My parents desperately wanted children. After a long battle with infertility, they had a stillbirth and then bore a daughter with down syndrome. Feeling prompted to pursue adoption, they adopted me as a six-month-old. They were always open with me about my adoption and raised me in a Christ-centered home full of love and comfort.
With all of that love and acceptance, they supported me in my search to find my birth family, which began when I was eighteen years old.
The truth is that there was nothing deficient in my adoptive parents. I don’t even think of them as “adoptive parents,” just my parents. I see them as a gift from God, and I know that they see me as their gift from Him as well. The desire to meet my birth family wasn’t so much to have a relationship with them, but just to meet them and find closure– and answers to my many questions.
After a few weeks I received my long-awaited package in the mail. All I could think about were their names. I can’t begin to explain how excited I was to see a name on a piece of paper inside that package that represented my biological mom’s name, and possibly even my biological dad’s name as well. I kept thinking that later I would probably say their names over and over and stare at the piece without moving for a very long time.
I opened the envelope and read through the information and couldn’t find a name. I was confused. I couldn’t find my biological mom’s or dad’s names. So I immediately called the Office of Adoption. I talked to a lady who pulled my records out of their file and read through it with me over the phone. I explained my problem to her, and she was able to quickly point out the confusion. She said, “Didn’t you read this page?” I told her that I glanced through it, but that I really just focused on the page that was supposed to have the info about my biological mom’s and dad’s names. So she read the part on the other page that explained why there were not any names. That page said that I was a foundling. I was found at an Alabama post office.
For a moment, I felt like a foundling; an abandoned bundle of an unwanted infant. But then the truth poured over me that I had known all along: I am a treasured son of my adoptive parents. I have been since the moment they saw me.
