Lisa Zielinski

My name is Lisa Zielinski and I just celebrated twenty years of marriage to my high school sweetheart John.  We were both raised Catholic, but I came to know Jesus as a personal friend and savior when I was twenty-eight years old.  I am the middle daughter of eight children and have always wanted a large family and planned to start our family just as soon as the honeymoon was over.  God had other plans for my life and after suffering an ectopic pregnancy in 1992, I have never been able to conceive a child.  John and I both threw ourselves into our careers to busy ourselves and dull the pain and obvious empty hole in our family supposed to be filled with children.  Nearly fourteen years of infertility, multiple procedures and running ourselves ragged at our jobs, we both knew that something had to end or our marriage eventually would.  At this point we had both come to know Jesus on a personal level and believe with all of our hearts that in that fourteen years God was orchestrating our family and just needed to lead us to them.  Through much prayer we decided to radically shake up our lives.  We decided to sell our big home, quit our big fancy jobs, sell our fancy cars and get debt free so we could call the shots in our life once again and make a fresh start.  We decided to relocate from Ohio to West Michigan where we moved to a two bedroom apartment, John started classes to get his paramedic license a dream he had always wanted to pursue and I was going to embrace and fulfill my dream of being a full-time homemaker and mother.  John and I befriended a lady named Sue at John's work who had independently adopted four children from Russia.  She encouraged us against my fears and doubts to pursue an international adoption.  John was all for it since he himself was adopted.  Seeing my hesitation, she herself went through the process and in the fall of 2004, we both traveled to Ukraine and came home with little boys.  She now had five adopted children and we were now parents to a nearly two year old beautiful little boy.  Our sons shared a special friendship coming home within two days of each other and from the same country, so our friendship grew even closer.  Sue was single and had never married.  She was an only child and her parents had passed away and her only living relatives were elderly.  She had adopted so many children because they were literally her only family.  Since I was used to a large family and all kinds of chaos around the holidays, I so enjoyed having them all over to entertain them, feed them and share in their traditions as well as ours.  In spring of 2007 and after just one week earlier sharing Easter together, Sue was taken from her home very ill to the local ER where she and John worked near death.  John phoned me from work to inform me that Sue was there and that all of her kids were left alone and that he knew she would not be home that night or any night soon.  I grabbed our son, flew through a fast food restaurant and went to her home to bring the kids dinner and check on them and essentially never went home again.  Sue remained unconscience most of hospital stay and passed away eight weeks later.  John and I through the help of the amazing hospital counselors, social workers, attorneys and God's grace were able to secure permanent guardianship of all five of the kids just eleven short days after her passing.  We were now one big family and had to learn all about each other, our habits, values, traditions and way of doing things.  It's been three years now and to most outsiders they would never know how God choreographed each step to making us a family, but we know and we are grateful and blessed.  Through what would otherwise be considered a tragedy, turned out for us to be the greatest blessing and answer to prayer.  Of course we were devestated at the loss of our dear friend, but looking back on all the little ways God's hands were preparing all of us for this new life and journey allowed us to celebrate His good and perfect will for our lives.