It’s Never Too Late: Make The Next Act Of Your Life The Best Act Of Your LifeSample

It’s Never Too Late to Change the World 

I had always loved children, but I was never one of those women who longed to be a mother more than anything else in life. By the time Frank and I were married I was thirty-three years old and starting to think my window of opportunity to have healthy babies was closing. I decided to let nature take its course and see where that led. Honestly, I was so ecstatic to finally be in a loving, supportive, healthy, and sexy relationship that I truly wasn’t longing for anything more. 

No one was more surprised than I when, weeks after we returned home from a vacation, I began to feel a little funny. Not sick, just different. I did some math. When was my last period? I couldn’t remember at first until I realized it had been right before our cruise. No . . . could it be? How could it be? I was astonished at the possibility after so much time.

We bought a pregnancy test at the drug store and watched the little stick change to a resounding positive. I don’t remember being thrilled, and I know for sure that Frank wasn’t (he had three grown children). But I did eventually rejoice, and so did he, knowing that God was going to bless us with a child.

This was not something we had prayed for, as so many couples do, but something that God had designed for a greater purpose than the fulfillment of our dreams. I had trusted that the Lord would bring it about if it was His will, and it obviously was. 

Three months after my son, Cody, was born I took him with me to a new facility for newborn babies suffering from HIV or full-blown AIDS. At the time, AIDS was a brand-new, terrifying, and largely misundersttod disease. On that hot June day I held my very first AIDS baby. He weighed less than two pounds. In my other arm I held my eleven-pound healthy son. One baby born into suffering and pain, the other born into health, prosperity, and hope.

The injustice of that one moment forever changed me. Frank and I both knew that we needed to do more to alleviate the suffering of these children. At that time there was no hope for these babies. They all died. We came alongside Gretchen Buchenholz and helped establish Cody House, a brownstone in New York where, day after day, loving, caring volunteers came to simply rock them—literally to love them to death. 

Frank and I also became involved in legal battles for the sake of providing medicine to mothers to combat the possibility of their children being born infected with HIV or AIDS. We took the state of New York to court, and I used an opportunity to speak to George Pataki (then the governor of New York) to explain the importance of our actions in addressing this issue. Months later we started to see progress.

Changing the world doesn’t have to be a large-scale thing—though sometimes small steps inspire major movements. You can impact your neighborhood, the school down the road, or where you work like no one else. It’s never too late to change the world, one child at a time.

Respond

What has God blessed you with—possessions, abilities, opportunities, relationships?

What needs in our world speak to your heart? How do you see God working in your life to help you address a need?

What first step can you take to use what God has given you to change the world for His glory?