Within several weeks of becoming believers, Patrick and Bárbara Hubbard are faced with two difficult health issues. Patrick, trying to wait out stomach pains that just wouldn’t quit, goes to the doctor and is immediately rushed to the ER for an emergency appendectomy. He spends a week in the hospital recovering due to complications resulting from his waiting to be seen. The doctor points out that there was a very real chance he could have died had he waited any longer. Not long after, Bárbara, thirteen weeks pregnant, miscarries. Early in the next year she will have another pregnancy that will end in miscarriage.
Driving her forty-five minute commute to work, Bárbara has a lot of time to think. Like most women struggling with infertility, a lot of those thoughts were about pregnancy. Why was this happening? There were single teenagers getting pregnant and having babies, why couldn’t she? The more she became aware of others’ successful pregnancies, the more the message of adoption began finding her. Perhaps that would be the way the Lord would grow their family.
Patrick and Bárbara were both becoming anxious and dissatisfied in their professional careers. They couldn’t quite name what it was yet, but it seemed there must be something else for them. They both wanted to make a difference in the world for the kingdom. As they began to accept that they may never have biological children, they began to explore what being involved in foster care could look like.
One day on her commute, Bárbara heard a radio ad for a Christian group home that was looking for house parents. House parents would live in a group home with children whose parents, unable to care for them for whatever reason, had signed them into the program. This gave the kids a safe, stable environment while their parent(s) worked to get to a place they could take them back. Curiously, when Bárbara called to set up a tour of the facility, the organization informed her that they didn’t run ads on the radio. Nevertheless, Bárbara and Patrick toured and interviewed and were eventually offered a job.
A job that paid significantly less than they were making. Their current mortgage would be well over half of the monthly salary they were being offered. Though their initial reaction was to decline, over the course of the weekend the Spirit worked on their hearts. They still had their savings accounts. They still had their dream of retiring at 45 to travel the world they had so diligently saved for. They decided to accept the position and sell their house.
Only, things did not go as planned.
For starters, within the first month of being house parents, Bárbara finds out that she is pregnant again. It’s a high risk pregnancy fraught with news of possible complications. Nine months later, after a difficult delivery, Baby Patrick III enters the world. His first six months are precarious. He is diagnosed with failure to thrive, then a mysterious breathing complication lands him in the hospital. After the initial six months though, he grows into a healthy, flourishing baby and then toddler—his feet barely touching the floor of the group home with so many adoring older girls to fawn over him.
There was another, much less joyful, snag in their plans. The house didn’t sell. Month after month they paid their mortgage, barely making ends meet. This dragged on for more than two years, draining their savings accounts. Their dreams of early retirement and traveling the world dried up. Finally, Patrick and Bárbara began to sell off all nonessential furniture, using the money from their yard sales to make the mortgage payment.
And then came the month where the money ran out. They weren’t going to have enough to make the payment.
And suddenly, the house sold. Bárbara wrote the check to pay off the loan the same day the mortgage payment would have been due.
Reflecting on this difficult season as new believers, Patrick and Bárbara shared how they could see the Lord building a foundation for what was to come. He directed them with small, faithful steps. They were faced with their own mortality with Patrick’s close call, then found themselves making peace with the possibility of never having biological children. They were drawn out of their comfort in making the courageous decision to take a huge pay-cut to enter ministry as house parents. They endured the confusion and misunderstanding of their parents who, understandably, worried that they had joined some sort of cult and had been brainwashed.
Bit by bit their security and their plans were stripped away. And step by step the Lord showed Himself to be faithful for the journey. He was about to lead them into a venture that would change their lives, and by extension the lives of many poor people across the globe. All of this built on the strong foundation the Lord was preparing, even through the difficulties of these early years walking with Him.
This is part four of the Living Bread Story, as told by Aleah Marsden. Click for Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
Aleah is currently fundraising for her upcoming trip to visit Brazil with Living Bread Ministries to help tell the stories of the families, individuals, and churches we serve. For more information or to donate visit: https://livingbread.givecorps.com/projects/12525-aleah-s-trip-to-brazil