Loving Couple Opens Home and Adopts 6 Blind Children After Struggling To Conceive
Infertility issues have dogged couples since the dawn of recorded time, causing frustration and fomenting fear. Modern-day celebrities such as Hugh Jackman, Celine Dion, and Jamie Lee Curtis all candidly admitted to having trouble starting a family.
The Bible itself returns to the emotionally charged topic again and again. In Genesis 30, Rachel — the wife of the patriarch Jacob — exclaims in exasperation, “Give me children or I shall die!”
An understandable desire, especially when one feels robbed of the chance to hold a little life you helped create. When one Oakton, Virginia, couple found themselves struggling to conceive, though, they decided to dedicate themselves to helping a set of very special children.
Joe and Karen Bartling were 30 when they had their first and only biological child, Joel. After it became evident that he would be their only child, they turned to adoption.
That’s a massive undertaking for any family, one that utterly changes its course. For the Bartlings, though, their particular approach to adoption made them local experts with a particular sort of case: blindness.
“We decided to adopt, and the first one just happened to be blind,” Karen told the Daily Mail. “It was a head scratcher.
“We were like, ‘Oh well, that is interesting.’ We went to the airport and just picked up this child. She was a precious little baby.”
The couple’s openness to a child with a profound disability got them on the lists of several social workers. When a young life with a physical deformity entered the system, those workers would contact the Bartlings.
When they received a random piece of mail about adoption one day, “I leafed through and there was Jesse’s picture with the words, ‘Parents needed for blind child,’” Karen said. “The Almighty sent her our way.”
Joe and Karen went on to adopt six blind children: Hannah, David, Bethany, Jesse, Abi, and Obed. One had been abandoned in a trash can in India, another was left on the steps of a Chinese governmental building, and another faced mental challenges in addition to blindness.
“Wherever we go it is a spectacle,” Joe said. “It’s not our fault, we just attract some stares.
“Depending on where we are and how the community responds to us, it’s quite interesting. Often when we are out in rural areas, in places where people don’t see a diverse family like ours, we get our meals paid for every so often.”
The Bartlings’ clan has also impacted other parts of their lives. In 2006, the couple got into a legal conflict with a builder when a house they purchased came with a bevy of wire-wrapped trees in the backyard, trees that were required by law and not on the original site plan.
“I don’t want my kids having black eyes running into trees all day,” Karen told The Washington Post. “These kids have enough obstacles in their lives.”
In 2012, they both testified before the Virginia State House regarding a bill that would have removed monies slated for state-provided abortions. The couple said that physical deformities should make no difference in whether or not a child has a chance at life.
“Today we’re here to testify not for the mom who is going through the unwanted pregnancy, not for the doctor, or the physician, who may be looking out for the wife and the mother, not for the social worker who is determining the eligibility criteria … and not for the state agency who is administering these funds,” Karen said.
“Today we are here to testify on behalf of that little unborn child who, unbeknown to him or her, may just so happen to have a gross or totally incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency … who one day might be somebody’s proud son or daughter.”
What an incredible family. The Bartlings are a true inspiration!
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