Extreme Heart Makeover
God's redemptive plan is working in the Barrett family of six.
“Good morning, Barrett family!”
a voice crackles through a bullhorn. Inside a tiny, run-down farmhouse the family doesn’t hear the wake-up call that’s about to change their lives.
Billy Jack is preparing for chores at his Peyton, Colo., ranch. Anne and their six children Dusty, 17; Jennifer, 17; Daphne, 16; Rebecca, 15; AJ, 14; and Clara, 13, are studying, crammed in a makeshift classroom. (Actually, it’s a converted garage.)
Anne reminds everyone, “School first, play later!”
Then the voice outside shouts again: “Barrett family, WAKE UP!”
Anne looks up from her desk. “Was that — could it be — is it really happening?”
Just then, Billy Jack pokes his head into the classroom. “Honey, I think Ty Pennington is in our front yard.”
The voice gets even louder: “GOOD MORNING, Barrett family!”
The teens race out the door, and Anne joins them. “I guess that means ‘Class dismissed.’ ”
Giving back hope
On a July morning in 2005, standing on the Barretts’ driveway was Ty, the design team leader and host of the ABC TV series “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”
As camera crews captured the moment, Ty announced: “Your children nominated you for this makeover. They want to give back what you’ve given them, a home.”
Four of the Barrett kids are adopted, and Billy Jack and Anne want to add more children to their clan, but they couldn’t. The problem: a serious lack of space!
In less than 24 hours, 6,000 volunteers moved in and pulled off what seemed impossible. In just seven days, designers, carpenters and construction workers leveled the old house and replaced it with a 14-room home, along with a surprise: The crew threw in a two-room, old-fashioned schoolhouse!
“The Lord has transformed my family,” Anne says. “We are a testimony of His redemptive power.
“All the sacrifices that went into building this place are reminders of the ultimate sacrifice &mdahs; the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. This place speaks of the true home that awaits all who are adopted into God’s family.”
Journey to wholeness
Anne and Billy Jack understand sacrifice. As real-life horse whisperers, the couple has applied their experience caring for unwanted horses to taking in children deemed unadoptable by child psychologists.
About nine years ago, a friend told the couple about an 8-year-old named Dusty. “He was living in a local care facility and had been shuffled from one foster home to another,” Billy Jack says. “He had been physically and emotionally abused. Our friend thought it would be good for Dusty to spend time with horses, riding them and helping us tend the animals.”
Billy Jack says it was love at first sight between Dusty and the horses. The boy, who rarely smiled since being abandoned by his mother four years earlier, was grinning from ear to ear. Shortly into Dusty’s visit, the horse he sat on got spooked and reared up. Billy Jack gasped as Dusty tumbled to the ground.
“I was amazed as the boy said, ‘Can I do that again?’ ” Billy Jack says. “I smiled and said, ‘We’ve got a real cowboy here!’ ”
As the weeks progressed, the Barretts (with their two daughters, Rebecca and Clara) began to bond with Dusty, visiting him daily at a psychiatric treatment center. They became mentors and eventually parents. They also adopted Dusty’s biological sister, Daphne.
Rejection to connection
Before meeting the Barretts, Daphne was a depressed 7-year-old who had lost the will to live. Doctors often isolated her from other children at the care facility, fearing she was a threat to herself and others.
“I felt as if I was being punished,” Daphne says. “I was alone and confused. I rarely saw my brother, and I didn’t have the one thing I wanted most: family.”
She’d spend hours by herself in an isolation ward. One day, Daphne turned to prayer. “I’d heard some visitors talk about God and how much He loves everyone,” Daphne says. “So I cried out to Him: ‘If You’re real, God, please bring my brother back to me.’ ” (He was in foster care.) Later that day, Dusty returned to the care facility. His latest foster parents had given up on him, too.
Daphne’s eyes welled up with tears as she threw her arms around Dusty. “God is real,” she sobbed. “He brought you back.” Dusty had good news as well. He, too, had encountered God through the Barrett family’s visits. “They’re different, Daphne,” he said. “They really love Jesus, and they seem to care about me.”
Adoption’s the option
On Thanksgiving Day 1999, Dusty and Daphne spent the afternoon with the Barretts. Then that evening as they stepped through the doors of at the care facility, a riot broke out.
“I remember seeing kids throw chairs and grown-ups jumping on the kids to stop the chaos,” Rebecca Barrett says. “My father, Dusty and Daphne were trapped. I just stood there crying and watching helplessly.”
After her father was safely escorted out, Rebecca gripped his arm and said, “Dad, we can’t leave Dusty and Daphne behind. We’ve got to adopt them. We need to be their family.”
Billy Jack agreed. “You’re right. Let’s pray about it. God will show us what to do.”
Three years later, the adoptions were approved. And in the months that followed, Billy Jack, Anne, Rebecca and Clara prayed about other foster kids they’d met.
“God eventually opened our doors to AJ and Jennifer,” Rebecca says.
“At first, it wasn’t easy for Rebecca and me,” Clara admits. “They came kicking and fighting.”
But with a balance of love and discipline, the four adopted teens now had a future filled with hope — not to mention plenty of room to grow.
“The Barretts gave us a home when everyone else gave up,” AJ says. “Most of all, they helped us find faith in God.”
Dusty’s eyes lit up. “Mom and Dad have given us more than a home, they’ve given us a future — an eternal future.”