MIM'S STORY - Part 1

This is my story: My knowedge of my biological mother is limited to a few facts.
*She was 16 years old when I was born
*5 feet 5 and a half inches tall
*120 lbs.
*A sophmore in High School
*Blonde hair and blue eyes, and a cheerleader

She gave me the gift of life, for which I am thankful. When I was born, I was put up for adoption. The family that adopted me had experienced a lot of pain; three miscarrages and the birth of a full-term stillborn baby boy. Instead of a family, they had an empty home and empty arms, which they tried to fill by adopting a baby boy and them by adopting me.

It seems that my new mother and I should have been a perfect answer for each others need. But when I was placed in her arms, I cried. Her embrace was unfamiliar and unwelcome. My new mother felt rejected, and I was learning to be alone within my new family.

We looked like this conservative Christian family, with a stay-at-home mom and a pastor dad, and two adopted kids. Later my parents were shocked when they had 2 more kids of their own. We looked like the model family in our station wagon, off to church every Sunday, but the truth was my childhood was filled with abuse, hidden behind a pulpit.

My father had been beaten and abused verbally. He in turn, beat and abused both my brother and me - the family scapegoats. I lived in constant terror, never knowing what might trigger a beating. My punishments were swift and severe. Both of my parents held me down, and my father beat me until his anger passed. I tried not to cry or make a sound. Yet my mind was full of unspoken screams for help.

The beatings seemed linked to my adoption. I heard my parents say, "We didn't have to adopt you. How could you be such a disloyal daughter?" My adoption was thrown back into my face, like toxic waste.

Between the adoption and the environment I lived in, I never felt loved or wanted or accepted. I longed to be held and appreciated. I wanted to belong and to feel safe. If I had played the word association game with you and you had said adoption, I would have instantly said "rejection" The word acceptance never would have crossed my mind.

In the book of Mark in the Bible, we learn that Jesus's family doesn't like what he is doing. He had been healing the sick, forgiving sins, and casting out demons. His family thinks he is crazy. On day Jesus's friends tell him his family has arrived, but Jesus replied, "Who are my mother and brother?" I used to think that was the strangest answer, until I realized Jesus was using this opportunity to give new meaning to the word 'family'.

Mark continues, "Looking at those sitting with him, Jesus said, here is my mother and brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. The ones close to him became his family.

This was a radical idea in the first century because they would never redefine your family. Family was your idenity and that couldn't change. But with Jesus, God's family was no longer limited to the blood line of Abraham. Family was defined by knowing Him.

I believe God, in His mercy, offered my parents a chance to understand family in a new way. I believe the pain my father had experienced from his childhood could have been turned into an opportunity for God to bring healing. An opportunity for my dad to embrace truth, to embrace a new type of fatherhood, but he chose otherwise.

As a child, I looked up into the sky and saw the stars and I knew whoever had hung the stars in the sky was big and powerful. It made me feel safe to know that there was someone bigger than my father. God was revealing His heart to me.

I saw the beauty of the sky and believed the creator of such beauty must be good. I felt comforted in knowing someone good was holding up the stars.

No matter how rough my life was, the stars were there to instill hope and a quiet peace when I looked at them. No one in my world could take the stars away.

God was breathing His life in me and I didn't know it.

Ezekiel 16:4-8 says:
On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths.
No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, Live!

God gave me the desire to go on. To live. The beatings lessened as I got bigger.
But the damage had been done. I had learned to shut off my emotions. I tuned out words and whole converstions and eventually entire decades of my life.

All I did was go to church and read Christian romance novels. I read about a Perfect Christian woman with perfect hair, who fainted from hunger because she gave her food to her dying mother. And the richest young man drove by in his red convertible and saw her faint on the sidewalk. Struck by her lovely raven black hair cascading around her like a halo, he carried her to his car and took her home. He was not a Christian, but on the last page, just three paragraphs from the end he became a Christian and then 2 paragraphs from the end he proposed and then in the last paragraph they kissed for the first time. Then they lived happily every after....

The romance novels I read had filled my heart and mind with lies about love. Over the years I consumed hundreds of them. I couldn't explain the longing in my heart, but the books filled a need. The problem was the 'fix' didn't last. As soon as a book was done, the 'fix' ended.

I wanted to be married, yet I had no idea what marriage meant.

I had been out of college for a couple of years when my 5th or 6th Prince Charming left me. As he was walking out the door, he turned to me and said, "You should get counseling!"

Counseling helped me see truth. I looked seriously at my life for the first time. Over the next few years I became undone and redone.

I started to understand the wrongs done to me. I started to understand my father and I started to see God. I was overcome with the knowledge that God understood where I had been and that He loved me. I recognized how He had been with me as I looked at the stars and that it was a miracle I was still alive. I knew He wanted me to live, to live abundantly. I began to do that.

To be continued