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

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

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.

CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE LINDSAY

ChristineLindsay.org

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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 

Writing About Mental Illness -- by Christine Lindsay

I'm not much interested in reading novels that weigh me down with the darkness of mental illness. Yet, it's an issue that's risen it's confusing head in my own family. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I steer away from stories that delve deeply into the shadows of depression.

I don't like going there. It's all just too dark.

I've had to live with the affects of emotional and mental illness in many of the people I love. My own precious daughter suffers with severe depression. If it weren't for heavy duty medications from her psychiatrist, she would be unable to function in our fast-as-lighting world today. 

My mother also struggled with depression and was even misdiagnosed by her doctor and prescribed medications that actually worsened her condition. One uncle died from an overdoes of medications, and a distant cousin committed suicide.

Horrible stuff. Horrible memories I don't wish to be reminded of.

Unless, it's to share a ray of hope.

Mental illness can be defeated. People can be set free.

My daughter modeling for the
front of one of my books.

I saw this in both my mother and my daughter. Today they are vibrant women living their lives and making a contribution to the world. 

So, I suppose it was inevitable that I would one day write a novel that touches on mental illness. In this case I put what we call Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome into one of my secondary characters. Just because they didn't label it that back in 1913 doesn't mean they didn't experience it.

But my latest book also dealt with a woman who suffers from addiction to a drug prescribed by her doctor. In this case, laudanum. I understood this too well as I watched my own mother slowly weaned off the wrong medication prescribed by her over-worked doctor.

Sofi's Bridge deals with these dark and difficult subjects, but I think the secret is in keeping this topic in small doses for the reader. The last thing the reader needs is pages and pages of dark depression. 

My advice in writing dark subjects such as depression and mental illness is to keep it short. Only place your reader in the mind of that tortured character for short periods of time, then whisk the reader out as quickly as possible to the point of view of a character that is propelled by hope.

We can't and shouldn't avoid stories about depression and mental illness, but we can write these stories in such a way as to give the reader hope for the people they love who struggle with these issues. 

My mum on her way to a
friend's birthday party.

That's the whole purpose behind Sofi's Bridge. I saw healing in my family from this disease, and bright hope for my loved ones' tomorrows.  

Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction with complex emotional and psychological truth, who always promises a happy ending. Tales of her Irish ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in Colonial India inspired her multi-award-winning series Twilight of the British Raj, Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and explosive finale Veiled at Midnight.

Christine’s Irish wit and use of setting as a character is evident in her contemporary romance Londonderry Dreaming and newest release Sofi’s Bridge.

A busy writer and speaker, Christine, and her husband live on the west coast of Canada. Coming August 2016 is the release of her non-fiction book Finding Sarah—Finding Me: A Birthmother’s Story.

Please drop by Christine’s website www.ChristineLindsay.org or follow her on Amazon on Twitter. Subscribe to her quarterly newsletter, and be her friend on Pinterest , Facebook, and  Goodreads

Book Recommendation for Sofi's Bridge by Christine Lindsay

Some years ago we stayed with friends of the Luis Palau Team in Portland, Oregon, and they took us to see the Cascades. It’s a beautiful part of the country and near to where this tale unfolds in the state of Washington.

This novel from Christine Lindsay lived up to all my expectations. Some time ago I’d read her beautiful trilogy with its setting of the British Raj in India. And again this story, set in the early 20^th century, captivated me right from the start. Its heroine, Sofi, is faced with the attitude of the time that a woman should do “woman’s work” and not take on anything in the male sphere. It follows that this intelligent woman is constantly struggling with a spate of frustrating desires. With her desire to do something, yet knowing it would surely overstep the bounds of propriety, soon becomes her constant state of mind. A debutante desiring to be an engineer of bridges? Hopeless. And definitely unbecoming!

It doesn’t help when she finds herself experiencing feelings toward a handsome employee of their wealthy household. Especially when she suspects there’s far more to him than he lets on. On the one hand he wants to earn her trust and on the other, he knows he can never expect more, for he has a deep secret he is bound to keep.

The tension builds with a supposedly faithful partner directing her late father’s business. And with a grieving mother hooked on laudanum and a sister full of self-recrimination, Sofi is at her wits end.

Add a Pinkerton detective and an ambitious policeman from Scotland Yard to the mix, and things seem to weigh heavily against the truth ever being revealed. There are many bridges on different levels to be crossed in this tale.

I love Christine’s descriptive words. Some examples:

‘A wisp of cloud snagged on spear-like treetops.’ ‘Spiky red flowers reminding her of paintbrushes.’ ‘A steel ribbon of triangulated trusses.’

Sofi’s Bridge in available now on Amazon and paperback on May 1.

Review by Rita Stella Galieh

Rita has just published a revised second edition of her historical romance, Signed Sealed Delivered, Book One of the Victoriana Trilogy.

