At a time when many people are having difficulty dealing with the recent tragedy in Connecticut, a Construction Equipment Guide reader, Genia Roof, the wife of Guy Roof, president, Con-Equip of the Carolinas Inc., Greensboro, N.C., chose to share this story of hope.

Ever since I was a young girl, I knew I would have children and, I’d hoped, lots of them. I dreamed of making their Christmases as wonderful as my parents had always made Christmas for me.

I gave birth to our first child in 2002. He died when he was four days old.

My life was shattered. Every dream I’d had for him was over. I lived with a broken heart for what seemed to be forever. Then, seven years into my heartache, with my faith being truly tested to the limit, I decided to let go of all my pain. What kind of a life am I living, I wondered. I knew I?had to accept living without children.

At 11:39 on Christmas morning 2009, the phone rang. My husband Guy and I had already exchanged our gifts and I?was in the kitchen fixing the sweet potatoes I was taking to my parents’ house for dinner. On the line was a man’s voice calling from an area code we didn’t recognize.

He said, “My girlfriend and I wanted to know if you want to adopt our baby, a boy due in March.”

My first thought was, “this has to be a joke.” Because as he spoke, I recognized his voice. He and his (same) girlfriend had called us three years previously, wanting us to adopt their six-month-old baby girl, Faith. She was their ninth child. Faith’s mother cried on the phone and begged me to come and get the baby that very same day. By law, of course, I couldn’t do that, but I frantically started the detailed and arduous process of an out-of-state adoption. Two weeks later, the mother called back and said she had changed her mind because Faith’s father had said he would stay with her if she kept the baby. Sadly, Faith eventually became a ward of the state.

Faith’s birth parents had both come from broken homes and had been in and out of foster care themselves. This yet-to-be-born baby would be the 10th child between them and Social Services had stepped in and informed them that he would be immediately placed in foster care if they did not have an adoptive family in place at his birth.

The birth parents had lost my information. But through some divine reason, the birth grandmother had kept my information in her phone book. When they had first contacted me three years earlier, she had felt it was very important to keep my number but had been reluctant to give it to them because of what had happened at that time. But she couldn’t bear the thought of the new baby being taken by the state as his sister had been when she knew Guy and I were out there ready to give him a loving home. Her decision gave that family peace and my heart joy.

Huey Roof was born March 7, 2010, at 8:23 p.m. in a small town close to Green Bay, Wis. I was there to cut the cord and my little boy and I have been inseparable ever since. My heart has never been happier.

My son Charlie is tucked away in a special place in my heart that is only his. He would want me to be happy.

So, as for doubting Christmas miracles, they really do happen. Huey and I believe.

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