ADOPTION IS COMPLICATED TO SAY THE LEAST By Christine Lindsay

Baby Sarah ten days after I gave her up.

There have been a few times in my life when I’ve curled my fist tight and shook it under the very nose of my Creator.

Unmarried and pregnant in 1979, I did what a lot of church-going girls did who “got into trouble.” I made an adoption plan for my baby girl. As much as I didn’t want to, I gave up the beautiful little infant, Sarah—when she was 3 days old. I wanted the very best for my little Sarah, and that included a loving dad as well as a loving mom.

During the next 20 years, I met and married the sweetest man, and we had 3 beautiful children, Lana, Kyle, and Robert. But each day when I prayed for our 3 kids, I prayed for Sarah and her adoptive parents as well. I also prayed for the day when a grown Sarah and I could meet, and develop a unique relationship as birth-mom and birth-daughter. I didn’t want to infringe on her relationship with her adoptive parents, but I figured there was enough love in the world for an adult adoptee to have both adoptive and biological parents in their life, with the adoptive parents taking the major role, of course.

Sarah in Kindergarten, just as I always

imagined her.

There is nothing more hungry than an empty womb. Mine, after I gave Sarah up. Oh yes, I felt that empty womb and wept. Sarah’s adoptive mom suffered from infertility. Adoption is not all sunshine and roses. Even Sarah as she grew up, hungered to know who she looked like. Who she came from.

The day of our reunion, when Sarah was 20 years old, was not the idyllic event I had envisioned. I figured Sarah and I, my family and hers would all meet on the day of reunion, and laugh and cry with joy like long lost relatives.

But people are made up of such different emotional stuff.

Here is an Excerpt from Finding Sarah Finding Me on the day of the reunion.   

There are plenty of DNA parallels between both my daughters. Sarah and Lana share similar smiles, their long-legged figures, that hint of goofiness that I only get a peek at in Sarah, as though it’s a vein of gold I must dig for. Yet with every sameness there are so many differences. With those few, slim glimpses into the real Sarah, I still feel that barrier. Her smile is so quiet, so polite.

The day wears on, and exhaustion reaches its peak for both Sarah and I, and I know that the little girl I’ve imagined all these years and loved was truly a phantom. My counselor is so wrong. There’s no way I can win Sarah’s affections. There’s no natural bond in Sarah to build upon.

As David, Lana, Robert, and I say good night to Mark and Sarah, with the vague promise that she’ll send us the date and time for the wedding, we wave as they drive off. As my family disperses to the living room, I lay my head against the front door, and the sobs erupt. Not quietly this time, like I cried that day on the maternity ward floor as the cold gray, steel elevator doors closed—holding in my full despair. This time I howl. This time the swirling dark waters of loss sweep me fully out of my safe harbor, out to the depths.

All these years, have I truly understood the magnitude of my loss, understood what I did in giving up my child?

The kids hear me sobbing, the three of them stay in the living room out of the maelstrom of my unleashed emotions. David pulls me into the kitchen and holds me close. I’ve kept a lock on my disappointment all day, having hoped for so much more closeness than Sarah has been able to offer. Now it unleashes, a wounded tiger uncaged.

“I’ve prayed for twenty years,” I yell at David as I pull away, “prayed for twenty years that God would prepare their hearts so that no one would feel hurt. And this is the best he could do! This… this is the biggest disappointment of my life!” I cry out, “and God knows I’ve had enough of them.”

David takes hold of me again. I resist, but he holds tight while my mind fights to sift through the avalanche of my emotions. I want to get to know my beautiful birth daughter, but my dream lies at my feet like shattered glass. She is my daughter, but not my daughter. I’m not a part of her family, nor have Sarah or her parents ever considered such a thing.

Her mom and dad don’t even want to meet me.

Sarah and her adoptive brothers, with their adoptive dad,

Theirs was a love match made in heaven.

Poor Sarah’s parents. Poor me. And poor Sarah stuck in the middle, trying to make everyone happy.

