I first met Lee Dyck at a men’s retreat. I had been asked to lead a retreat for the men of his church and over the course of the weekend he told me about Emma, the daughter who had just been adopted into his family. That was a couple of years ago now, but just recently our paths crossed and I asked him how Emma was doing. As he filled me in I realized that I wanted to do a full interview with him. He had his wife Anna were kind enough to do that. Read it and be encouraged!

Tell me about yourself and your family.

My wife Anna and I have been married for 16 years, we have four children: Nathan 14, Corina 9, Emma 4 and Cameron 2. I am a pastor at First Baptist Church in Arnprior, just outside of Ottawa.

Did you plan to adopt and then decide to adopt a child with Down syndrome? Or right from the beginning was your desire to adopt and your desire to adopt a special needs child one and the same?

I had just graduated seminary and was serving a church in Edmonton. At the time we had two healthy children, our youngest was 2 and finally becoming a little more independent. We had a church who loved us, our housing was provided, life was comfortable. One night my wife and I listened to John Piper preach a sermon called Predestined for Adoption which really opened our eyes to the beauty of adoption. Around this time God had also really given us a passion for the sanctity of human life. Anna was volunteering as a peer counselor at the local Pregnancy Care Center but we felt God calling us out of our comfort zone to do something more. We knew He was calling us to adopt and we knew we wanted to adopt where there was a need. We began exploring that a bit not knowing exactly where God was leading us until we learned the startling reality that 80-90% of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome during pregnancy were being terminated. After realizing that, there was no turning back for us. We both had had people in our lives with Down syndrome that we loved dearly and were overjoyed at the thought of welcoming a child with Down syndrome into our family. Still there were friends and family worried about the stress this would put on our family and we ourselves knew that it would be challenging . And yet we also knew that God calls us to step out in faith and pursue the hard things in life for His glory and that His grace would be sufficient to meet all our needs.

How did it happen that you came to adopt Emma?

Not knowing where to begin we went to a private agency and let them know we were specifically looking to adopt a baby with Down syndrome. We were told that they really only saw healthy newborns and our best option would be to go through Alberta Children’s Services as they dealt more with the special needs cases. So we began the long process of paperwork, training, home study, etc. only to find out they really didn’t see babies with Down syndrome either. We followed through though trusting this was where God was leading. Once we became an approved home through A.C.S. we began contacting all the different private agencies just to get our name out there. We followed up on different leads we had heard about but nothing happened for three years. It was during this time, as we began to question our decision, wondering if we were making any progress, that the Lord taught us about the need to wait on Him. As it turned out, God used this time to have us create awareness of the issue in our church and community as well as being interviewed for an article in a national magazine. In the end, we received our phone call from that first private agency we met with. In God’s providence they had decided to keep our names on file, “just in case.”

One of the most exciting parts of founding Cruciform Press is the ability it has given me to bring great books to print. And after co-founding the company the first person I got in touch with was Greg Lucas. I knew Greg as the author of an excellent blog—one that had drawn me in with its “lessons in the life of a father learned through the struggles of his disabled son.”

The result of getting in touch with Greg is Cruciform’s new book for November: Wrestling with an Angel: A Story of Love, Disability and the Lessons of Grace. It’s quite a book, if I do say so myself. And I’m not the only one. I’ve been reading it aloud to my kids and they are enjoying it a lot (“Just one more chapter! Please!”). I am receiving emails from people who bought a copy at the Desiring God conference last month and they are raving about it. The early reviews are uniformly positive.

Here are just three of the book’s endorsements:

“Witty…stunning…striking…humorous and heartfelt. In our culture which is so quick to devalue life, Wrestling with an Angel provides a fresh, honest look at one father’s struggle to embrace God in the midst of his son’s disability. Can sheer laughter and weeping gracefully coexist in a world of so much affliction? Greg knows all about it. And inside these pages he passes on his lessons of grace to us. I highly recommend this wonderfully personal book!”
— Joni Eareckson Tada, Joni and Friends International Disability Center

“I didn’t want to read this book. I knew these tear-stained but hope-filled pages would jostle me out of my comfort zone and shake me up. C.S. Lewis wrote that he paradoxically loved The Lord of the Rings because it ‘broke his heart’—and Greg Lucas’ writing does the same for me. And it’s for that reason that I heartily commend this book—especially for dads. This is just the book many of us need to taste afresh the goodness of God and the grace of the gospel even as we long for the day when this broken world will be made right.”
— Justin Taylor, Managing Editor, ESV Study Bible

“This is not primarily a book for parents of special needs children. There is only one disability that keeps a person from heaven. It is not physical or mental like Jake Lucas’ condition. It is the sin that lives in our hearts. Jake’s father, Greg, is a captivating storyteller. When he writes about life with Jake, I recognize God’s grace and loving persistence in my life. I want more!”
— Noel Piper, author, and wife of pastor and author John Piper

Here is an editorial description:

