Looking back to the Woman I Would Become

Looking back 41 years today, I became a mother.

I was an "unwed mother". The brand that no nice girl would want to carry as a badge on her life.

Love brought life into my body,but unquestionably extreme sorrow and huge decisions that I had to make as a young adult.

I felt disconnected to my family as my parents faced their own stress and marital problems, and although they were there for me when the inevitable became obvious, I removed myself to Hawaii to prepare for the birth of my first son.

Through many hours of good council, I made the decision to give this beautiful child to a couple that desperately wished to have a baby and could not.

We were together for 9 months. I would talk to him and love him as I nurtured him within the save environment of my body
I can still remember awaking to the first birth pang, the labor and his delivery; desperately requesting to see him before they whisked him away to the nursery.

The day I signed the papers for his adoption, his father said that perhaps some day the Lord would bring him back into our lives.

What seemed like a thousand years and through inumerous tears, but with the consolation of giving that gift of life to someone else, never knowing where he was or how he was doing, life went on.
He was always there in my heart, a part of me was missing.

Just short of 25 years later, God knocked on the door of my life and presented me with the gift of my son, restored to me after so many lost years!

We were an instant match. I have never been so blessed as with that day. It was like giving birth over again.

I cannot imagine that it has been 41 years ago that I, a young woman, carried this pain, but the Lord has turned this mourning to joy, unfathomable joy, that cannot be expressed.

We have been restored mother and son.

Each one of my four children are gifts from God. They are my most precious jewels that have been given to me to guard and care for and I am thankful for motherhood and the responsibility that it carried.

They are all grown now and building lives of their own. I smile and am proud of the gift I gave someone else, the tears that fell so often, even though it hurt so much, the gift God had given me has made it all worth it.