Stacy Long

AFA Journal staff writer

June 2014 – How God untwisted a train wreck marriage and gave 32 special needs children a home
Teen pregnancy. A reluctant bride. An abusive husband. A broken family. Alcoholism. Anger. Unforgiveness. Hatred. Only God can take those things and transform them. And that’s what He did for Irene and Domingo Garcia. And beyond that, He used them to minister to others coming out of similar devastating situations. 

New life for the broken
Coming from a strongly Catholic family, when Irene became pregnant at the age of 15, she believed she had no choice but to marry Domingo – the young teenage father of her child, a man whom she did not love and had already come to fear. Almost immediately, abuse and anger began taking over their marriage, with Domingo’s problem of physical abusiveness due to alcoholism coming to the forefront on the day after their wedding. 

“For me, there was a feeling of hopelessness,” she told AFA Journal. “I was a young girl, and already felt like I had brought shame on my family by becoming pregnant. I knew that divorce would be a terrible thing to them. And so I just endured the pain of my marriage because I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. I felt alone; I had nowhere to go.” 

As time went on, the situation worsened, despite the birth of their two sons, and her fear of her husband grew into hatred. Ten years into her marriage, she was prepared to divorce her husband. But instead she found herself on another road that involved redemption, restoration and reconciliation for herself, her husband and their marriage. Through the compassionate friendship of a Christian woman, Garcia was presented with the gospel, and the Lord took over her life. Even then she struggled to exercise faith when it came to her battered relationship with her husband. 

“I believed God wanted me to have a Christian husband,” she explained, “and not really understanding Scripture, I started praying that God would take my husband – let his car go over the canyon. I wanted him out of my life. Now I think about how my prayers were perfected by the Holy Spirit, and God did give me a new man. He made Domingo a new creature in Him.

“My Christianity really took life when Domingo asked me to forgive him. I didn’t want to forgive him, I wanted to just move on and not be with him anymore, but God said, ‘I put My hands out for you and Domingo. Your sin is no different than his, so you need to forgive him.’ I was mad that I had to, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

“We worked on our marriage for a while. At the end of a year, I prayed, ‘Lord, let me love my husband because I still don’t love him. I hate him.’ And in the end, God just filled my heart with love. One day, I looked at Domingo across the dinner table and realized I had fallen deeply and madly in love with my husband.”

Purpose in the pain
God’s redemptive work in the family was not completed. It was God’s plan to bring meaning and victory even out of their past sorrow by allowing them to help others still trapped in deep suffering. 

“I wanted to adopt a little girl,” Garcia shared. “Domingo went along with it because he really believed they would not give us a child because of his past, but we said we would take any child except one with brain damage.” 

But all that changed before they had even met the six-week old, disabled baby girl who had been found for them.  

“Domingo was planning to try and talk me out of it,” she said. “As we bowed to pray, he looked up and said, ‘Irene, I can’t do this.’ And I thought, It’s over. It’s not going to happen. But he said, ‘I’m rejecting God’s gift, a perfectly innocent little child, and I profess to be a Christian. God forgive me.’ 

“He prayed that day, ‘Whatever it is You bring us – if it is this little girl with brain damage, if I have to push her in a wheelchair, whatever I need to do – that’s okay, Lord. Give us this baby; I will never reject one again.’”

God did bring them more children, first two, then four – and they kept coming. All counted, 32 children entered the Garcia home and, when possible, were legally adopted. 

Among these were special needs children, those who had been sexually abused and those who had already been exposed to drugs. Even as they sought to rescue these children, Domingo and Irene suffered through the death of a son and other dark days, as she describes in Rich in Love, the book that tells their story. 

Hope of transformation 
But even in the most difficult times, Garcia could not forget what God had done in her life.

“When God started changing my life so dramatically and my husband became the man that he did, I knew God is alive,” she said. “In all the struggles with parents, courts, kids, in every single issue, God was there. He is our defender. And then it hit me, You know what? This is not hard! What Christ did for us, to redeem us and change us and perfect us, that was hard.”

In particular, she cannot ignore the evidence of how her husband has become a godly father and leader in his family and his community.  

“He is an amazing father, and he loves the fatherless; he is an example to other men as an advocate for these children,” she said. “He gives everything and does whatever he needs to, to care for these kids. Even now, we homeschool, and he stays home to school our kids because we have boys who are very difficult – three autistic children, one boy who doesn’t even want me to touch him because of his past experience with his mother.”

Because the Garcias have seen how radically God remade their lives, they know He can transform the life of even the most lost and hurting child. 

“There is always hope, because God can take an ugly relationship like my husband and I had, and He can change it,” Garcia said. “He can take an abusive alcoholic and cause him to do a 180 and become a completely new man. He can take a young, rebellious girl who hated her husband and fill her up with so much love for that man. And He can take these children who are so beaten down and abused and neglected, who have seen horrible things, and transform them to new lives.”  

Irene and Domingo Garcia lead special needs ministries in their church in Simi Valley, California, and challenge Christians to practice foster care and adoption. “If you want to grow as a Christian, take in a child, and take a front seat in seeing God in action.” Garcia said. “It’s not an easy journey, but don’t let fear keep you from it; fear is not of God.”  

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More insight into God’s work in their family is available at richinlovebook.com. Garcia’s book is available at local and online booksellers.