Back in 2008, I adopted two children from the foster care system. From the very start, the predictions weren’t kind. Social workers, doctors, and even teachers warned me not to expect too much. One teacher called the agency to say my “hopes and expectations” were too high — that these “feral children” would never thrive.
I was told they’d never speak clearly, that Amber would always limp, and that Joe would never have the balance to run. Their guardian ad litem said it was the second worst abuse case she’d seen in 25 years — “without hope,” she called it.
But I believed differently. We worked hard, prayed endlessly, and focused on what they could be, not what the world said they couldn’t.
Today, Amber is in her second year of culinary school. And Joe? He spent weeks convincing us to let him join the regular high school track team — not the Special Olympics track, but the one where he could feel “normal.”
We finally agreed. Now he runs home from practice, grinning ear to ear, shouting: “Prove them wrong, go faster Joe!”
The world once wrote them off. But every step they take proves that with belief, love, and perseverance, anything is possible.