Christine's Got a Brand New Baby

If a writer knows the subject and setting well, the story comes to life. With this new baby of mine, Sofi’s Bridge, I’d like to take you on a tour of my beautiful home close to the Cascade Mountains that bridge Washington State and British Columbia, Canada.

In my opinion I live in one of the prettiest places in the world, often compared

Wood carvings featured
in homestead of Sofi's Bridge.

to the Swiss Alps. Since I literally live only 3 miles as far as the crow flies from the US border, I used my own valley and created a fictional vale in Washington State. I did this only to give the book an American setting since those readers make up the majority of the market. But just between me and you, the story is really set in Canada. But shhhh, let’s keep that a secret.

Below are 3 scenes in which I used my province to create the fictional town of Orchard in the US.

~*~

The view from my dining room window.

Sunlight slanted from the west as they entered the valley. Farms created a velvet patchwork, and the tang of recently mown hay sweetened the air. The opposite side of the bridge met them at the entrance to town, where the hammers of steelworkers driving rivets into the trusses rang like a welcome home.

Neil stopped at the crossroads.

Sofi savored the outskirts of the town she’d spent most of her childhood summers. Already her spirits lifted. A high-wheeled freight wagon rolled toward Gronberg’s livery stable. Railway lines would make it so much easier to transports goods in and out of Orchard. But there were things she hoped would never change—the red and white awning of Helsing’s mercantile, the steeple of a white clapboard church that sought the sky. With a quiet nod, she motioned to Neil to take the road following this side of the gorge.

~*~

Sofi’s Bridge starts out though in Seattle, which I drive to a few times each year, so again I know the location well. Here’s another snipped created from my own memories driving out of Seattle and heading north.

~*~

Puget Sound

A rising sun melted the morning fog. Where the roads were good, the Cadillac ran smoothly at thirty-five miles per hour. Not so with the out-of-the-way paths

Sofi chose, taking them through cultivated farmlands that hugged the water.

Neil kept to a low speed to avoid jarring as the thin tires travelled the rutted byways. They’d come almost forty miles. Now a smattering of small islands floated on the intense blue of Puget Sound. To the northeast, rolling mountains furred with evergreens gradually molded higher and higher. Ireland wasn’t the only emerald land, but his halfhearted smile faltered when he glanced at Sofi.

~*~

A romantic scene from the book is set in one of my favorite places in all the world, taken directly from my visits to the Alpine Meadow in Manning Park BC,

just across the border from the same glorious Cascade Mountains in Washington State. In fact, each summer I look out on the US side from this location when I go to view the alpine flowers at their peak in mid-July.

~*~

At the summit they reined the Clydesdales under a shady tree. The wind, carrying a clean pine fragrance, blew unimpeded as though they’d reached the top of the world and grasses swayed in the breeze.

Neil walked with Sofi along a pathway strewn on either side with blue and purple lupine, pink phlox, yellow arnica, and red Indian paintbrush. In the distance, pale blue and turquoise ice from glaciers filled crevices between serrated granite heights. Quiet awe filled his face as he swept his gaze three hundred and sixty degrees and studied the glaciers that though they were miles away seemed close enough to touch. Above the tree line, gray peaks scraped the sky, some still capped with snow.

Sofi could only hope that up here for a while he could let go of whatever pain he was hiding from the world, and from her.

Read the first chapter of Sofi’s Bridge for free by clicking HERE.

SOFI’S BRIDGE by Christine Lindsay

Seattle Debutant Sofi Andersson will do everything in her power to protect her sister who is suffering from shock over their father’s death. Charles, the family busy-body, threatens to lock Trina in a sanatorium—a whitewashed term for an

insane asylum—so Sofi will rescue her little sister, even if it means running away to the Cascade Mountains with only the new gardener Neil Macpherson to protect them. But in a cabin high in the Cascades, Sofi begins to recognize that the handsome immigrant from Ireland harbors secrets of his own. Can she trust this man whose gentle manner brings such peace to her traumatized sister and such tumult to her own emotions? And can Neil, the gardener, continue to hide from Sofi that he is really Dr. Neil Galloway, a man wanted for murder by the British police? Only an act of faith and love will bridge the distance that separates lies from truth and safety.

PURCHASE LINKS for Sofi’s Bridge Paper & Ebooks

AMAZON.com 

Barnes and Noble

Pelican Book Group

About Christine:

Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction. Tales of her Irish ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in Colonial India inspired her multi-award-winning trilogy Twilight of the British Raj, Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and explosive finale Veiled at Midnight.

Christine’s Irish wit and use of setting as a character is evident in her contemporary romance Londonderry Dreaming and newest release Sofi’s Bridge. 

A busy writer and speaker, Christine and her husband live on the west coast of Canada. Coming August 2016 is the release of Christine’s non-fiction book Finding Sarah—Finding Me: A Birthmother’s Story.

Connect with Christine:

Please drop by Christine’s website www.ChristineLindsay.org or follow her on Amazon on Twitter. Subscribe to her quarterly newsletter, and be her friend on Pinterest , Facebook, and  Goodreads