How many times do we think to ourselves—in those moments when God takes our breath away—I should write this down so I don’t forget? Or I should take a picture so I can hold onto this moment forever.About a year after I met Sarah, I began to work at Trinity Western University as a secretary. Each day my steps would take me from the parking lot to the building in which I worked. I would walk along the tree-lined pathway, and look down the hillside to the fountain shooting up like a geyser in the large duck pond. In the Spring, goslings would flutter their dull yellow feathers and stagger after their parents. The beautifully manicured grounds would burst with blooms; cherry blossoms, magnolias, maples—almost a small patch of perfection in an imperfect world.
Between the parking lot and my office building, I'd pass MacMillan Hall, one of the student residences. From my chats with Bob when we first started talking about the reunion I’d learned then, that this was where he and his wife had lived with their two little girls. It was also the home he'd brought baby Sarah to after I relinquished her at the hospital. This was Sarah’s first home, and it would be my working home for the next eight years.
It was in that first spring of working at Trinity that I noticed the large tree outside MacMillan Hall, starburst with small white blossoms. But I stopped on the pathway. Out of the many branches on this tree, one branch shot out from the main truck—as if grafted on at one time. The blossoms on that branch fluttered pink in the air fragrant with the surrounding cedars.
I never did take that picture with a camera, but I’ve held it in my heart, musing. Was it a snapshot of Sarah’s life grafted into her family with her mom and dad, and twin brothers? Or did it portray how Sarah would always be rooted in my heart as one of my children. Yet the schism of—she’s my child, yet not my child—churned within me for several years. Peace and healing came and it was Sarah’s own sweet nature that brought it. That first year she patiently let me introduce her to my church, to all my friends, and to each member of my family. When Kyle got over his shyness he met Sarah and Mark and now considers them family. When Kyle married his wife, Crystal, Sarah sat with us in the family pew.
When my brother, Stephen, met Sarah, he said, “That’s the prettiest hernia I ever saw.”
My sister, Irene, shied away from Sarah. For Irene, it was one of those painful memories she didn’t want to go near, but my mother always numbers Sarah in her list of grandchildren. And Sarah has a standing invitation from my aunts and uncles in Ireland to come and visit.
In the years to follow, Sarah and I got to know each other slowly through many a lunch or dinner. Several years ago she and her husband moved a few hundred miles away to work in a large city hospital in the US. But each Mother’s Day she calls me faithfully. We email several times a month. Whenever Sarah goes on a missions trip to a third world country to give medical care, she enlists me as one of her most staunch prayer supporters. Nowadays when I meet with Sarah, I’m replete with satisfaction. All of my children love her.
And David is always asking, “Any emails from Sarah this week?”
As I look back over the years through the writing of this story I see how gently God has dealt with Sarah, and Anne, and me. Our adoption and reunion story has been one of the good ones—one of the best I’d say. In sharing this aspect of my life, it has been my intention to show as honestly as I can the emotions of relinquishing one’s child. To have Anne share parts of her story has filled a place in my heart that no one else could. In reading hints of Anne’s emotional journey I have found the gentle closure I needed as a birthmother. I’ve loved and appreciated Anne’s honesty and her sensitivity towards me.
After her husband’s memorial service Anne and I held each other and cried. She thanked me for giving her Sarah. I received her thanks with great discomfort. I was only part of the means in which God wanted to bless her. And in their turn, God used Anne and Sarah to enrich my life. Through my husband and children, God has taught me the greatest lessons. But also through my birthdaughter and her mother, I’ve learned what the love of God feels like.
But there are a lot of people out there who may read this blog, whose adoption stories did not turn out as well. I’ve spoken with a great many people over the years from each side of the adoption circle. I’ve heard many an adoptee speak of feelings of abandonment. I’ve listened in horror to stories of abusive or neglectful adoptive parents. And there are so many women out there who gave up their children and feel that terrible sense of being robbed—because I couldn’t provide for my child, I had to give my baby away.
And how many good adoptive parents sit at their kitchen tables and cry, “What did I do wrong, that my child has turned out so rebellious?”
Yesterday I spoke to another woman whose close friends made the heartrending decision of abortion. She and I talked about the fear when you discover you’re pregnant—oh how I remember that fear. This lady shared with me the resulting physical trauma of abortion, and the awful mourning that her friends experienced afterward that so often lasts a lifetime.
She asked me a question that rang within me, “Why is the world so scary that a woman would go to the extreme of preventing the birth of her child?”
Recently I talked to another woman who gave away her baby girl after social services convinced her that adoption would rescue her child. But this woman’s daughter ended up with a life so scarred with sadness that the girl took her own life. When you hear stories like that you want to weep. As this other birthmother read my blog she was angered over how we could call it ‘God’s perfect anything’.
Her words thrummed inside me with the pain of an old wound, because I know how she feels. How often have I thought this through with God—in a perfect world, a girl would wait for the perfect marriage before giving her body. In a perfect world a woman in Canada or Ethiopia or Romania would never have to be parted from her baby, and every woman who desired children would have a houseful of them. In a perfect world we would not need adoption.
While in many ways my journey as Sarah’s birthmother has been much gentler than that of other women’s, it has had its share of tremendous pain and tears. It’s been a long journey, taking me years after my reunion with Sarah to come to peace over who we are in each other’s lives. Now ten years after our reunion, when we talk on the phone I feel almost normal. I think only in Heaven will I be able to look at Sarah without loss strumming across my heart.
It’s not a perfect world. It’s a world scarred and rutted with sin. But through the valleys of relinquishment and adoption I found the face of perfect love looking down at me—a Savior whose hands and feet were nailed to a cross, a Savior who died for me, so that I could be adopted into God’s family.
From that same loving heart of our God comes His solution to many a heartache. Most adoptions bring incredible joy to people. There have been millions who walked this earth, who were and are grateful to God for their mom and dad who chose them and gave them happy childhoods. There are thousands of happy reunion stories.
And this twenty-week story is of one birthmother who is grateful to God for where He placed her child.
Some people say the pink flowers were a miracle. I honestly don’t know. Or did God just whisper to me when the flowers arrived and I saw them that way? All I know is I felt like Hagar of old when she ran out into that desert, pregnant and feeling unwanted. Leaning on her hands and knees in the dust and sand, Hagar cried out to God. “You see me, don’t you, God. Yes! You saw me.” To me this is the true miracle.
This scarred and imperfect world brings a lot of pain. I don’t know where your pain comes from, but I can tell you this, “God sees you and cares deeply.”
Isaiah 49:15, 16a “Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would never forget you. See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.”
The photograph above is not that of the actual tree outside of MacMillan Hall. Below is a picture of the real tree, but my pink branch is gone now. Perhaps that too is God's perfect timing.
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