The Edwards Family
Told by Cathy Edwards
Keith is the youngest of our six grown children. We are blessed to have four grandchildren, with one more on the way. Every day, we are grateful for the ways God has shown his love for us, through our family.
When Keith was born, I could feel the grace and patience of Jesus’s love for him in my soul. Keith was born with Down syndrome and autism; but we all knew that Keith was God’s perfect plan. He is now 21 years old and has been attending Jill’s House since 2010. If Jill’s House had not been part of our lives for all these years, it’s hard to imagine how things would’ve been.
Keith’s first weekend stay at Jill’s House was two months after it had opened, in 2010, when he was 11 years old. We were so nervous, as we had never before considered the idea of respite or our child staying away from home overnight. But I’ll never forget the look on his face when we were driving home after the first weekend. He appeared to be in a kind of dream state, as if he were replaying the whole weekend in his mind. It was almost as if he couldn’t believe it was real; maybe he was wondering if it was going to happen again. He was quiet. And this type of behavior wasn’t typical for him; so I knew, at that moment, that Jill’s House was really something special.
Between each visit, Keith would mark the days on the calendar until his next visit. He had been going to Jill’s House for about a year, when we began noticing how comfortable he was. He would walk into the building and say, “POD two, please!” He was so at ease that it was almost as if he were checking into a hotel.
Though Jill’s House has mostly been for Keith’s benefit, it feels like God has used Keith and Jill’s House to impact the whole family!
After observing Keith at Jill’s House, our middle daughter applied to be a volunteer there. Later, she took a staff position. She said that she had never worked at a place where people just loved to be there. She had once considered going into Nutrition. But, observing Keith at Jill’s House and being on the team as a volunteer and an employee changed her heart, and consequently her career path. When you witness people come forward to help fund a cause or help serve, it replaces fear with love. It inspires you to step up and do the same. We feel that there is no other place in the world for families like ours. Our daughter is now a Special Education Teacher.
When Keith was younger and we were attending the McLean Bible Church (MBC), we were excited about Jill’s House opening in the community. Before that, Keith would participate in the Access Ministry at the church, while we would attend the worship service. It was during that time when our faith in God’s sovereign plan was really nurtured. We were attending the MBC, so Keith could participate in the Access Ministry. However, we believe that God provided a space for Keith, so my husband would return to church. It was while we were attending the MBC that my husband accepted Jesus as his savior.
God’s plan, for our lives, is always greater than our plan!
While we feel very fortunate that Keith has had all this time at Jill’s House, we also feel sad that he will be aging out of the program in a few months. Our dream is that Jill’s House continues to help families, even as kids grow into adulthood. Jill’s House brings such joy and comfort to families!
Keith loves interacting with people, using technology, and making people laugh. He loves kids and will be assisting us as we develop a Special Needs Ministry, at our new church. We are excited to see how God uses Keith to bless others in the future!
God’s plan is always greater than anything we could possibly dream of, and God’s grace is always sufficient.
Thank you for making stories like Keith’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.