The Edelbrock Family
Told by Laura Edelbrock
Before Emma was born, my husband and I both had full-time careers in music. I was a high school music teacher, and he had served with the US Army Band for 35 years. Then in 2000, God gave us Emma! We knew before she was born that she would have Down syndrome, and when she reached puberty, we learned that she was autistic as well. We moved from a lifestyle of practice, performance, and perfection to this lovely life we now have with Emma, which we like to call the real life!
When I was six months pregnant, we found out that Emma would be delivered in this beautiful package, and for the next three months we embarked on a journey to prepare our lives and our hearts for her. But we spent many sleepless nights worrying about the future of our family. One such night, when I just couldn’t seem to fall asleep, I decided to read the Bible, knowing that was where I would find the comfort my heart longed for. I was reading a passage in Luke about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. This was a story I had read often, but that night, I heard God’s voice clearly speaking to me.
The two disciples were talking to each other, despondent, when they were met by a stranger. The stranger asked them, “So, what are you talking about?” They simply responded, “We had hoped for something different.” I had to stop reading. That was us! We had hoped for something very different with our pregnancy and with our family. But then as I continued to read the story, I was reminded that the stranger on the road was the risen Christ. Jesus had come for the brokenhearted. He had come for us! My heart cried out, and I started weeping. I looked down at the Bible, my vision so blurry that I couldn’t even make out the heading of the section I had just read—“On the Road to Emmaus.” Through my tears, I saw the word “Emmaus” split into “Emma” and “us.” God had given us her name, and I knew in that moment that we were exactly where we were supposed to be.
Emma was born on a beautiful snowy day. We could feel the peace around us, and on our ride home from the hospital, we felt the need to stop at our church, where we found our pastor in his office. We had been surrounded with love and understanding during our pregnancy, and that afternoon, with our pastor, we dedicated Emma and our life to the Lord.
We knew that from that moment on our lives would be radically different, and for 23 years, God has not stopped writing our story into a memorable tale.
Emma started attending Jill’s House in 2014, but it took us a long time to get to that point. In my mind, I thought Jill’s House was for families who had children with different needs than ours. However, as Emma approached puberty and we began facing new challenges, we were encouraged to reconsider Jill’s House. Not just for Emma but for us!
We cautiously moved forward with our decision. Our intake meetings were successful, but we were unsure how Emma would respond to staying overnight in a new place, away from us. We worked with our intake team to create a “social story” of Jill’s House on her iPad, uploading pictures and videos of the different rooms at Jill’s House and then inserting her own picture into those rooms. The story helped us introduce her to Jill’s House and all the activities she would participate in while staying there.
When Emma’s first visit arrived, we still weren’t sure how her time away from us would pan out. Would we get a call in an hour or late at night? We never received a call, and when we picked her up at the end of the weekend, she was so happy. The staff kept thanking us for allowing them to spend the weekend with her! After a few more overnight stays at Jill’s House, she would barely wait for the car to come to a complete stop before jumping out and running into the building.
The blessing of Jill’s House goes far beyond Emma’s overnight stays—they continue in the form of family retreats, Bible studies, women’s retreats, and marriage retreats. Now that Emma is 23 years old and out of school, we have established relationships with other parents who are in the same situation as we are. We encourage one another and share resources.
Emma is nonverbal, but she is incredibly expressive, so daily maintenance can get busy and jumbled. That’s where Jill’s House blesses us the most! God led us to Jill’s House—a place that lets Emma do what she loves the most while allowing us the time to rest. She would return to a quiet and peaceful home, and rejuvenated, we would be able to completely dedicate our time to her.
Our story took a big turn, but God was so good to prepare us for it, and he continues to keep us close. Emma is such a blessing to our family and to others around us, and through Emma, we have been blessed by Jill’s House.
Thank you for making stories like Emma’s possible.
“Before moving to Virginia, we lived in Oklahoma, which is where Charleigh was born, New York, and Texas. Charleigh was much younger when we received the first diagnosis of Severe ASD.”
“Shortly after arriving in Virginia, Charleigh’s developmental pediatrician asked if we had heard about Jill’s House, which of course we hadn’t. Hearing about Jill’s House was a complete blessing!! We were so focused on providing the best care for Charleigh, that the idea of respite had never entered our minds.
Meet Margot and Family
“Margot has a great friend group of kids who have special needs and some who do not. Margot would say that she and her friend group are ‘Really cool!’ . They do typical teenage things like go to the movie theater, go to McDonald’s, or hang out at each other’s home. Though she has great time with her friends and her family, we also know that she needs something special and just for her. Margot’s special place is Jill’s House Windy City Camp!”
