Beginning the Search

The sun is shining today. That is a good thing. It is shining both outside my window and in my heart. After experiencing minus 45 degree windchill temperatures for a week, seeing the sun again gives me hope. The sun is shining in my heart today as well for no apparent reason other than I know I am blessed. That too is a good thing and it warms the soul.

My story of adoption reunion is one that is hard to pen or in this medium, type. The dark days of not knowing where my baby boy was, if he was dead or alive were like the wind swept chills of winter days without sunshine. I remember the nights of tears, the times when other things in my world seemed out of place and really it was because he was lost to me. Prayer and love sustained me but I must admit my soul was weakening. I remember crying out on his 30th birthday in sheer desperation that if there was a God out there why would S/He not hear my cry and come to my aid. I wanted peace and if that peace could only be accomplished through death then let it be so.

The internet is a wonderful thing. We can surf and hunt and lurk in places we dare not tread in person. Guest books were common in 1999 and it was one night in the cold dark winter before the turn of the century that I sat lurking at a town I believed in my heart was the place my son was taken to after he left my arms. It was a town in Northern Ontario that I had passed by many times in my travels but had never ventured off the highway. When I would be driving by and we neared the town my heart would quicken and my agitation level rise. I even hated the sound of the name of the town when my Mother would say it. On this winter night I sat and typed in the name of the town. I wanted to see what it looked like, I wanted to see what was the attraction or lack of it.

The site had a library and the library had a sign-in guest book. Boldly I added that there was a male born on a certain date, in a certain city and from the non-identifying information obtained from Children's Aid he had been adopted into a family where the siblings were considerably older than he was. How quick an email is sent these days. There is no hesitation as you lick the envelope, purchase a stamp or walk to the mail box to deposit it. There is no time to ponder the wisdom of sending off such a "note". Gone in a second and with it the opportunity to change your mind. It is a different world we live in. Caution needs to be captured in the fraction of a second that before you had time to contemplate.

As I sat on my sofa a few months later crying out to the God of the Universe for mercy and pity and grace I had no idea that my sign-in was being read by a person half way around the world in New Zealand. I had no idea that the library sign-in of a small Northern Ontario town would be of any interest to a man in a country so far away and that this person would know the post was about my son. I also had no idea that it would take another 5 years before I would know how my cry that afternoon on my sofa would be answered.

We think we are not heard in our prayers at times because the answer is not immediate. I am reminded when I pray that the answer is always forthcoming. We may not know the answer for awhile, we may not like the answer but it is always being answered.

My brother is a computer nerd (he prefers the word geek but anyone who has a brother knows that the word nerd is always a better fit). He tells me that in the world wide web the odds of someone in New Zealand reading a guest book sign-in and know that it was my son is at an exponential number higher than even he could know. He also said my chances of winning lotto 649 would be greater. I think I did win the lottery and there is no amount of money that could ever buy what I gained from being reunited with my son. I am rich and I am blessed. I will continue the story again in another post. Thanks for dropping by.