The Difference Adoption can make....

The difference adoption can make…..  I know it can....

You see, I knew this little girl….  She had a sweet little smile and bright blue eyes.  Unless you knew her story you probably wouldn’t know what she’d been through. She didn’t know life was supposed to be different than it was.  When she was very young, 2 to 3 years old, she was left alone, often for days, to fend for herself and try to take care of her younger brother.  Most of her memories are gone from those days and she knows only the accounts of the neighbors or social workers who documented those early years.  She has 2 memories that have withstood the years of life since.  Simple yet heartbreaking…. One, she was home alone and wanted to eat but the bread she wanted was just out of reach.  No matter how much she stretched she just couldn’t reach it and went to bed alone, hungry.  On another day her little brother sat in a play pen and one of the sides was down so she went over and pushed it into place only to pinch the skin on her frail hand.  She turned to find someone to comfort her in the pain but there was no one there.

She wasn’t afraid the day the social workers took her away.  She was just happy someone wanted to hold her hand.

She’s blocked out a lot of her time in foster care though she can still feel the sting of pain deep in her heart when she thinks about the rejection she felt being moved around to different homes and different families.  She does, however, remember the day she was picked up from preschool and told there was a man and woman at the house that wanted to meet her and her brother to possibly become their mom and dad.  While her brother hid, scared , she ran into the house and jumped into the arms of the big, red-headed man sitting on the couch.  If this man wanted to be her dad she wanted him to know she wanted to be his daughter.  She’d never had a dad in her life.  She sat in his lap and compared freckles and she felt safe.

That day was the start of her new family.  As she made the transition to her new family and they worked through the adoption she finally felt like everything would be okay.  It almost was but then her adopted mom began to call her names.  She told her she was a stupid idiot when she made mistakes and told her she regretted adopting them.  She beat her until she had bruises for imperfect papers at school and a messy room.  Her heart that had only just begun to heal began to break apart all over again.  She tried to be good enough but the abuse continued.  She withdrew and began calling herself names, questioning her existence.   Her father, in an attempt to stop the abuse, divorced her mom.  All this before she entered middle school.

She began middle school just wanting to be accepted by anyone but she was so fragile and sensitive.  People often made fun of her and put her down just adding to the “truth” she already believed that she was worthless.  She hadn’t had a mom to help show her how to dress better or do her hair so she was often made fun of for not being put together well enough.  Her father remarried while she was in middle school and while she was happy for him she wasn’t interested in having another mom.  On the outside she appeared to be just like many of the other awkward middle school students struggling through puberty and trying to find her way but inside she was dying a slow death.  She often thought about suicide and questioned why she should continue to live.

Her father had raised her in church so she knew the gospel.  She’d even walked the isle and been baptized as a younger child but her motivation had been to stand in front of the church so people would walk up and hug her in congratulations.  Her life had never been any different and in reality, she didn’t think God knew who she was, much less, loved and accepted her.  After all, she reasoned, if her own mothers couldn’t love her, why would He.

Somehow she survived middle school, mostly in part to a summer church camp that gave her a new glimpse of who God was.  One night she watched a skit where the “Africans” were looking up at the missionaries with a longing and hunger in their eyes that she’d never had to know and she thought then that she would love to help others.  Later that week she sat on the edge of a huge map that had been spread on the chapel floor and as the staff poured thousands of beans on the map the director stood up and said, “One bean represents 10,000 people who have never heard of Jesus”.  As she got on her hands and knees to help pick up the beans, with tears in her eyes, she said, “God, I don’t even know if you know who I am but I want to make a difference for You”.  It was at the moment that she heard Him say, “Shasta, I’ll use you if you’re willing to be used”.  God knew my name!  God knew me!

That day changed my life.  Who I was began to change.  I can’t say things were immediately better but I began to figure out who I was.  I had so much to deal with and get through but I can say at 32 I have overcome so much.  There’s a lot more that happened from that summer until now but I’ll save that for part 2. J  (I’ll talk about how my marriage has been impacted by and with adoption.)

I tell this story for several reasons.  I never understood the power of a testimony until I was asked to share my story and watched as people connected to my pain and celebrated my triumphs and overcomings.   Adoption made all the difference in getting me from who I was then to who I am now.  People often wonder if I wish I’d never been adoption with the events that happened following, but I wouldn’t change one thing about my life.  If one thing had been different, if one event, whether good or bad, hadn’t happened, I might not be who I am, where I am, or doing what I am doing and I can’t imagine doing or being any one else.

I’ve had people leave me but I’ve had others love me.
I’ve been rejected by some yet accepted by others.
I’ve given up on life but then given hope to carry on.
I've hated who I was but love who I have become.
Love made all the difference.