Adoption is one of those very human situations that cannot be pigeon-holed. People are beautifully complex. It took a long time for healing to come, but I stopped shaking my fist under God’s nose, when I began to see in my journey as a mother, just how deep His love is for His children.

My post reunion relationship with Sarah and her family is still not the way I envisioned it, but God is using our story in fascinating ways.

Finding Sarah Finding Me is the braided memoir of, not only my story as a birth-mom, but Sarah’s adoptive mom’s story, and Sarah’s, in their own words. This book also tells the stories of several adoption reunions, all in the hope of encouraging people when they feel all is lost, and not necessarily about adoption.

There is a very special reason why 100% of my author royalties go to Global Aid Network Women’s and Children’s Initiative for the lifetime of the book. But you’ll have to read the book to know how God tied my heart as a writer with that of my birth-daughter, Sarah’s nursing career.

FINDING SARAH FINDING ME BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Sometimes it is only through giving up our hearts that we learn to trust the Lord.

Adoption. It’s something that touches one in three people today, a word that will conjure different emotions in those people touched by it. A word that might represent the greatest hope…the greatest question…the greatest sacrifice. But most of all, it’s a word that represents God’s immense love for his people.

Join birth mother Christine Lindsay as she shares the heartaches, hopes, and epiphanies of her journey to reunion with the daughter she gave up...and to understanding her true identity in Christ along the way.

Through her story and glimpses into the lives of other families in the adoption triad, readers will see the beauty of our broken families, broken hearts, and broken dreams when we entrust them to our loving God.

PURCHASE LINKS FOR FINDING SARAH FINDING ME

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ABOUT CHRISTINE LINDSAY

Irish-born Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction and non-fiction. Readers describe her writing as gritty yet tender, realistic yet larger than life, with historical detail that collides into the heart of psychological and relationship drama. Christine's fictional novels have garnered the ACFW Genesis Award, The Grace Award, Canada’s The Word Guild Award, and was a finalist twice for Readers’ Favorite as well as 2^nd place in RWA’s Faith Hope and Love contest. 

This author’s non-fiction memoir Finding Sarah Finding Me is the true-life story that started this award-winning career in Christian fiction and non-fiction and speaking ministry.

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A Christmas Without Faith – by Christine Lindsay

With Christmas just around the corner, I’m sharing an excerpt from Christmas 1998 a few months before my birth-daughter Sarah and I were reunited in our Adoption Reunion. This excerpt is from my memoirs just released this 2016, Finding Sarah Finding Me, 

Because Christmas isn’t easy for everyone, at least not every year.

Excerpt from Finding Sarah Finding Me:

A few days later, with the adoption file containing Sarah’s and her parents’ legal names in my hand, I phone the reunion support group. I don’t really know what to expect, but I’d like some advice on the next step toward reunion. The resulting rollercoaster of phone calls in one afternoon comes as a shock. As soon as I tell the other member of the support group, she starts a computer search on the voting registry for Anne and Hans VandenBos. Moments later, feeling again like the Cold War spy, I write Sarah’s home address down on a pad of paper. What do I do with this? Walk up to their door and ring the bell, and say, “Hi, I’m Sarah’s birth mom. Have you been waiting for me as long as I’ve been waiting for you?”

For half a minute I want to giggle. In reality, I need my adoption counselor to smooth the way, and I write Bob a long letter bringing him up to date. A week later he calls.

When I sit in his office again, Bob’s brow puzzles over what could have happened to the first letter I wrote for Sarah. He can’t remember receiving it, but my friend assured me she had delivered it. Bob thinks perhaps he stuck it at the back of an old cabinet when he moved some files.

But nothing ever fazes Bob. With a grin, he asks me to write another letter to Sarah. He’s also been wondering why he hadn’t heard from me since our first talk, and I wonder what happened to the numerous voicemail messages I left him. Is Bob juggling too many counseling cases and put me on the back burner? Had he simply forgotten me? Or maybe Bob has become a bit cavalier doing monumental work, such as taking a baby from one woman to give that baby to another woman. As cavalier as God?