“Now that Margot has been going to camp for several years, she has developed some favorite things about camp. For starters, Margot considers herself a foodie and says the food is really good! She also loves having a camp buddy. But hands down, her most favorite thing about camp is the Talent Show. Margot will carefully prepare for the Talent Show. She plans what she will do and what props she will bring. She will sometimes dance or sing along to a favorite song.
Our older children range in age from 32-18, and after them comes our son, Peter, who is 11! Peter has Down syndrome, and once we learned all about the joys of Down syndrome, as well as the need for international adoption of children with disabilities; we became interested in pursuing that option as well. Here in the United States, there is a waiting list to adopt children with Down syndrome, but in other countries those children are often institutionalized. In Russia, at that time, children with Down syndrome were often sent to a psychiatric institution after the age of 5 or 6. That reality tore at our hearts. On top of that, Peter is much younger than his siblings, plus making friends requires lots of support, so we could see the value of a special inter-family friendship. It was a process that we started hesitatingly and prayerfully. Our agency happened to have a strong connection to China, so we eventually met our son Stephen through an assortment of little pictures and finally brought him home in 2014, which means he has been a part of our family nearly 7 years!
Peter and Stephen have grown up together! Stephen, who just turned 10, teaches Peter to be gentler, and Peter teaches Stephen to be more adventurous. Like Peter, Stephen has Down syndrome, and he has autism as well. He is almost completely non-verbal, although he can make noises to mean “Home” and “Mama”… we’re working on one for “Papa”, too!
The boys are little buddies, always playing together, inside and out. They are very different but have a lot of the same interests—which means they LOVE going to Jill’s House Blue Ridge Camp together! They’ve always gone together, which they really prefer. Their friendship is very sweet, which has been so important for each of them to have during the pandemic. We cannot even imagine what it would have been like for them to be on their own during this time.
The boys were planning on going to Blue Ridge Camp on March 13th 2020, the weekend that everything shut down! That was such a big heartbreak for us, that the world shut down on that particular weekend. That morning we had the boys’ bags packed and we thought that time at camp would be how they spent their weekend. We are SO glad to say that we have been able to come to Jill’s House Blue Ridge Camp since it reopened, which has been a joyful highlight for both the boys and for us.
Jill’s House is a place that we really have confidence—the staff are familiar with the disabilities that our children have, there is full understanding of the medical needs of our children, and the combination of fun and structure of Jill’s House is amazing. We are very fortunate that our boys are physically capable to go adventure around outside. We were stunned that there was a place that even existed like this, and the glowing recommendation of a friend is what drew us to it initially. She referred to it as “a spa for special needs children”—how accurate!
Jill’s House is such a unique operation. When we have told people in other places about Jill’s House, people who don’t have access to what we do through Jill’s House, they are amazed, because it’s hard to find programs like this. We are so grateful that we have such a wonderful thing—there really is nothing else like it. My husband, Chris, and I don’t have parents who are able to take the boys and care for them, and it’s helpful when an attendant comes to our home, but it is certainly nothing like what Jill’s House frees us up to do, including special events with our older children. It meant so much to our daughter that we drove up to her college to attend a parent’s event, were able to spend the night, and spend the next day with her—things we absolutely could not do without our boys staying overnight at Jill’s House Camp!
January 29 | 3 minute read
Respite opportunities are very hard to find—especially in Illinois. There is very little funding for it, especially in Illinois. Children who have special needs carry their own challenges, so that certainly impacts the options for someone to provide respite care. There is no other organization we know of that facilitates nights away like Jill’s House does. Jill’s House is tackling and pioneering a very challenging task, and for that we are very grateful.”
Trevor is very unique—I don’t think we’ve ever met a child with Down syndrome like Trevor. He is very high-functioning, very verbal, very involved in all parts of life, and is very athletic (he loves doing high intensity workouts!). Trevor loves to play his drums, he is deeply loyal to his high school (he is super proud to be a Tiger!), and absolutely loves movies. In fact, at Windy City Camp he will organize the entire Jill’s House staff into all the parts and characters of movies, and then they reenact the entire film, wearing costumes, as Trevor narrates!”
At home, there is pressure on our other kids to include him, or on me to entertain him. While he is having his own weekend adventure at Windy City, we can all relax. We don’t have the added level of “Well, what’s Trevor going to do? How is he going to engage?” We miss him when he’s gone, we are always ready to have him back, and we love hearing about his fun times at camp, but it is very lovely to just have that brief time of relief from the ongoing stress and tension we feel each day.”
“Churches are often looking to bless families like ours. They have big hearts, they are well-intentioned, but the ways they are typically able to help is not what we truly need at the core. They will do a big Saturday morning activity or show a movie for families affected by disability. But that limited time is not true respite. What our family really needs is a weekend off. That is too hard for a church to pull off without the help of a place like Jill’s House.