Find Your Family?

There's a new reality series on TV titled Find Your Family. It's about a parent or child or siblings that are trying to locate someone who they have a connection to by adoption. So far I have seen about 4 episodes. They all end happily every after. But I wonder how often this happens in life.

I have a personal story about "find your family" that didn't turn out as happily as everyone would have liked. I was raised as an only child, or so I thought. My mother always said she wanted more children, but was unable to have them.

One day about twelve years ago, I received a phone call. The gentleman on the other end of the phone relayed some personal knowledge about my childhood and parentage. He had facts that no one should have known. He eventually announced that he was my FULL biological brother.

WHAT?

I was startled, scared and skeptical. He gave me the facts as he knew them. My mother had gotten pregnant at age nineteen. My dad was married to another woman in which he had a little girl who was born with a disability. My mother went to Denver and gave birth in a Catholic Charities hospital and he was given up for adoption. Now after more than four decades he had located me. My brother was only 13 months older me.

He was adopted when he was 18 months old by a wonderful family in rural Colorado. He was raised on a farm with a terrific dad, mom, & adopted sister--very Norman Rockwell. My childhood not so much. (Much of my personal story is told in Embraced by the Father--Finding Grace in the Names of God. It's available for pre-order on Amazon.com.)

My brother's search turned out not to be the story he hoped for in his dreams. First, by diligent research he discovered our biological mother's obituary. She died in 1969, so that was not an easy task in and of itself. She was only 36 and had never breathed a word to anyone (that I know of) that she had given birth to my brother.

By reading it he discovered he had one sister--me. Tomorrow the rest of the story.

Keep the Heart-Print Faith,

Susanne