November is Adoption Awareness Month. It’s a time to examine the why and how of adoption. To raise awareness and tell honest stories.
This is a snippet of mine. It’s not a bright and shiny story. It’s a story born out of loss. One of struggle. Most importantly, it’s one of redemption.
At five years old, as soon as I understood the story of my birth, it wasn’t long before I began to fantasize about what it would be like to meet my biological mother and visit the orphanage where I was left. I wanted to know every detail of my story, however broken and disjointed it may have been. I wanted what I believed everyone around me had. I wanted answers. I would visit friends and I would see baby pictures on the wall and baby footprints pressed into plaster. I wanted that. I wanted a story without gaping holes, without unanswered questions. And so I isolated myself from others because I did not have what they did. Isolation was the result of feeling inadequate, unworthy, and shameful.
Wishing for answers to my own story would leave me daydreaming about the day I would meet my mother. I wanted to hold her and tell her I love her. I wanted so badly to snuggle up on her lap and feel her soft hands stroke my hair. I wanted to hear her voice, her native tongue, pouring out words of love and strength. While I knew my daydreams would never come true, I hungered for her, this woman who carried me for nine months, safely in her womb and instead of death for me chose life. I’m certain she knew she would never see me again when she gave me up, but did she know would be a loss that would shape my heart, aching over a primal abandonment that would only be healed by the Father who had knit me together and called me beloved?
My isolation gave me comfort because I chose the narrative. I was in control of my story. I was not offering it up to the God who I feared, in some part of me, may be responsible for my loss.
Brennan Manning pens in his book, Abba’s Child,
Jesus says, “Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed, and I will not crush it; a smoldering wick, and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place.”
The desire to be wholly and unconditionally loved is fulfilled in the person of Jesus. He is the beginning and end of every hope in our hearts. This desire to be loved, that drives our every move, will never be satisfied unless we throw ourselves wholeheartedly at the mercy of the Restorer. He will be patient with us. He will handle our wounds with extreme care. He will not use the cheapest salve on our bleeding heart. He will be, as Manning said, “a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, and unbearable forgiveness.”
The yearning for a mother who wanted to keep me as her own would only be fulfilled in the grace of Jesus. I knew this in my mind but my heart was trying to play catch up. I had no idea that healing would be hidden in the orphanage I wanted to visit.
Adapted from the book Never Alone: Exchanging Your Tender Hurts For God’s Healing Grace, Tiffany Bluhm, Ó 2018 by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. Available wherever books are sold.