Impact Story: Marlee & Randall Rowe

God is at work in our lives, and every single one of us has a story. We have a life story. Tell a story, our lives are a story, but more specifically, each one of us has a God story, how God is drawing us to himself, or He's drawing us to himself continually, and how He is making us more like Him and working in our hearts, minds, and lives.

What are the big occurrences for the two of you?

Kids. One of my cousins, who’s addicted, has a kid who is 2 1/2 years old, and he is through the CPS system, and he has been placed with us right now. We’re hoping to long-term adopt this young man named Hudson.

How is God growing you in this entire experience?

For me (Randall), it's just been we’ve got three kids running around, work, life, and everything, so it’s just like every minute, every second counts to make it all worth it. (Marlee), definitely patience. I’m at home with them all day, and our oldest is 3 1/2 years old, and the rest of our 2 kids are even younger. So it’s kind of crazy, but there’s a lot of flexibility and patience and being able to go with the flow, you know. We have to work around Hudson’s visits with his biological dad and mom, at-home therapies, and things of that sort, so our week looks different every week. It’s a lot of flexibility and having patience, and lots more of patience.

How did you know that this is what God wanted you to do?

(Marlee) in short, this was something we figured that was coming since the beginning and we had offered to take him from the beginning and that didn’t happen. So long story short two years later he needs a home and  it went along the lines of 'well God we’ll pray about it and if we throw our name in the hat and if it happens, then he can come into our home.' We have the space we have the ability to do this and as Christians, we should do these things if we have the ability to  do it, since not everybody can in certain seasons of life is able.  In a practical way we said, 'OK like I guess we’re gonna do this and it’s kind of terrifying.'

(Randall), Marlee's been nice about it, and she was dead set from the beginning. She’s like I just see this coming and just keep a heart and a passion for this kid needs a better safe home. When my cousin was pregnant,  she finally went to rehab and stuff but the kid was pretty much born with a difficult beginning. Marlee just wanted this kid and she was like I’ll be praying for it. I want him in a safe environment and a good home, and I just like to sit back and see if this is apart of God's plan. I don’t know if it's apart of God's timing, there’s nothing I can do about it, but if it is then let it be.

How can we be praying for you in this journey of three kids?

(Randall) As I think, as far as support, it’s just having a community. The old thing goes. It takes a village. Fortunately, we’re in a place where we’ve seen that village. You know, we can add some more to the village anytime. Come on over. Hang out, but Syria‘s been great. She stopped by my family, stop by, I think so. You come to mornings all week and just help get breakfast kicked off, get the kids downstairs, and get changed into some day clothes. It just gets crazy, but the support of just having a community of believers and people who love you and love God is the biggest thing I can say for support, as hard as prayer, as we work through the system. Everyone knows that the CPS system and it’s a broken system. It’s a broken system that deals with broken homes and broken people, so there’s a lot of brokenness in that, and it is very frustrating. Very frustrated, so I would say pray for that system. We’re hoping long-term to adopt Hudson, and that is based on the system doing its job, and so we’re putting that back over God, it’s saying, "God, you’ve got this, not the system has you, but that you got this completely."