It felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall.
No matter how hard I tried to connect with my birth mother, she remained nasty.
Fellow adopted and foster kids, let me give you a loving challenge. I preface it by telling you I am not a biblical scholar, nor do I pretend to have the answers. This was the answer for me and I offer it to you for consideration.
Rejection is talked about much, but it is a common experience for many adoptees and foster kids. Even if it is an open adoption, the child suffers much rejection.
Years ago, my birth mother rejected me one day after I returned home from an Idaho reunion with her.
The moment I heard the tone of her voice over the phone, I knew something drastic had happened. Without mincing words, she announced that she wanted no more contact. Period.
Needless to say, I was crushed, but just as determined to work at the relationship in the future.
At that time, I fell into “repetition compulsion,” which means almost addictively trying and trying the same thing, with no progress. Some call it insanity.
Just think about the need of adopted and foster kids. We are as desperate for connection as a starving man looking for food.
No wonder, we repeatedly try.
But, dear one, we don’t have to.
We can take care of ourselves instead.
One day I was reading about Abraham and Sarah in the Bible. Remember how God had promised them a child? But nothing happened. So, Abraham took things into his own hands and had a child with his handmaiden Hagar and named him Ishmael. Not long after that, Sarah got pregnant and named their son Isaac.
Hagar and her son were causing lots of trouble and dissension in the family. So God told Abraham…the birth father…to send away Hagar and their son.
Say what?
God actually gave permission to Abraham to send them away… Hagar and his birth son. They were causing incredible conflict.
Unbelievable.
If it was alright with God for such a Godly man as Abraham to send away these two, then it must be okay for me to send away my birth mother.
I didn’t have to keep banging my head against the proverbial brick wall anymore.
Whew.
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