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I can't remember a time when I did not know that I was adopted. I remember telling my friends in kindergarten that I was a "chosen child", the term my parents used. My classmates didn't understand what that meant, and they asked the teacher what I was talking about. Luckily, the teacher was my mom, and she explained it to them.
It wasn't always that easy, though. When I was about four, I recall my grandmother saying that she "wouldn't have anything to do with the little bastards", referring to my brother and me. Then there was the day in first grade when a kid said to me, "Your mom didn't want you; that's why those people had to take you." I cried all the way home and had a terrible struggle to understand, even when Mom did her best to explain.
These experiences set up feelings of rejection and lack of identity that I have struggled with ever since. When you are a biological child, your parents and family form a point of reference for what you are like. For an adoptee, that point of reference isn't there.
I grew up with a very loving family, and I am thankful for all that they brought to my life. Home was always very safe and loving. My dad was a big teddy bear, a loving man from whom I learned what the love of Father God is like. My mom was more of an authority, but she always disciplined me in love and never unjustly. They could not have children of their own, and so, well into their 40s, after over 15 years of marriage, they adopted first my brother and then me. It was hard for them to do this as their famillies did not approve, and yet they loved us well as long as they lived.
Mom and Dad were staunch Anglicans and took us to church until something happened to turn them off when I was in my early teens--I never learned what--but they continued to support me when I attended an evangelical church across the street from our home. I made my first commitment to Christ there during vacation Bible school when I was eight years old. I have felt God's hand in my life ever since, even though I have walked some difficult roads.
In my teens, I began to struggle very much with those early feelings of rejection. Though I felt secure in my parents' love, I felt something was missing--I was not a biological product of the two people I grew up with; I didn't know who I was; I felt unloved in a deeper place inside.
My parents knew little about my birth family. I knew I had been born to a 29-year-old secretary/bookkeeper who lived with her Irish immigrant father. She had never seen me, but had let them take me away at birth. I was placed with my adoptive family four days later. I knew my birth father was an engineer, name unknown. I had many questions and no answers. I became addicted to alcohol and drugs, then became sexually promiscuous after being put on birth control for a bad complexion problem. I was searching for a way to escape the pain of my reality.
The Lord was still at work in my life, however. Twice I became so despondent I considered suicide, and both times God intervened in miraculous ways to save me.
In the midst of all this, I got married and had a daughter, then a son. Sometime before the birth of my son, I quit the drugs and drinking and then rededicated my life to the Lord. It was as if God knew I would need the extra strength that closeness to Him would give. Shortly after, I discovered that my husband was unfaithful, and my marriage started to come apart. Christ helped me through difficult days and prevented me from coming unglued.
A precious experience was when my first child, a daughter, was born. Mom was there with me through a difficult labour and delivery. After the baby was born, Mom was the first to hold her. She cried and said to me, "You have given me the most precious gift anyone has ever given me--experiencing the birth of a child." It was neat, the bonding that occurred between Mom and me. I realized later that in a sense my daughter belonged to my parents. She idolized my dad, following him around and visiting every chance she got. I had established more of an adult-to-adult relationships with my parents by this time, and much healing had occurred.
Six years later, the bond between my parents and my daughter became complete. I was visited by an RCMP officer who told me that my parents had been killed in a fire in their home. My daughter had been with them and had also died. I remember feeling I was going to fall and crying out, "Sweet Jesus, please help!" Immediately, I felt arms supporting me. In the following days, I felt a joy that was supernatural. I was also given a vision of my parents' house in flames. Jesus was standing over it with my dad on one side of him, my mom on the other side and Jody holding Mom's hand. The vision gave me a wonderful sense of peace, that everything was okay.
I have gone on to raise my son and have been remarried to a loving Christian man who has many characteristics of my father. I feel a strong bond with my son. We have a real sense of responsibility for one another. I am already beginning the process of letting him go, though, as I watch him relate to his first girlfriend and prepare to finish high school.
In recent months, the Lord has been leading me to a new level of awareness of my own needs for healing. I have become frustrated by well-meaning Christians who do not understand the depth and complexity of my feelings of rejection and identity confusion. I have often been told that I just need prayer for these problems and then I should walk in faith, believing I have been healed. That attitude makes me angry because I know that God is showing me a lot of things about myself. I am realizing that being adopted is at the root of many of my deeper wounds.
I have very mixed feelings about searching for my birth family. I know many people are doing that now, and every now and then someone encourages me to do so. I have looked for some information, and I know I could find out more. I don't really want to establish a relationship with my birth mother, but part of me would like to say "thank you" for giving me to such a wonderful family. I guess I am afraid of being rejected again. It also feels a little like a betrayal of my adoptive parents; I know I could never call anyone else "Mother". Some people say it would help to bring "closure", but I'm not really sure what sort of closure I am even looking for.
I think that the kind of open adoption that is practised these days is much better for the child. A birth family's involvement in the child's life can help to answer the "why" questions and relieve the sense of rejection that I experienced. It can also give answers to the questions about family characteristics, medical conditions, etc. that I can never know. Last year, I was diagnosed with glaucoma, and I would have liked to know if this ran in my family.
In a roundabout way, I guess now I am an orphan, but I take a great deal of comfort in the truth that because I have Jesus, I'm never alone. My life has not been easy, but God has been faithful, and He continues to bring healing to me in His own time.
Shelley Johnson works in the clerical department of a Christian social services agency in Edmonton, Alta. She attends an evangelical church.
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