“It sounded at first like something out of an old horror movie. I thought maybe someone was just playing around, but then I heard it again and again, a loud piercing cry, and less like Hollywood every time. The windows were down in my police cruiser on that warm fall day, but I still couldn’t tell where the sounds came from. I began looking around for the unlikely sight of someone being disemboweled in a mall parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Seeing nothing, and still hearing the screams, I called in a ‘disturbance.’ Around the next corner I found the source of the commotion.” So begins Greg Lucas’ captivating account of life as a husband, a police officer, and Jake’s dad. Jake Lucas, the first of four children, lives with severe physical and mental challenges. Caring for him each day is an ordeal few of us can imagine, and this story of Jake’s first 17 years is not one you will soon forget. But the remarkable thing is how the whole narrative is saturated with wonder at the grace and goodness of God, who brings hope and promise through his Son into the darkest of circumstances. In this book, we see that Jake’s problems are our problems, only bigger, and the challenges of caring for him carry profound lessons about God’s care for us. Wrestling with an Angel is about tragedy and laughter and pain and joy. It is about faith and grace and endurance and God’s unfailing, loving wisdom daily being worked out in each of our lives, whatever the nature or extent of our difficulties. Here is a book that may explain faith to you in ways you never quite grasped, through a life few of us can relate to. When it is all done, we come away better able to live as Christ calls us to live.

Interested? The book is currently available in print and PDF formats, with audio book and e-book coming very soon. Buy it here. And why don’t you consider a subscription which will get you each of the books we release over the coming 12 months?

Still need to be convinced? Then why don’t you download a sample chapter and see what you think. I think you’ll be hooked.

A couple of years ago Paul (my pastor and co-elder at Grace Fellowship Church) wrote about an article in the Canadian media which stated that “The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada will recommend next month that all expectant mothers undergo screening for fetal abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome—not just those over the age of 35, as is the practice.”

Dr. Andre Lalonde, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ottawa and the executive vice president of the SOGC, said the society decided to issue the recommendation so that a greater number of women would have the option to terminate their pregnancies should fetal abnormalities be detected.

“Yes, it’s going to lead to more termination, but it’s going to be fair to these women who are 24 who say, ‘How come I have to raise an infant with Down’s syndrome, whereas my cousin who was 35 didn’t have to?’” Dr. Lalonde said. “We have to be fair to give women a choice.”

“The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada will recommend that all expectant women younger than 40 be given nuchal translucency screening, followed by genetic counselling and amniocentesis if their risk for Down’s syndrome appears high.” Based on this article, Paul wrote:

I reject this proposal from personal experience. Although we rejected amniocentesis as an option in our son’s pregnancy (for the simple reason it might have killed him), we were given indicators through non-invasive testing that there might be a genetic problem. Readers of my blog will know that my son was born with a genetic defect labelled Williams Syndrome—a full-orbed physical and mental disability.

Is my son an accident? A faltering of the progressive cycle of evolution? A drain on society and its money? A thing not as valuable as a fully-functioning “normal” person?

My son is my flesh and blood and his worth is bound up in the fact he was made in the image and likeness of God, knit together in his mother’s womb and held together by the grace and power of Jesus Christ right now. If he never moved a muscle, never spoke a word, never made my life happier at any point, he would be no less valuable to the One who made Him. And no less valuable to me.

One does not have to be at our church for long, or to be with Paul and his family for long, to see how much joy this  boy brings to his parents, his sisters, and his church family. He is greatly valued and treasured because he is a treasure of great value. But in a sense this is largely irrelevant when it comes to this innate value and worth; the value of life is in the fact that it comes from God and is not affected by our desires, whims or preferences. Paul and his wife had no right to interfere with that life (and, thankfully, had no desire to interfere with it).

I am excerpting this from the blog Wrestling with an Angel. It is a beautiful bit of writing—one you will want to read in its entirety.

Dear Jake,

It’s hard to believe that you are 17 years old today. I woke up this morning wondering what happened to that little red headed boy that used to sleep on my chest at night and ride around on my shoulders everywhere we went during the day.

It seems like only yesterday when your mom came to me with the news that you would be our son. You were so tiny. We named you Jacob, after the grandson of Abraham, the youngest son of Isaac in the Bible; the son who was born small, weak, and insignificant but who was nonetheless chosen by God to be a Patriarch of a nation.

I still have the picture of you nestled inside of my old baseball glove wearing that miniature Cincinnati Reds baseball uniform. I didn’t have dreams of you actually becoming a patriarch, but I was sure you would grow up to be an All Star.

I can remember coming home from work late at night (actually early in the morning), just in time for your 2 AM feeding—getting you out of your crib, warming up a bottle and holding you all to my self. It was one of my favorite times of the day.

There in the peace of the morning, I was so content, just sitting in a dimly lit room watching you watch me—your eyes glued to mine—both of us speaking in deep, father-son conversation, without ever saying a word.

As you lay there on my lap taking your bottle, I would fascinate over your tiny, perfect hands, your smooth white cheeks and your fine strawberry hair. I couldn’t believe that I was a dad and you were my son. I was twenty-five when you were born and it was one of the happiest times of my life.

Then, just after your first birthday, you got sick and had to spend a lot of time in the hospital. Your mom and I were young and scared and didn’t know what to do when you stopped breathing and had seizures. We spent that entire year in hospitals and doctors offices trying to figure out what was causing you to be so sick. No one could give us any answers. No one could help you get better. We cried a lot that year. It was one of the most difficult times of my life.

Then, just as we were about to give up, we found someone who could help. He picked us up off the floor of our hopelessness, held us up with His strong arms, wiped away our tears with His gentle hands, and healed your seizures with His mighty power. He changed our lives forever. His name is Jesus, and you know Him well—for it was you that introduced us to Him.

Keep Reading