Angela and I are not a DNA match. (Insert primal scream here.) It's back to the drawing board.
I spiritually and emotionally prepared myself for it this time more than any other before this. I didn't stockpile Razzleberry pies. I’m not bloated today from binging. I am so disappointed but not slayed. I'm not taking off work. I'll get a lot more done now that I'm not checking DNA results 30 times a day. I'm not laying in bed crying. I'm not feeling as if I want to check out of life and leave this world. I'm stronger now. This time I'm just taking a big breath and moving forward with everything in life including searching.
Regina kept working last night on the next thing. (There's always a next thing.) Later this evening I will do some paperwork to send out on the search.
Looking on the positive side, Angela (who tested for me) is still my friend and is "boots on the ground" in Richmond to help me with whatever I need in continuing to search for my father. Since she's connected in the Greek community and knows a lot of people who were living there at the time I was born, she is there to help.
I did not share this yet here on the blog, but one of the reasons Angela was so eager to help me when I cold called her is that she is a first mother who relinquished a son for adoption when she was a teenager. They have been reunited in the past few years. She knows how important this is to me. She has experienced it in her own life. She wants to do anything she can to help me. We will always remain friends.
Last night I texted with my sister Kim (who is also adopted) and told her I wish I didn't care so much about this. She said, "why don't you just pray that? Pray that you won't care anymore." I told her I have. It's true, I have prayed so many times that I just wouldn't care anymore about my bio father. That I could just let it go. But the gnawing never ends no matter how much I pray. I really have come to the conclusion that God puts an innate desire in human beings to know where and who we come from. I've met far more adoptees who want to know -- who "have" to know - more than those who don't care.
The most challenging thing for me on a daily basis is
forgiveness. The bible talks about the number of times we need to forgive someone -- 70 x 7. (That's another way to say -- an infinite number of time times.) Welp, today I’m at 3,009. That’s the number of days it has been since
my bio mother told me my father's name would go with her to her grave. That was the
day she told me she would "never, ever tell me his name." Shortly after that, she died. She made good on her promise.
Every day since that day 3, 009 days ago, I’ve gotten up in the morning each day still looking at this face in the mirror, trying to find his face in mine. And in that frustration, I eek out the words, “I forgive you.” It’s a daily thing, not a once and done. Because the longing to know him never goes away. So neither does the sad feeling about why I don’t know his name or know him. Her decision affects my life each day and then I make a decision all over again to forgive on the next day and the next day and the next day after that when I still don’t know who he is.
I’m a believer, and forgiving is what we do. Even if it takes forever.
