I watched 10-year-old Sarah (Name has been changed to protect identity) sitting by herself under an oak tree, far from the other kids playing kickball in the Georgia sun. Staring at the ground, she picked at a tuft of grass. Since she’d arrived at our foster home a week earlier, she hadn’t said a word to me or my husband, Charlie, or to the other kids. Nor had she wanted to play with any of the displaced animals on our farm, Noah’s Ark Animal Rehabilitation Center.

"She’s been abused from a young age," the social worker had warned us. "No one’s been able to help her." I’ll be able to, I thought. But whenever I went to hug Sarah she stood as stiff as a pole, arms clamped to her sides. Never in eight years of caring for foster kids had I met a child who couldn’t hug back. Now I wondered if , once again, I’d taken on too much.

Ever since I was a little girl I’d been rushing to catch up with my dreams. My dad was an itinerant preacher, so my family was always on the road. One morning I found a scraggly stray puppy outside the motel we’d stayed in. I smuggled him into the backseat of our beat-up station wagon, but the puppy yelped and gave us away. "Now Jama," Dad said gently, "you know we can’t have pets with us on the road."

"When I grow up I’m going to have lots of animals, just like Noah did on his ark," I declared. "I’m going to have run-down horses and three legged goats and runty pigs and toothless tigers. I’ll take in all the stray, hurt animals nobody else wants."

That was the first dream. The second came on a trip to Mexico, when we were giving money we’d collected to an orphanage. My stomach tightened when I saw the kids slept on metal beds without sheets. I told my parents I was going to build a home for kids without families. "And we’ll have bedspreads on the bunk beds and books and toys all over the place," I said breathlessly.

"Honey, calm down," Mama said. "In time. Pray about it and wait."

I could pray, but how could I wait? Those children needed help, and I needed to help them.

With every stray animal or lonely kid we had to leave behind, I told my parents all about my dreams again. By the time I was a teenager, I was good and tired of the word wait.

One night Dad was leading a revival in Crossville, Tenn. I noticed a handsome fellow with dark curly hair at the service. I could not take my eyes off him! I asked a gal who he was. "That’s Charlie Hedgecoth."

My pulse started to race. I felt certain God had put Charlie in my path. "I’m going to marry him," I decided. And two months later that’s exactly what I did, despite my parents’ urging, as always, to wait. Eventually, my family had to move on. Charlie and I stayed put. As I watched a dust cloud kick up behind the old station wagon, I wiped away my tears and squared my shoulders.

Now I was on my own. It was time to make all my dreams come true. Eager to get started, I headed to the grocery store. That evening I showed Charlie what I’d bought. "We’ve got some crackers and chips and look – cupcakes," I said, setting the goodies on the counter.

Charlie peered into the empty bags. "But, Jama, did you get any real food, like chicken or potatoes?"

"Why would I get that?" I asked. "We can go out to eat that sort of stuff."

Charlie stared at me. I had grown up in motels. I barely understood how eggs got from their shells into omelettes. All at once I felt overwhelmed. Lord, I know I’ll have to work hard. But you put these dreams in my heart. Help me follow them.

Charlie and I moved to Indiana, then to Georgia, where we rented a small farm. We had three sons and two daughters, and I’d soon gathered more than 200 unwanted and disabled animals – everything from monkeys to raccoons to cows. A local couple even donated the money to build an eagle care facility. It was a never-ending battle to keep the house clean. Cages filled with rabbits and possums crowded the living room. Charlie worked hard for a trucking company. When he got home, he plowed and planted. After school, I took the kids with me on a film delivery route. But even working as hard as we did, we were way beyond broke.

Time and again our electricity was cut off. I resorted to rifling through Dumpsters behind grocery stores to find food for the animals. Some sympathetic store managers set aside a few things. Then one day I found a teenager sleeping by a Dumpster. We barely had enough for our own kids, but this boy had nothing. Yes, help him, a voice inside me urged. I took him home, and a procession of displaced kids soon followed.

There was always another mouth to feed. One spring morning I was too tired to get out of bed. The children and Charlie were playing catch outside with an old football we’d found at a yard sale. Suddenly I wondered, What’s wrong with me, God? I wanted to make a cozy home with toys for orphaned children, but I don’t have enough money to take care of my own family, not to mention the animals. The trash was filled with empty cans of dog food, the hamper crammed with unwashed clothes. Hadn’t there been a time when a toothless poodle wouldn’t let Charlie get into bed? More room, I thought, that’s what we need.

