Growing up without a mother or father is like the vine or the tree that withers without water or nourishment: it makes you vulnerable to mistrust and low self-esteem, to a lack of structure and sense of competence. It opens you up to false and wrong sources for rooting and growth—and to “lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.”
By the time I was 14, my parents had divorced, I’d been taken away from my mother, and my father had died. I experienced additional pain—physical and sexual abuse, and my brother was critically injured with a homemade gun. I was desperate for meaning and love, always believing that I would die young from heartbreak. By 25, I myself was a divorced single parent and an abusive mother who’d had an abortion and had attempted suicide. Although I had heard and believed that God loved me and that Jesus died for me and wanted to live in me, I was still so full of unhealed brokenness and crookedness.
Every night, I would hold my arm up to the ceiling, believing that if I could fall asleep without letting it down, God would lift me out of my pain.
Then I, the “foremost sinner” of mamas, discovered I was pregnant again. I had recently become part of a Bible-believing church and discovered that Scripture was living: God was speaking to me through His written word! It mattered what I did—only God could straighten me and integrate my shattered self.
Five months pregnant, I sat in church listening to a perfect-looking pastor preach on Psalm 51 about David’s adulterous sin with Bathsheba and subsequent disastrous cover-up and pain. This preacher started the service by singing with his perfect-looking wife and perfect-looking children. I was furious. I thought, “It’
s fine for you to preach that stuff with your perfect little family, but what if you were sitting here in my place and had done the things I’ve done?” I was so angry and ready to run out the back of the church, but somehow found myself running up to the front!
My story poured out. The pastor told me that God loved me and forgave me, that my baby was not sin but a gift from God and needed to know my love. We prayed together, but I went home not feeling any different. As I lay in bed that night, I asked God yet again for forgiveness. Suddenly, it seemed that the ceiling of my room opened—I could see blue sky and billowing clouds, and hear holy and delighted laughter. I don’t know how, but I knew I was clean, pure, accepted, and loved.
With pastoral counseling, I placed my daughter for adoption with a Christian agency. When she was 18, we would be able to connect with each other. I awaited that time joyfully and prayerfully.
Lisa and her daughter reunite.
Over the years, God gave me a new family. He healed and shaped me through the loving care and correction of the church community.
Slowly, and through trial and error, God revealed gifts He had given to me. He started to use me—even me.
My husband Paul and I were married and had two more children. He adopted my oldest child. We went to seminary, became missionaries in West Africa, and later served in the pastorate of several Brook churches, and worked for healing in the city of Milwaukee. We have been a part of Eastbrook for the past ten years, where Paul served as missions pastor and I am on the Church Council. You might think to yourself, “Wow, who let her in?” And you would be right because I have never been deserving, but our gracious God loves to use foolish, despised, and broken things.
All across these years, I have prayed for my daughter and tried to find and connect with her. I thought that perhaps she had died or was so disabled that she couldn’t communicate with me. As I entered my 70s and suffered more chronic illness, I realized that perhaps I had misunderstood God. Once again, I surrendered my daughter into God’s faithfulness.
Last April, after her 46th birthday, my daughter found me and we met. She told me that she loves Jesus and never doubted that she was loved. She was nurtured in a loving home that I couldn’t have given her. She was married to a pastor, had four believing children, and was involved in missions to orphan and marginalized children in a needy part of the world. How could all of this be?
The Lord has done great things for me, beyond anything I could ask or imagine, “exceedingly abundantly.” He has lavished His love on me.
Now, when I raise my arms in church or at home on my bed, it is in gratitude that God has seen and taken my hand. He will take me home one day: beloved, belonging, rich, and full of days. ■
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