For Heather Mullen of Jim Thorpe and Jennifer Eckhart of Lehighton, a power greater than their own will has brought upon a significant change in their family dynamic.

Perhaps it was just an intuition a mother has to give love and a stable home environment to kids in need, but both women made decisions prompted by external forces to adopt children.

Foster familiarity

At the end of February, nearly two years to the day when they first came to Heather and her husband Bill as foster children, 8-year-old Jasmine and her sister, 4-year-old Jules were adopted and added to their biological family that includes 14-year-old Hannah and 11-year-old Hallie.

“My husband and I had decided that since my pregnancy days were over, we would take in foster kids,” she said. “We had 12 foster kids since 2020 from babies to teens, from just weeks old to an 18-year-old. These were kids removed from their parents to be in safer environments and get some sense of real family care.”

Mullen had been exposed to the idea of foster care by her father who along with her mother had adopted four children from the program.

“Jasmine was 6 and Jules was 2 when they were placed with us and at first and we figured they would be either moved back with their parents or to other family members.”

Jasmine and Jules were moved out of the Mullens’ home, but due to an emergency, Child Services asked them if they could take them back.

‘Do it Scared’

In the meantime, she and her husband were planning on moving away from foster care and invest their savings into purchasing a building to begin a business. “It was ‘Go Time’ for us,” she said. “We were about to make our own lives a priority.”

“I read a book titled, ‘Do It Scared,’ thinking we would just jump into starting a business, but then my father had a kidney transplant, my mother had breast cancer and Bill lost his job. Making these beautiful sisters a permanent part of our family was something that we could have declined to do, but there was a greater power telling us to ‘do it scared.’?”

There was much more involved than having Hannah and Hallie adjust to getting new sisters, which is working out just fine according to their mother.

“Jasmine and Jules still have involvement with their parents,” she said. “They make phone calls and read them bed time stories and I’m good with it. I could never deny any child a relationship with her natural mother and father.”

Prayer answered

Jennifer Eckhart met her husband, Cliff when they were young children at church. They married when she was 19 and after their first 13 years of marriage, they tried to conceive without success.

“Cliff and I are pastors of Blue Mountain Church in Palmerton,” she said. “In 2009, we had prayed that God would gift us with conceiving a child, but it just wasn’t to be. Then as I watched a fawn walk across our backyard with no mother nearby, I asked God to take away my desire to be a mother. Little did I know that a miracle was about to happen.”

Through a friend from a friend, they were told about a great-grandmother, raising an infant, but wanting to give the baby to a good Christian home.

In 2013, Jennifer met five and a half months old, Bella.

“As soon as I held her in my arms, I knew I wanted to take her home.”

Two years later, what Jennifer calls the “Gotcha Day,” Bella was officially adopted.

Just like with Heather Mullen, challenges come along as part of the package deal. Child care was fortunately provided by Jennifer’s mother who had come to live with them during the pandemic, but Bella still has contact with her own mother through social media or a card at Christmas time. As she grows older, Jennifer expects more questions that her now 11-year-old will be asking.

“She already asked what it was like to be in my belly and I told her she was in someone else’s belly so I could then have her come to me,” she said with lump in her throat. “My daughter said, ‘Yay!”’

Jennifer then explained that all families are broken in some way. Life is hard, but trust that God will bring them together.

“Adoption is a gift from God,” she said. “It’s a give and take of love.”

Nature to nurture

Jennifer’s calling to be a mother is similar to the same feeling Heather has. “As a woman, I have a natural desire to nurture, to teach my child values, but I realize I’m not strong enough to do this by myself. It takes a village to raise a child. I network with other moms and together we form a loving team to help Bella and their children grow into good people.”

Speaking of good people, Heather works for Family Promise, a local program that helps support the homeless in our area and Jennifer works at CareNet, a program that provides assistance and counseling to young pregnant girls.

Both Heather Mullen and Jennifer Eckhart give credit to a higher power for the blessings of all their children and come this Mother’s Day, both moms will be doing what moms love to do. They will be spending the day enjoying their children.