God is Good!!!