By Christine Lindsay
As a young woman of twenty-one, I didn’t have many friends. That is, until an elderly woman toddled into my life on her old-fashioned pumps. Eighty-something-year-old Eva’s kindness turned my life around from sadness and loss, to new horizons of shining hope.
The year prior to my meeting Eva, I had moved 3000 miles to the Pacific west coast. Right after starting my new life I met Mr. Wrong. No surprises that I met a Mr. Wrong when I’d been looking for love in all the wrong places. Sadly though, this supposedly good Christian girl became pregnant out of wedlock. My short walk on the wild-side brought me to the place of heart-breaking decisions.
Growing up in a single-parent family, I never had a loving, attentive dad. While my mom is my hero, and I knew I would also make a good mom, I wanted a loving daddy for my baby. Though it crushed me in every way imaginable I made an adoption plan for my child.
During those long, lonely 9 months while I waited for the birth of my little one, and our soon-to-come separation, I prayed and wept, long and hard in the dark each night in my single apartment. My young life had come to a stand-still. I felt that once I gave up my baby, that in some ways life would end for me.
Also during those months, 80-year-old Eva phoned me on a regular basis. Eva’s phone-calls kept me going through the days and weeks when all I could think about was the loss of my virginity, the loss of the joys that should be mine as a 21-year-old, and most of all the soon-to-be loss of my first-born.
Up to this point I’d never thought much about having children. Getting married to some wonderful guy, yes. Having a great job, yes. But as I nurtured the baby in my womb, and held her on the night she was born, I wanted nothing more than to be a mother. I wanted with all my heart to raise my baby girl, but like any good mom, I put my baby’s needs first, and did the hardest thing in my life—I gave my baby Sarah up for adoption.
Sarah at two weeks old
Those next 12 months were the hardest. No longer was I a carefree girl, but a woman who had lost her first-born. Another woman would hold the honoring role, and have that precious title of “Mom” in little Sarah’s life.
As for me—was life over? It sure felt like it.
But Eva was still there, phoning me, and having me over to dinner on Sunday afternoons after church. She didn’t let me slide into the deep depression that dogged me, even though all I could think about was little Sarah. Instead, Eva briskly steered me into helping her teach the teenage girls’ Sunday school class. Eva corralled me into helping her with the youth. Eva encouraged me to go out that summer as a camp counsellor. My 80-something-year-old friend inspired me to live. She persuaded me to go to places that would stir life into this 21-year-old who felt as though life had passed me by.
One afternoon, on a bright spring Saturday, Eva phoned to have me meet her at a specific corner. Bemused by Eva’s mysterious invitation, I obeyed, and she lead me to a church where a wedding was underway. I didn’t know the bride, but Eva did. A beautiful young woman strolled up the aisle on her father’s arm, and it wasn’t until she passed my pew that I realized the bride was totally blind. The wedding attendees were overjoyed. Joy can come to those who don’t expect it.
Outside, after the ceremony, Eva said to me, “Now go, girl, and think on the good things. Think on things that are lovely and pure, and worthy of praise. Things that give hope.”
I did exactly what my elderly friend advised, and those new shining horizons did open up for me, just like she said.
present day-Christine and kids, including birth-daughter Sarah
Finding Sarah Finding Me:
Sometimes it is only through giving up our hearts that we learn to trust the Lord.
Adoption. It’s something that touches one in three people today, a word that will conjure different emotions in those people touched by it. A word that might represent the greatest hope…the greatest question…the greatest sacrifice. But most of all, it’s a word that represents God’s immense love for his people.
Join birth mother Christine Lindsay as she shares the heartaches, hopes, and epiphanies of her journey to reunion with the daughter she gave up…and to understanding her true identity in Christ along the way.
Through her story and glimpses into the lives of other families in the adoption triad, readers will see the beauty of our broken families, broken hearts, and broken dreams when we entrust them to our loving God.
100 % of author royalties from this braided memoir on adoption will be donated to Global Aid Network Women and Children’s Initiative for the lift-time of the book.
For Free Read of Chapter 1 of Finding Sarah Finding Me, Click HERE
Irish-born Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction and non-fiction. Readers describe her writing as gritty yet tender, realistic yet larger than life, with historical detail that collides into the heart of psychological and relationship drama. Christine’s fictional novels have garnered the ACFW Genesis Award, The Grace Award, Canada’s The Word Guild Award, and was a finalist twice for Readers’ Favorite as well as 2nd place in RWA’s Faith Hope and Love contest. This author’s non-fiction memoir Finding Sarah Finding Me is the true-life story that started this award-winning career in Christian fiction and non-fiction and her speaking ministry.
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