I pulled myself up and went outside to my family. "Pack up, because we’re moving to a bigger place where Noah’s Ark can grow." We piled into our van and just started driving, looking for a farm. After six months Charlie finally said, "Jama, I’m really worried. This is crazy even for you. We’re using nickels and dimes to put gas in the car. How much longer can we do this?"

"Charlie," I said, "we have to keep looking. God will help us and show us the right place."

Finally, one day as we were driving through Locust Grove, Ga., we passed a For Sale sign nailed to a tree. "Stop, Charlie!" I yelled.

He slammed on the brakes. "What’s wrong?"

"This is our farm!" I jumped out of the car and ran through the tall grass to a knoll where a small two-bedroom house with a porch stood in a pecan grove. I sank to my knees. "Thank you, Lord. This is it!"

I had no earthly idea how we were going to pay the $497,000, but I borrowed the $12,000 deposit from my father’s friend and we signed a contract promising to pay the total amount the following June of 1991. Meanwhile we’d pay rent. Deep down I know I was being impractical, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to keep my dreams alive.

May 1991 came, and not only did we not have the $485,000 , but we were $6,000 behind in our rent. I called an attorney to ask about our options. "Jama, you’ve got thirty days to vacate," he told me. "There’s really nothing else we can do. I’m sorry I can’t help you more."

After I hung up, I started bawling. "God, I’m in a mess again," I said. "I have more than three hundred animals and all of these children with no place to go." Again, my dreams were getting away from me.

Then God seemed to answer: It’s in my hands.

"All right," I said, "but you haven’t got much time." I looked at the calendar on the wall. Where would we be in the next couple of days? How would I tell my family we would have to move again?

The phone rang. It was the attorney. "My client who donated the eagle facility to you last year just called. I happened to mention your plight to him. You’re not going to believe this, but he and his wife would like to pay off your property!"

I nearly dropped the phone.

Soon after the property was purchased, our benefactor came by to visit. His wife’s eyebrows rose when she saw a colt in a sleeping bag on our bedroom floor. She pulled me aside. "Jama, you and your family deserve a bigger place. Find an architect and build a house with ten bedrooms and ten bathrooms."

I wrapped my arms around her, speechless. Finally, my kids and animals have a place to call their own.

We converted our original two bedroom home into a wildlife rehabilitation center and moved into our spacious new quarters – enough to house up to 12 foster kids at a time. At last all of the pieces were in place. Our farm had more animals than a zoo, the foster home more books and toys than we could count.

Yet here I was watching 10-year-old Sarah, unreachable despite all my efforts. I was so used to seeing results just so long as I kept plugging away. Now I felt as helpless as I had as a little girl who couldn’t keep a stray puppy.

The night Sarah came to us, she barely ate a bite of her dinner. I asked her over and over, "Honey, what can I do for you?" Sarah just gave me a blank stare. A couple of nights later Charlie and I passed by her room and heard sobbing. I knocked and went in. Sarah hushed, but I could see her body trembling.

Back in the hallway I whispered to Charlie, "How do we reach Sarah?"

"We can give her food and clothes and love, but we can’t force her to respond to us. Maybe we just need to wait, Jama."

There was that word again. "She’s hurting now," I insisted. "We’ve got to do something right away!"

That afternoon as I watched Sarah pick listlessly at that tuft of grass, I was about to ask for the thousandth time, "Honey, why are you hurting?" Then I spied one of our fawns. It wobbled close to Sarah, who looked up for a second, then dropped her hand. I drew in my breath as the fawn climbed onto Sarah’s lap. Then the fawn licked Sarah’s face with its velvety tongue. I started to rush over to tell her that it was okay. Wait, Jama. The words I’d heard so often came loud and clear in my mind. This time I knew they came from God. But she’s scared, I thought. Just wait, he told me again.

The fawn kept licking Sarah’s cheeks, dodging her efforts to push it away. At last Sarah stopped struggling. She slowly moved her hands across the fawn’s speckled back. And then Sarah was hugging the fawn as it licked her tears away.

That night Sarah spoke to us for the first time. Soon she was playing kickball with the other kids and helping feed the animals, including the little fawn.

We’d gotten through to Sarah, and God had gotten through to me. I work hard and dream hard and pray hard, but the results are up to God – in his way, in his time. I lose sight of that occasionally, when I want so badly for things to work out as I’d hoped and planned. Yet sometimes the most important thing to do is wait. After all, the least I can do is be as patient with God as he is with me.

Featured in Guideposts Magazine, September 1999