In August 2009 Mary attended a women’s retreat with her San Jose church and heard Lee Grady speak about the unorthodox woman in his Baptist church who had been such an influence in his life. Mary felt God’s calling to search for an opportunity to minister to college-aged young men, a group she felt particularly comfortable with after growing up in the home of a PE teacher and athletic trainer at Foothill College. She began serving as a “housemom” for her church’s discipleship house providing a year of intentional living for college-aged young men. Every Thursday night she arrived at the house to make dinner for “family night” for the group. Her loving presence quickly attached the residents to her, but one of the young men kept missing the Thursday dinners. The other residents told her about him – Xavier, but they called him Xavi. She remembers feeling a deep bolt of recognition the first time she heard his name. “‘Xavi,’ I thought. ‘What a nice name!'” She left food for him each week.
About a month in she arrived at the house to find Xavier outside on the back porch, the first time she’d actually met him in person. He came bounding in, enveloping her in a hug and thanking her for leaving him a meal every week even though he wasn’t there in time to eat with the group.
She and Xavier bonded over the next few months, to the point where he began spending weekends with her and her family. Xavier’s mother and brother were in jail on drug trafficking charges, and he adopted Mary and her family as his own. The impacts of living with parents who often deserted him and his siblings in a hotel room for days at a time in the midst of the drug culture left their impact on Xavi, and he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, a circumstance that got him in trouble with the disciple house.
By May of 2010 Xavi was the focus of concern and disciplinary actions at the house. Mary decided to go and talk to him the afternoon of May 17 – a day she and her family now call “Xavi Denny day.” When she arrived at the house, she heard God speak to her, saying “I’m giving this one to you.” She didn’t know exactly what that meant, but sat with Xavi and talked to him. They grew close – by early fall of 2010, even though he was now 21, Xavi asked Mary and Todd to informally adopt him, and they agreed.
Xavi completed two years at the discipleship house, but the problems continued. This tumultuous time cost them their church – asked to choose between the church and caring for Xavi as they felt called to, they chose Xavi. Mary recalls Todd telling her, “he doesn’t have anybody else. We can find another church, but he can’t find another family.” They broke with their church, took him permanently into their home, thought of him as their son. She says of that time that God warned her that it would be a painful season in her life – that she would experience all the phases of a child growing up in a compressed time frame – which she did. Xavi had his moments of clinging, his rebellious phase in which he left them for a year, his continued struggles with alcoholism.
But throughout, Mary and Todd held onto their trust in God, their faith that he had called them to be a family to Xavier, and the support of His daily presence in their lives. Eventually Xavier worked through many of his issues. On August 10, 2013 he married. Mary and Todd sat in a parents’ place of honor in the front row. Mary danced the mother-son dance at the reception. He got a full time job, took in his birth nephew “little Xavi” and has been raising him for his brother, who has been unable to care for him. As Xavi and his wife look forward to the birth of their first child, Mary anticipates the baby coming and considers it her first grandchild.
I had the opportunity to meet Xavier one evening a few weeks ago – today he is an outgoing, expressive, ebullient young man who is clearly head over heels with his Mom and Dad, full of love for the Lord, a far cry from the 14-year old who lived in a storage locker and slept on friends’ floors to complete high school and seemed headed for a life of drug addiction. God gave him to Mary, and she has been a faithful steward of His gift.
