After years of wondering and months of searching, my husband held her phone number in his hands; he paced the room, wondering what to do. What if she didn’t want to talk to him? He did not want to complicate her life; he just wanted to know his natural mother. After his adoptive dad died and his mother lived in a nursing home, a man gave him the name of the doctor who had delivered him forty years earlier. The doctor, who had lived only three houses down from him his entire life, was now in his 90s and still had his old medical records in the basement. (This was small town Wyoming.) The doctor gave him a maiden name and a place—Speedwell, North Carolina.
Wes couldn’t find Speedwell on a map so he called the state’s Highway Patrol. They explained that Speedwell was basically a general store in the Smokey Mountains. He then began calling people in Jackson County with that same last name. He finally reached a woman who gave him his mother’s married name and her phone number. (She later worried about giving a stranger such information, but thankfully it worked out.)
We decided that it would be easier if I made the call. I shook a little as I asked, “Did you deliver a baby in Wyoming back in the 40s and then give him up for adoption? “Yes,” she replied. I told her that my husband had been looking for her and wondered if she would mind speaking to him. “I have been looking for him too,” she said. Her first words to him were, “I have been praying for you every day of your life.”
Mother and son had a joyful reunion at the Ashville airport six months later. Wes met his mother and her husband and an aunt and uncle. The next day we met more aunts and uncles and cousins. One of his uncles pastored a little Baptist church in the mountains. He introduced us to his congregation and we received many hugs of welcome. Then we had a family get-together where the family shared stories, challenges, hurts, and victories. They broke out singing old songs, laughed often, and watched each other, fascinated with similarities. What a unique experience! It is one thing to visit a different culture as a tourist, but it was wonderful beyond words for us, as strangers, to be accepted into an intimate family circle and to enjoy the rich heritage of the Smokey Mountain culture as a part of that family.
Wes had been an only child with few relatives. As we looked at all these relatives with similar facial features, voice patterns, and personalities, we marvelled. We took them into our hearts because they were family. Faults and silly quirks did not matter because they were family. They had different habits and customs but that did not matter because they were family, and they were too valuable to us to allow differences to hinder our love for them—and, thankfully, I think we got some of that grace back.
The whole experience made me think of my relationship with God’s family. We fell in love with strangers simply because they were family. I wonder if I am as open and caring to those I meet in God’s family. Paul taught the Romans by saying: “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” (Romans 12:10-13) Those seem to be good words to live by.
