In 2004 after a routine ultrasound, Jessica Ronne, who was living in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the time, received the news that no expectant mother wants to hear: her unborn child had suffered a stroke and had no chance of survival. Despite being told to terminate the pregnancy, Jessica and her husband, Jason, refused. “We put our baby in the Lord’s hands and just had faith that God’s will would be done,” Jessica told The Christian Post. Their baby, Lucas, was born August 12. Lucas would have intense medical needs, dropping Jessica and her husband into the role of caregiving parents.

Just three years later, Jason would begin to mysteriously lose weight and have seizures. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor, an oligodendroglioma, which later developed into a glioblastoma after surgery. The diagnosis left Jessica overwhelmed as she was also raising four young children, including Lucas. “I felt like I was drowning every day trying to take care of the four kids and a husband who was completely deteriorating,” she told Today. After three years of battling the tumor, Jason would pass away, leaving Jessica a widow at 33.

Despite the grief and the responsibility of raising four children under seven, Jessica found strength. “Even as I buried my husband, I promised him that our children wouldn’t lose two parents — one to death and one to depressive grief,” she said of the time. “I just leaned into the Lord, and he provided what I needed, which was just enough manna for the moment, and I was just able to continue to put one foot in front of the other and continue to live for my children.”

Jessica began a blog to bare her grief and share with others who were going through loss, as well as other parents caring for children with disabilities. One of her readers reached out to her and told her about a man named Ryan Ronne, who had lost his wife to cancer just four days after Jessica had lost Jason. The reader thought they could encourage each other, leading Jessica to send a message to Ryan, who was living 1,000 miles away in Guymon, Oklahoma. Ryan was raising his own three young children alone and the two instantly connected through a series of emails and phone calls. They would meet in December 2010. By February 2011, Ryan proposed and the two were married two months later, blending together their seven children. They moved to a 30-acre property in Tennessee in 2013 and expanded their family with the birth of their daughter in 2015.

Despite the busy life of caring for Lucas and seven other children, Jessica decided to give back and help other parents who found themselves in the role of caregiver. She started The Lucas Project to offer resources to a sector of parents she says are often overlooked. “We isolate ourselves in our homes with these behaviors, with the aggression, with the incontinence,” she said. “I often even speak with pastors at churches, and they’re like, ‘We don’t have these families in our community.’ And I’ll say, ‘Yes, you do, you just don’t see them.’ The church is not created for these families. Environments aren’t created for these families.” She gives talks to educate church and communities about the struggles of special needs families. She said churches can help in ways that may appear small but offer huge relief. “Each child is so different, and the Church doesn’t know its place. But helping doesn’t have to mean direct care for the child. It can be mowing a family’s lawn, bringing over a meal, or picking up groceries. Small groups within a church could adopt a family, learning together how to meet their needs.” She encouraged others to get out of their comfort zones. “This is exactly the kind of work Jesus did — stepping into messy, uncomfortable spaces.”