It doesn’t matter though. On this section of the emotional rollercoaster God must have slowed the process in answer to my prayers, to prepare Sarah and her parents for the reunion. And now God is speeding up the process. I can accept this. After all, God is God. I stuff my previous disappointment down deep. The heavenly Father isn’t going to let me down like my earthly dad did.

Meanwhile, Bob leans back in his chair with a chuckle and fills me in on memories he’d been unable to share with me at the time I relinquished Sarah. Nineteen years earlier, Bob and his wife had taken care of Sarah in their apartment at Trinity Western University. It comes as a surprise to me that Bob and Beverly cared for my child the first night she’d been apart from me. I’d always assumed they’d taken her directly from me to her adoptive parents. A slim shaft of hurt arrows through my ribcage, cutting off my breath. As if I’d been kept in the dark all those years ago. When Bob had phoned me that night after I’d come home from hospital I’ had no idea my baby slept in his arms.

If I’d known then, would I have asked for her back?

But I shake off this tiny sense of betrayal. It no longer matters. Now the search is back on track, and I can afford to laugh….

….That sweet little memory of Bob’s erases a tiny bit of that new shadow in me, that sense of loss, knowing now where she’d actually been after I’d said goodbye. I stuff my jealousy deep into a crevice of my heart.

Before I leave Bob’s office, he says, “It’s only a few weeks until Christmas. Better wait until after New Year to deliver your letter to Sarah and her parents, so we don’t intrude upon their family time.” Family time. I nod and smile, but inside I shrivel. I understand. Still, hurt stabs once more that I’m not considered family. And David and our kids aren’t family to Sarah either. The desire to run and hide shrouds me again. So much for my confidence of only moments ago. Oh, who am I kidding?

The fear of rejection continues to hammer me on the drive home. During the Christmas holidays I leave a voicemail for Bob that it would be best to call the whole thing off. Better to stay in the shadows, let Sarah live her life without the awkward addition of a birth mother who doesn’t really fit into any family dynamic.

Bob calls back that night. “You’ve trusted God all these years, Christine. Don’t stop trusting now.”

Read Forward and Chapter 1 of Finding Sarah Finding Me by clicking HERE

To read more about Christine Lindsay and her fictional novels as well as her memoir, go to her website www.christinelindsay.org

Help Me Give Back -- by Christine Lindsay

November is Adoption Awareness Month. 

Adoption. A word that touches one in three people, a word that conjures different emotions in those people touched by it. 

A word that might represent the greatest hope…the greatest question…the greatest sacrifice. 

Most of all, it’s a word that represents God’s immense love for his people. 

Adoption has certainly placed me in all of the above states of emotion. These days though, that word gives me one of my greatest joys, but it was a long, long, long time coming.

I wrote a non-fiction memoir FindingSarah Finding Me to reach out to:

·        Those touched by adoption

·        Those considering the scary prospect of adoption reunion

·        Those girls/women who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy.

Because my own Adoption Story is so precious to me I could never accept

My birth-daugther Sarah on one of her
medical mission trips with Global Aid Network

payment for it. 100% of royalties from this book will be donated to Global Aid Network Women's and Children's Initiative. This is not a one-time thing, but for the entire lifetime of the book.

How could I take money for the gift that God gave me through the relinquishment of my baby? The gift of understanding how much He loved me.

Isaiah 49:15,16 Can a woman forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. 

I'm planning a huge Thunderclap blitz to tell people about this book and to raise money for my birth-daughter's mission. I'd love your help through my Thunderclap message, to raise funds to help needy women and children, the mission that braided my birth-daugher's heart with mine. If so, please go to this Thunderclap link http://thndr.me/lXBkPR so that you can help me share my message on November 18.

All I want to do is Give Back to the God who helped me through my deepest heartache to my deepest joy by discovering my true identity in Christ as I searched for my birth-daughter. Because sometimes it is only through giving up our hearts that we learn to trust the Lord.

I’m hoping that as this book gets shared, that this braided story that gives glimpses into the lives of other families in the adoption triad, that readers will see the beauty of our broken families, broken hearts, and broken lives.

