Sanctity of Human Life: Couple’s desire to ‘give love’ to foster child leads to adoption

In 2010, Jeremy and Lesley Creech heard a series of sermons at their home church, Barnwell First Baptist, on practical ways they could be the hands and feet of Jesus in their community.

They learned, for instance, that if only one family in each Southern Baptist church in South Carolina volunteered to become foster-care parents, the list of children waiting for adoption with the Department of Social Services would be reduced to zero.

For Jeremy and Lesley, who already had two young children of their own, stepping up to parent other people’s abandoned and broken children was a matter of obedience to God’s clear call: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27).

While the Creeches were yet to step into the sometimes confounding bureaucracy that is the foster care system, they knew they at least “could always give love” to a child, Jeremy said. (He admits he was ready to become a foster parent before his wife was because he “would be doing only 10 percent of the work.”)

The couple began to pray, and one of the questions Jeremy asked himself was whether he would be able to love a foster child as much as he loves his biological children. Jeremy and Lesley were also aware that their parents had worrisome concerns about the uncertainties inherent in the foster-parenting process.

Still, relying on their faith, they moved forward, applying with the state to become eligible to serve as foster-care parents. The process was long and complicated, with several classes and stacks of paperwork. The next several months were a test of patience for the couple because they “were just wanting to help a child,” said Jeremy.

A year after they applied, the Creeches were finally approved as foster-care parents. “I prayed and asked God to use us then and to send us a baby,” said Lesley, “because we felt like our parents could accept a baby, and we knew it was important for us to have their support for this calling in our life.”

The next day, March 15, 2012, the phone rang. Their social worker asked if they could go to the hospital the next day to take custody of a newborn boy.

“We did not have anything at our home for a baby, but by the end of the night we had everything we needed, provided by our friends,” said Lesley.

The following day, they went to the hospital, where they met young Wyatt for the first time. “From the moment we laid eyes on him, we loved him, and he was already a part of our family,” said Lesley.

Over the next few months, the Creeches developed a warm relationship with Wyatt’s mother, and for a time DSS allowed Wyatt to live with his mother. That time was short-lived, however, and Wyatt’s mother, who continued to struggle with personal issues, died before her child’s first birthday.

Jeremy and Lesley were granted permanent custody of Wyatt and began to pray they would be allowed to adopt him. Three years later, Wyatt’s father agreed to the adoption. On July 28, 2016, Wyatt, now 4, became the son of Jeremy and Lesley and the brother of Natalie (12) and Coleman (9).

Today, the Creech family lives in Windsor, in Aiken County, where Jeremy is a bivocational youth pastor at Mount Beulah Baptist Church and Lesley is a stay-at-home mom.

“Wyatt has blessed our family by allowing us to see God at work,” said Lesley. “We have seen God give us strength when we didn’t think we had enough to get through.”

Jeremy said his early doubts about whether he could love someone else’s child as his own were answered quickly. “Our love for Wyatt is a love only a father and mother can have,” he said, “and Wyatt is a brother to our other children.”