The Freedom In Forgiveness
11/6/2024
Written by: Christina Gregory
A Letter to My Birth Mother:
Where is the line between neglect and abandonment?
According to the law and Google, it’s a year. A full year before a custodial parent can be charged with abandonment.
Did you say goodbye?
Was it a conscious choice…selfless and calculated? Or is it a gradual accumulation of time formed by shame?
Maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s a bit of both. Do you know? Does it keep you up at night?
Does the memory of the first time you told someone you have 2 children instead of 3 still sting? Or did you purge that from your mind along with my birth date?
Is it uncomfortable for you that I share your skin tone, your almond eyes, your freckles?
What else that makes up me comes from you? Are you a foodie too? Do you love rainy days but count down the days until summer? Are you double jointed?
Is whatever moves a mother to abandon her daughter hereditary? Am I broken that way too?
I think I have rounded the five stages of grief during each season of my life just trying to make sense of the mess you made. But I think I finally have the answer to these questions and so many more now. They almost all fit into two categories of “I don’t know” or “I don’t care.” But they’re fluid…ever changing. I’ve learned to accept that sometimes closure is accepting that there will never be a resolution.
As a child, I was embarrassed of your sin. Lying my way out of your existence. Pretending to forget you just like you forgot me. As a teen, I was ashamed of your sin. Anger fueling disdain for every part of me that I potentially got from you. As an adult, I was afraid of your sin. Afraid that whatever the world did to break you, would also come for me.
But then on November 8, 2012…I became a mom.
Again on July 13, 2015.
And once again in a whole new way on April 27, 2022.
And with each birth came new questions. Questions I’ll never know the answers to.
But with that also came the answer I needed most of all.
I am not you.
And with that revelation, I began to heal. Slowly. Steadily.
God began redefining my identity that had once been so tangled up in you. That was neither of our burdens to carry.
Through my faith in Jesus Christ I am a child of God. (2 Corinthians 6:18)
He took what was once embarrassment, fear and shame for sins that were not mine to atone for and he made it His own. Isaiah 49:15-16 says it best:
“Can a mother forget her nursing child, and have no compassion on the child she borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, your walls are ever before me.”
He took my pain and made it my testimony. I hope it brings you peace knowing that none of this was wasted. Not in spite of you, but simply for the glory of God.
I met my son’s birth mother on January 24, 2022. She is such a good mama. I told her about my beautiful life, one that I hoped to share with her baby if she saw fit. I got to tell her about how I grew up in a small town with a small family and a lot of friends that we called family and how that’s a tradition I carried on into adulthood. I told her how my Mom and Dad supported everything I did, but especially this dream. Her oldest son sat between my husband and I when I told her about you. A perfect, wide eyed, energetic, foreshadowing of what his brother would look like. I gave her the short version, of course. But I summarized it like this…”What you’re doing isn’t what she did. You are not her. And regardless, what she did is done. Jesus has forgiven her and so have I and I hope to see her in Heaven someday.”
The most important thing God granted me was a forgiving heart. It has served me better than anything else in this life. I haven’t told you before, but I do forgive you. I do hope to see you in Heaven. I hope that you’re free from the shame and guilt of your past. I hope your testimony is leading others closer to Him. I hope who you were 38 years ago when you left, isn’t who you are today.
I wish you nothing but the best.
Thank you for this life.
In Him,
Christina