The Benson Family Love Story

It was just before Christmas and the doctor told Dustin’s parents to go home and give him the best Christmas they could. They did not get all the cancer and they gave him a less than 1% chance of survival. Dustin parents did just that – they took him home and had the best Christmas, and the small joy of being permitted off the hospital grounds for Christmas while he was so sick. Dustin was put through the “Make A Wish” foundation program and fulfilled his 8-year-old dream of flying to California and meeting his cowboy hero, Roy Rodgers and his horse. After the holiday was over they reported back to the hospital for additional treatment to help in any way they could. The doctor came in and told Dustin’s parents they could not believe it, but the cancer was gone, by the grace of God. Dustin left with no chance to survive and returned to the hospital rid of the illness that was stealing his life away.

I had the opportunity to go back and visit St. Jude Hospital with Dustin right before we got married for a survivor’s checkup. The doctors that knew his story told it like a legend, and it blew me away how many people knew about him. He would come in the room and the doctors would say, “you aren’t going to believe this one” to the other doctors in the room as they started to tell his story. Dustin was such a big St. Jude survivor story that he became the “poster boy” of sorts – he was featured on billboards in Memphis, in the St. Jude survivor calendar, and during radio-athons for St. Jude he would tell his story. Dustin suffered from sensitivity to many medications during this time and he could not take pain and sedation medication so the doctors were forced to give him what they called a cocktail of medication that would make him forget what he was feeling – a memory killer to hide the pain he would feel. Dustin has no memories before the time he was about 10 years old. He often looks at photos of that time and says that he hears the stories and believes he has envisioned what is was like through the stories his parents and older sister tell of that time.

I will never forget the day I found out that we would never have our own children. When Dustin and I were dating I knew when I married him there was a chance we would not be able to have our own children, but the doctor was very encouraging and upbeat, telling us it was a 60/40 chance. We decided to confirm what the chances were so we did not have to wonder; it was about a week or two after the test that I got the phone call.

I answered my phone while shopping for a baby shower gift for a friend. I had no warning of what kind of news was coming, just a voice telling me there would be absolutely no chance of us having our own child. The nurse on the other end of the phone held zero compassion and spoke very quickly. I had to ask her to repeat what she had just shared. I looked around with the phone in my hands standing in the middle of Babies R Us and I could not get out of that building fast enough, surrounded by tiny clothes and little toys.

We had no chance of having a child that I wasn’t even ready to have and hadn’t even thought about yet (we had only been married about a year). I was hit with the mourning of a loss before we ever even tried to conceive. It was strange to feel sad for something that I knew I would miss more as time went on, and it took a lot to get us to really talk about how this impacted us as a couple. It’s been a growing experience in our marriage, full of hard times and triumphs and seeing what God can do if we remain faithful.

Dustin: Lindsey and I met in high school at our church youth group. She was the younger sister of my friends’ girlfriend. She was beautiful, and sweet, and for my birthday she gave me a Pinky and the Brain video, which was the fastest way to my heart. We soon went on our first date after being set up by my cousin, and have been together ever since. Lindsey and I were married in December of 2006.

For me, my heart started to really open wider to adoption about two years ago when we moved to our new house. God had done some amazing work in our lives and his hand was so evident in every step of our move that it just had the feeling that this was where God wanted us to be and where our family would begin. Lindsey and I have known since the first year of our marriage that we would not be able to have children. With my cancer treatments as a child, we knew that infertility was a possibility, but the news did come as a shock. We were not ready to have kids at the time, so it was confusing to be grieving for a loss that we were not ready for. It made going through the grief process very hard and instead of confronting it early it was something we avoided for a long time.

Lindsey: I have known we would adopt always! But it’s so different to “decide” to start, when you’re having a baby it’s a gamble and even if you try there is an element of surprise. With adoption I think we both struggled with not wanting to feel like, “oh, I’m ready let’s go to the store and pick up a family.” I felt the pull to start the adoption process about 2 years ago, I was 28 and really starting to feel it was time to invest in family and get started. When you’re ready to have a family and you’re adopting, the time it takes to get the process going is exhausting and long but worth it when we can make our family complete.

I worked alongside a woman at my past job for 11 years who is a birth mother. I remember when she told me she had chosen adoption for her son, I was shocked. She is beautiful, hardworking, and seemed to have her whole life in order with a big supportive family around her and I could not imagine a time she would be in a place to choose adoption. This has impacted me the most after choosing adoption – I had a vision of who our birth mother could be as someone very different from my friend, and this taught me very early on to not judge a birth mother because you never know who could be in a hard place in life at some point. 

Our church group has about 6 families and 4 of these couples have discovered they could not have children. We have had the chance to walk through their journeys in adoption and see them become parents and have a great support system in them – these families are our biggest cheerleaders. Our best-married friends have just given birth in March to a child after conceiving through embryo adoption since like us, the husband was unable to have children, and their path took them down a road where she carried the adoptive child.

To us, adoption means hope and opportunity. I desire a child and somewhere out there is a child who needs me too, just like I need them. I am so excited to experience being a parent and have the opportunity to see my husband become a father.

Dustin: I think for me I view adoption as a path that God has laid out for Lindsey and I. It isn’t the easiest path or the one we necessarily grew up imagining but I can see God’s hand of blessing all throughout our lives, preparing us for this journey. It requires faith and trust in Him but I know that in the end It will be beautiful.

You can join Dustin and Lindsey’s amazing story by giving today – just click “give to this story” – Thanks for being here!