A brief explanation about Thunderclap:

Thunderclap is a platform on social media, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that allows people to pledge to a one-time concentrated message going out all at once, (My date November 18 at 12 pm EST), on YOUR Facebook or Twitter or Tumbler. Think of it as a massive flash mob to promote my message. This pledge is scam free and completely safe in putting out this one-time message. 

Thank you for considering pledging to helping me with this desire: To encourage hurting people, and to give back in some small way.

If you would like to read the Forward and Chapter One of Finding Sarah Finding Me Click HERE.  

If you would like to read more about Christine and this mission that means so much to here, go to her website 

WARNING TO WRITERS. WARNING...WARNING !!!

If you want to write fiction you have to adjust to the fact that all fiction is autobiographical…to a point. You’re going to bleed emotionally on the pages. You will need plenty of hankies near your computer.   

When I first started writing 15 years ago, I understood any non-fiction I hoped to write, especially the book on my birth-mother

experience, would be autobiographical. But later when it seemed that particular true-life account might never be published, I felt the Lord urge me to put the spiritual and emotional truths I’d learned into Christian Fiction.

Whew! This means I don’t have to bare my soul. I can hide behind my “untrue” historical epics with plenty of action and romance that God-willing might help readers think about the Lord while they’re being entertained.

Ah...but here’s the real scoop.

When people read Shadowed in Silk I don’t think they have a clue that I poured my own wounded heart and soul into my "bad-guy", the enemy of my heroine Abby Fraser. Much of my emotions (from a number of years ago) are seen in Tikah the woman who kidnaps Abby’s child.

The title Shadowed in Silk shows all characters feel invisible for their own reasons. The two women feel no one sees their heartaches or hears their cries in the night. As a woman who was hurting over the relinquishment of my firstborn to adoption, I felt like invisible Abby. But I also felt like Tikah who steals Abby’s little boy, because part of my heart longed to turn the clock back so that I’d never relinquished my child in the first place. 

I took the bare truth of my soul and painted that longing into my character Tikah as she does the reprehensible.    

Shocking, I know. I’m not saying my emotions were right or honorable. Emotions are emotions, but that’s what books are, a baring of the soul. 

Of course I didn’t take back my true-life child, and the Lord helped me through my heartache. Thankfully, God also didn’t leave me in my spiritual immaturity, and my second book Captured by Moonlight shows some of that spiritual growth.  

One of my heroines, the beautiful Indian woman Eshana is imprisoned in a ruined jungle palace by her fanatical uncle. Her head is shaved, her lovely saris taken away, and she's dressed in coarse white cotton like that of a Hindu widow. In this book Eshana says the following, straight from what I hope I will say the next time I go through a real life valley of suffering...

“I will sing your praises, Lord. Though you have dressed me in funeral clothes, I will sing your praises with joy.”  

I could go on and on—how Veiled at Midnight shows what I learned the 2 years my brother lived with my husband and me, as my brother went through rehab for his alcoholism. This book breathes the message that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God.

The message of Londonderry Dreaming is to speak the truth in love, no matter how hard it hurts. And in the soon-to-be-released Sofi’s Bridge is about being true to the gifts God has placed in our souls, and to not try and save your loved ones on your own. All deep spiritual and emotional lessons that I have learned in my true life. 

God has done some amazing things for me.  Sure, I’ve suffered, who doesn’t, but I’ve experienced that scintillating feeling when 

God makes everything new. That’s why I always write happy endings.

That’s also why 15 years since I first starting writing, I’m seeing my original dream come to pass. Remember that non-fiction book on my birth-mother experience that started it all? Well, it too is soon-to-be-released. But in all honesty, there is just as much of me in my fictional novels as there is in this account.

Me and my birth-daughter Sarah. She too writes a piece for the book, including several other people from various adoption reunions.

No matter what emotional state you are currently in--hold tight to God, and believe in the ultimate happy ending for you through Jesus Christ. 

For more about Christine Lindsay and her books, go to www.ChristineLindsay.com