Abba’s House is what one of my dearest friends calls her home. When she said Yes to Gods clear call (after raising three adult children) to open her heart and home to two teenagers, siblings, one with a baby boy on the way, from Haiti that needed a home, a mother, and a place to establish a new life in the United States.
Abba’s House is a home where orphans from Haiti have come to be loved, cared for, and guided to walk in the principles and pathways of Jesus Christ. It is where a beloved special needs adult daughter (age 34) sings loudly to the Lord every morning, for about three hours. She praises and intercedes whole heartedly for those needs around her, the greater community, and those who are suffering overseas. It is a place a dog name Jael, nuzzles on an easy chair, barks at every stranger. steals food from the table, and loves all in the home. It is a place that received a Haitian earthquake survivor for a season while she recovered from the effects of the mental trauma of her near death experience.
It is a place later that began nurturing, and is still raising that precious baby boy from the teen daughter. He is a sickle cell baby, and is seven now, and is a thriving first grader, and a children’s hospital miracle.
Abba’s House is also a place that received a badly burned five year old from Haiti. The daughter of a Voodoo priests who nearly killed her, and abandoned her in some remote mountain village. Marlane, again, said, Yes to the call from the head mistress at the orphanage Can you take this child? Today, that child is a thriving middle school student that, although has physical scars, is healing from the wounds of abandonment.
So, all of this background information leads me to state, that it was in this home, this place, Abba’s House that I came to live with my four year old son in a time of great sorrow and need in my life. My husband had left us, and we were unable to stay in an expensive rental on the Northshore. My friend said Yes again, when I came to her with my crisis. My young son, Elisha, and I came to be part of the Abba House entourage, and blended into the menagerie of activity quite well. This was Christmas 2007.
At the time, little did I know that I would be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the Spring of 2009. I stayed on another whole year and a half after the ovarian cancer diagnosis came and was battled against. It is here that many relationships were forged. God truly does- sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; Psalm 68:6. It was through these life experiences that a book was birthed. Abbas House: Lessons on Living. It is here that I plan to fill the pages with stories of family life, and the deep abiding lessons that are given and learned.