Love and Acceptance

Feeling loved is something that I have always wanted to feel in life. Growing up, I was told that I never smiled. I wasn’t happy. On the outside I seemed normal. I smiled when I felt like it, but on the inside I often fought back tears and struggled with the pain that I felt. I was different and I knew it. I didn’t have the same life story as all of my friends and family members, and I always wanted to be with my birth mom. I knew that I had two families. I knew them and I knew where they were and how to contact them. I felt abandoned and rejected by them. The people who should have loved me the most weren’t there. Thinking and processing these feelings are a bit much for me at times. Feeling loved and accepted is something that I have always wanted and I have struggled to find that. I am a work in progress.

 I am an adoptee. I was placed in foster care the day that I was born. My birth parents were substance abuse users, and they weren’t able to care for me and my 11 siblings. I had an open adoption so I was able to keep in touch with my biological family, and I even got to see them from time to time. It was a blessing and it was very confusing. Having to split my time between my adopted family and my biological family was so hard. I had two sets of parents, several siblings and a few siblings that were old enough to be my parents. It was confusing. I was adopted with one older biological sister. I am so thankful that we were placed together. We got to experience life together and share our pains along the way. We lived in several foster homes and our last foster mom adopted us as a single parent. Momma, as we call her, had 3 biological children that are 30 years older than I am. She was in her early 60s when we came along and she still had enough love in her heart to take in 2 more children. Life was hard and wasn’t perfect. My mom cared for us well, and I am thankful for that. Taking in a foster child is very hard and challenging for everyone involved. What people don’t realize is when you are walking into the pain of another person, especially a foster child, you need to be ready for it. Taking classes will help, but you yourself need to work through your own trauma and struggles before you take in a child and walk into their pain. If you are not mentally and emotionally prepared to handle it, please don’t do it. My sister and I struggled a lot, and I wish we would have been placed in therapy earlier in life to help us process the trauma that we were experiencing.

What I wanted most in life was to be loved, cared for and protected. That safe feeling is something that I still struggle with today. We were placed in several different foster homes before we landed in our adopted home. Each one wasn’t safe. Lot of overcrowded foster homes with other children who had experienced just as much trauma as I had. It was never safe. I experienced abuse of all kinds and mistreatment throughout life from foster siblings, family members and friends. What’s weird is that I thought that this was normal. I assumed that every child in life experienced that kind of pain. It was hard for me to share what was going on at home or express what I had gone through. As a child it’s hard putting words to what I was experiencing. I suffered through it. I wanted to be invisible. I often hid in my room and didn’t want to be seen. I loved attending school each day. It allowed me to leave and escape the pain that I felt each day. School was safe for me. I liked being there. Teachers were required to be nice and had to care for each of their students during the school hours. I kept my head in my books and got involved in sports and activities in school to fill that void in my life. The depression void, the I am not wanted and loved void, the why am I even still here void. Even with having an adopted family, that feeling of being loved and accepted still wasn’t there. I have always struggled with the fact that some of my biological siblings had the opportunity to stay with our birth family. Why couldn’t I stay with them? Why did I have to be in several different foster homes? Why did I go through the abuse and mistreatment that I went through? Why wasn’t I wanted? I have always questioned what was wrong with me. Why wasn’t it enough? The answer is, I am enough. Many of you reading this may think, “Wait, she was adopted, why isn’t she happy? Why wasn’t what she had enough?” Well, having to live in a state of grief, loss and trauma for the majority of your life will leave you with an empty feeling. I hate when people tell me that I should be grateful. Grateful for what? Grateful that I was taken from my birth family and had to grow up not knowing my family? Grateful that my birth parents suffered through life and didn’t have the love and support to be able to keep my sister and be placed in foster care? Or grateful for the abuse and mistreatment I went through growing up? People, please don’t tell a foster/adoptee this. We already feel guilty for loving and wanting to be with our birth families. We feel guilty for loving our adopted family and appreciating the life that we have. We carry around a lot of guilt .

I am enough! It is still a phrase that I am still getting used to. I became a Christ follower in college. I had always wanted to go to college. I was so excited to start over in life and I knew that I needed a college education in order to make it in life. Also, moving on campus was also a plus. I had the plan to party it up in college. Because that’s what college students do right? Ha, nope! That wasn’t God’s plan for me. My first week on campus, I was invited to a Baptist Student Union event on campus. They offered free food, a free t-shirt and a gospel centered message. All I heard was free food and a t-shirt and I was there. I went to the event, and everyone was so nice. A little too nice to be honest. Lots of smiles, lots of hugs and high fives. I felt like I was in a cheesy movie to be honest, but they were nice and it wasn’t fake. That night I had the opportunity to hear the gospel for the first time. The Campus Minister shared that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and that we needed a savior? Sins!? Wait! My thoughts were: are these people telling me that I am a sinner? That I am bad, Unlovable, Unworthy, Undeserving? Great, more people in life are not accepting me for who I am. This definitely wasn’t the case. I just didn’t have a clear understanding of the gospel, but this is how I felt for a while. I continued to go to every Monday night service that they had. I wanted to grow and learn more about who Jesus was and why he died for our sins. After about 6 months of going, I finally asked a friend of mine her thoughts and opinions on the matter and what it meant to be a Christian, and she shared the gospel with me in a way that I could understand. That same night, our Campus Minister shared a message about God being the father for the fatherless and how God will never leave you, will protect you and will provide for you. I wanted that. I wanted a father like that. I knew that I would never have an earthly father, but I knew my heavenly Father was all that I  needed and wanted. I knew that He loved me and accepted me as me. I accepted Christ that night. I was enough. In His eyes I was perfect, He loved me and I was wanted. From that day until now, I have worked hard to build a relationship with the Lord and have served in ministry for 15 years. He has always provided Christ followers in my path to help me grow in my faith and help me walk through life.

I still struggle with love and acceptance. Especially in the area of dating and friendships, but I am working on it. I am in therapy to help me work through all of this. Those days when I struggle the most I am reminded that God is with me, and He is a hope for the abandoned, a refuge for the fearful and a Father to the fatherless. I am enough!

Mary Ann