The Beginning of Becoming | On My Way

I don’t remember a time in my life when I felt “at home.”

People talk about childhood like it’s supposed to be full of certainty and belonging and safety and roots. But for me, even as a very small child, despite being deeply loved, cared for, prayed over, and raised in a home that provided more than everything I needed, I still felt like a visitor in my own life.

There was always this hollow place inside me, a space that whispered, "You don’t belong here. You won’t feel whole until she comes for you."

“She” meaning my birth mother. That lie was planted early, and I believed it with my whole heart.

My parents, my real parents, never hid the fact that I was adopted. They told me the truth from the very beginning. They loved me fiercely and raised me with intention, faith, and a steady foundation. They provided opportunities I never would’ve had otherwise. They worked incredibly hard to create a stable, safe home.

But even in a safe home, a lie can still grow.

And the lie that grew in me was this: I will never be whole until my birth mother rescues me.

I didn’t just long for her.
I fantasized about her.

I imagined her pulling up in a white limousine, sweeping me into some fairytale castle life where everything finally made sense. In my mind, she was the missing piece. The one who could fix what I didn’t have words for.

Looking back, I wasn’t an unstable child because of my environment. I was unstable because of the war happening inside me between the truth my parents spoke over my life and the lies the enemy whispered in the quiet places of my heart.

The bitterness, the hatred, the confusion, the longing… it all ran underneath the surface of everything I did. I didn’t know how to put words to it then. 

But now I can say it plainly: I spent most of my childhood believing that the people who loved me the most weren’t really mine. And that the woman who had given me life hadn’t really let me go. I believed she was coming back.

And I believed my parents were simply holding me until she did. None of which was true.

But to a child who believes her own thoughts more than the truth spoken to her, it might as well have been gospel.

I wish I could say those lies faded as I grew. But they didn’t. They simply buried themselves deeper, shaping my reactions, my emotions, my identity, my decisions. I was grateful for the life I had, but that gratitude ran parallel with a constant ache, the ache of rejection that I didn’t want to acknowledge.

It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that everything finally shattered and then finally showed signs of healing.

When I found out I was pregnant, the weight of what my birth mother faced hit me in a way I was not prepared for. I dove into every option at my disposal. So many questions, and few clear answers. I sat down with an adoption attoryney to weigh that path, but couldn't beaer the thought of passing on the very identity struggles I had spent my whole life untangling or the pain it caused my parents, onto another family. So I chose to raise him myself. And even though it looks like single motherhood on paper, I wasn't alone for a second. My own mother stepped in with the kind of sacrificial love she has shown me from the beginning. 

I vividly remember sitting at my parents’ dining room table, broken, scared, and facing single parenthood, when my mother reminded me again of truths I had refused to believe for years. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, they landed and with 20 years of reinforced impact.

I realized that the woman I’d spent my whole life longing for wasn’t the one who sustained me.
Wasn’t the one who taught me truth.
Wasn’t the one who shaped my character.
Wasn’t the one who pulled me out of dangerous situations.
Wasn’t the one who held me when I was broken.
Wasn’t the one who loved me with a love that cost something.

I realized that the hole in my heart was never going to be filled by my birth mother, because she wasn’t the one who had been standing in the gap. My parents were. God was.

And finally, the lie no longer made sense.

That moment was the beginning of healing for me. Healing that has taken years. Healing that had to take place before I was ever ready to meet my birth mother.

And I did meet her.

Years later. As an adult. After the bitterness had dissolved, after the hatred had been surrendered, after the lie had lost its power.

And meeting her didn’t fix anything, because by then, nothing was broken in the way it used to be. Meeting her was simply meeting someone I am biologically connected to.
Not a rescuer.
Not a missing piece.
Not a savior.
Not a solution.
Just a person.

A person I was finally ready to meet with clarity and peace because God had already done the work in me long before she and I ever stood in the same room.

And this is the part I want to speak to anyone who is adopted, or raising adopted children, or loving someone adopted:
We know the logic.
We know the gratitude.
We know the truth.

But our hearts often know something different.

It’s a strange place to exist, grateful for life, grateful for adoption, grateful for the family that raised us, and yet still wrestling with the ache of rejection that doesn’t make sense on paper. It’s an emotional limbo that’s very hard to explain (it's taken me 31 years to put it into words)

But God is a God who meets us in the limbo. And He builds identity where confusion once lived.
He replaces lies with truth.
He restores what rejection tried to ruin.
He turns the ache into a testimony.

As a 31-year-old woman, I can say with confidence: His hand has never left me.

He never forsook me.
He led me, even when I was walking in lies of my own making.
He guided me through the wilderness of identity and belonging.
He taught me the difference between longing and truth.

And the greatest truth I’ve learned is this: There is no such thing as a “home” that will complete us.
Home is not a place.
Home is not a person.
Home is not biology.
Home is not a childhood fantasy.
Home is not tied to the past or the people who gave us life.

Home is identity in Christ.
Home is truth.
Home is belonging in the Kingdom.
Home is knowing who God says you are.
Home is peace.
Home is the absence of the lie.

So no, my story is not the long road home. That concept doesn’t even make sense anymore. My story is the long road to who God made me to be. And I finally know who that woman is.
She is loved.
She is chosen.
She is protected.
She is purposed.
She is whole.
She is wanted.
She is free.
She is His.

And that is the story I’m ready to tell. Not in one post. Not in one book. Not in one emotional paragraph. But over the next year, every 20th of every month, I’m going to share another piece of my testimony. 

Not because the story is finished.

But because I’m finally ready to tell it while it’s still unfolding.

This is On My Way: The Long Road to Who God Made Me to Be. This is my story. And if any part of it speaks to you, know that I want you to walk with me through the next chapter. Because healing is real. Identity is real. Restoration is real.

And if God did it for me, He can do it for you, too.

So, I invite you to follow along. A new chapter will drop every month on the 20th. 

I’m on my way finally, to who God made me to be.