What if you didn’t know your name? Your first name? Your last name? Not just the name, but everything behind your name? What if you didn’t know who your people were and what they were like? Where they were from? What if you didn’t see yourself reflected in the people that loved and raised you?
As an adoptee, I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions until I found both my biological mother and father’s families. I share my experience in this week’s blog which first appeared as guest blog on Taylored Intent https://www.tayloredintent.com/blog.
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In olden days your last name often described your family’s occupation and reflected your status in the community. The Bakers baked bread. The Carpenters built things out of wood. The Smiths crafted items from iron, silver, and gold. For as long as I can remember I’ve known I was adopted, so my family name was not my own and seemed to reveal nothing about me.
That’s not to say I wasn’t treasured as a longed-for baby adopted at nine months and an adored only child until I was six when my adopted brother joined our family as a four-year-old stranger.
Let’s say my family’s name was Farmer. Although I was unconditionally loved by the whole Farmer clan, I never felt like a Farmer. My mom had a laid-back temperament. Mine was more intense. My mom liked to sew. I had no inclination as a seamstress. Fitting my dresses, she often commented on how our proportions were so different.
When I was in fourth grade, I discovered I had a different first name before I was adopted, and growing up, always wondered what was behind that name. Who were my people, and what were they like?
Out of respect for my adoptive mom and dad, however, I never searched for my biological parents while they were alive.
But when my adoptive parents passed away, my husband said, “Your bio mother and father are getting old too. If you want to find them, you better hurry up,” so we opened the green metal box always kept in the downstairs closet of my childhood home and dug through official papers to find the name of my adoption agency.
When I read the family history they recorded, I discovered a great uncle was active in community theatre, and so was I. Another great uncle was a teacher of foreign language who later became a diplomat to Uganda. I got my masters in language, literacy and culture, and my favorite job later in life was teaching English to brand-new immigrants.
When I finally met my bio mom, she invited me on a family vacation. We walked a Cape Cod beach, in our bathing suits, and I marveled that her body was proportioned just like mine. My husband videoed us chatting, so I could see how our animated mannerisms mirrored each other. She shared that my grandmother’s favorite flowers were lilacs, my favorite scent, and that my grandmother was a DJ for a classical music and public affairs radio station. I’d just discovered opera, and my grandmother’s favorite arias, were also mine. The icing on the cake was when she told me, that my great, great, great grandfather was Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter.
Recently, my husband urged me to do a 23andMe DNA test, to locate my bio dad’s family we’d never been able to locate. As a result, I found a bio half-brother and subsequently the rest of his siblings. Neither of my maternal half-sibs look like me, so when I saw my paternal half-sibs, I was stunned. Let’s call my father’s family The Jones. There was no denying I was a Jones.
Recently someone told me, “Trauma can be not only something bad that happened to you, but the lack of something you desperately needed.” This average family resemblance flooded a gaping void I was unaware of.
Although finding my biological family proved that God made no mistakes when he designed me for his purposes, my adopted family demonstrated the unconditional love of God.
All this to say, whether you’re adopted or not, there is power in knowing your name and everything behind it. That’s why my most important name is from neither my birth parents or the parents who claimed me as their own. Under the banner of Christ, no matter my origin or circumstances, I am a chosen, holy, beloved member of the family of God made in his image with a blood connection to Jesus, the first born of many siblings. And dear readers, those siblings are you.
“But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel,
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!
2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
Nor will the flame burn you.
3 “For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior; Isaiah 43:1-3 (NASB)
Cover photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
