Callie Rose Bynum

Callie was born on December 16, 1999 in Santa Monica, CA three weeks early. Let me back up a bit. For many years, my wife Debbie and I prayed for a child. I always thought we would produce our own but it was not to happen. The effort to "get pregnant" was extremely intensive to the point where we stopped trying. Years went by, we relocated to a different city, then "suddenly" we got a phone call from a friend of ours who knew of our desire and she told us her sister was going to have a baby in three weeks and asked if we wanted to adopt the child. Since we had relocated a year prior she had to track us down through many other people to find us. We told her to give us a couple of days to think about it and she was ok with that. The moment we got off the phone we agreed, who are we to turn away the "gift" God has dropped in our lap. When we called her back in three days she said "I hope you like red heads, because she was born yesterday"!

Callie's birth mother was living in Santa Monica and her family lives in Las Vegas. That Thanksgiving she came home to Las Vegas to be with her family. They noticed she was pregnant (which they did not know about) and she told them she was about 3-4 months along. She did not appear to be as far along as was to be discovered. The mother never did have ANY pre-natal care. Her family told her to visit the OBGYN when she returned to Santa Monica after the Thanksgiving holiday. When she went to the doctor, it was discovered that Callie was breach in the womb, an emergency c-section took place and Callie was born approximately one hour later on December 16, 1999. Callie stayed in intensive care for three weeks. She had difficulty sucking and needed to learn before she could be released.

At that time Deb and I were living in Denver. It was Christmas week and we were running "with our hair on fire" to make arrangements for Callie to come home with us. In Colorado you must work through an adoption agency and have an attorney represent us before we could bring a child across the state line. Meanwhile in California we needed the court to grant us "legal guardianship" of Callie before we could take her out of the state. All of this did happen while we were "on the road" and by the time we got to the hospital on December 28th everything was in place to receive the "gift of God" into our family.

We took Callie home to Denver where she was legally adopted in August 2000. After about one year we noticed Callie did not do the normal one year old things such as, sit up, crawl, mimic impressions etc. We started having additional testing done and she was diagnosed as having Cerebral Palsy. Upon learning this we set out to do everything possible to help Callie progress, grow and develop life skills. In 2007 we took her to UCLA Cerebral Palsy Clinic and learned she has Angelmans Syndrome. We had a genetic test done and it confirmed the diagnoses.

You know, there was NEVER a time when we questioned God's choice of Callie as our daughter. We knew she was ours the moment we got that first phone call. From the time of Callie's conception the Lord has used her to bless thousands of people as the love of Christ freely flows through her smile, her laugh, her reaching out to people to give a loving hug and not letting go. Yes she has challenges but we all work together to give her the very best life has to offer.

Be encouraged, your child has been given to you because no one else can love, care for, help and support them as you do.

Our love and support to all of you: Cliff, Debbie and Callie Bynum. bynie1@msn.com

Callie and Mom

Callie (Year 2000)

Callie (Year 2000)