The JOURNEY …
Psalms 119:59
“I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies.”
These are my personal notes as I document my journey from being given up for adoption (my entire family of 4 brothers & sisters) until now. As a point of fact to everyone that views this blog, my life has changed…. At this point in my life I am as content and as happy as any man could hope to be, but the stark reality of it all hinges on one solitary decision that I made in my life when I was an 18 year old. I can honestly say that I would not be where I am in life today if I had not made the decision to follow Jesus and be obedient to the Word of God.
I have a wonderful wife with whom were born three children: Jennifer, Joseph & Jason; I could not love or respect them more.
As the scripture above states “I thought on my ways…..”. I was heading down a destructive path…. and I knew it. I spent countless hours thinking about the path that I was going down. My life was full of internal turmoil, anger and confusion. My world was turned upside down when four of us were turned over to an adoption agency. And truthfully, from that day until now, I have never really felt as though I ‘fit in’. That is some of the collateral damage inflicted upon those that are adopted in their formative years. It is unfortunate, but more times than not, that is the case. I certainly didn’t feel as though I fit into the family that I was adopted into. I knew that I was ‘different’ and that I had nothing in common with any of them, other than my last name was the same as theirs. I didn’t look like any of them, I didn’t have any of the natural, God given, behavioral characteristics or talents that are passed along genetically. My adopted sister was always very critical of me (many times it was for good reason) all of the years that I remained in my new home. The younger brother that came along three years after my adoption was 10 years younger than me, so we never had a chance to develop a meaningful relationship with each other. My mom & dad didn’t understand me, but they did their best to teach me what was right. I had a huge disciplinary gap, my dad used to joke to his friends that his dog minded him better than I did. And he was right! One thing about it, even though I wasn’t very obedient, I respected my dad and I hold him in very high regard yet today. He passed away in 2003. My journey through life has not been without difficulty, but it has been victorious.
Few people know that a short while after I had been adopted, because of the serious disciplinary issues, I was taken out of grade school to see a psychiatrist for evaluation. I remember my mom picking me up and taking me to the 4th floor of the Mahaska County Hospital to see the psychiatrist. I remember the 4th floor of that hospital being in a very dingy, depressing, almost forsaken area of the hospital. I was never told anything regarding the outcome or results of those visits. Later in life I contacted the Mental Health department of that hospital only to be told that those records no longer exist because of the internal policies they had in place to destroy them after 10 years. My adoptive mother had piles of documents that had accumulated over time (she was still living in 2023), but her organization skills were lacking so no-one said anything to me about any existing documents remaining in her apartment when she was moved to an assisted living facility in 2022. Of course, at this stage of life she is unable to answer the two main questions that I would want answers to. #1 – how much did it cost to adopt me in 1962 and #2 – what were the results of the psychiatric evaluation that I was subjected to in those early years.
That is where the second part of the verse above fits into my life “and turned my feet unto thy testimonies”. The decision to TURN around and live for God was the single best thing that I have ever done in my life. To do so was MY choice and not someone else. I knew that I was lost and would spend eternity in hell without Him if I had died before making that decision. The Bible says that there is ONLY ONE WAY to the Father and that is through His Son Jesus Christ. I was holding off because I wanted to ‘live’ life and do what every one else was doing, but that didn’t satisfy the longing in my heart for stability. I had heard of Jesus, I had gone to church and done all of that…..but inside I was a mess & I knew it.
I can tell you this, at this point in my life I am totally committed to living for the Lord Jesus Christ and no one can take that away from me. I know what changed my life and gave me hope…. I cannot tell you the exact ‘day’ that I made that decision, but I can tell you generally what season & year that decision was made. When I made that decision, my life began to turn around just as the scripture states in II Corinthians 5:17 which says “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Now if you don’t understand what that is saying and what it really means I can tell you quite simply. I cried out to God when I was an 18 year old man and asked him to forgive me for my past and consciously made a decision to accept Jesus as my savior and promised Him that I would allow Him to lead me through life. I instantly found acceptance and knew without a doubt that something about me had changed. My dad said that it was a ‘fad’ and that it would pass, but it has only gotten stronger. My so called friends said that I was a ‘hypocrite’ because I chose to no longer run around with them and do the things that I had done previously. I ‘hang my hat’ on the scripture that is found in John 6:37 “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” I now belong to the family of God and He has given my His Word that he will not cast me out, but He will take me in.
I hope to keep the entries in chronological order as much as possible, but my goal is to share ‘snap shots’ of the monuments in my life. There are certain ‘defining moments’ in all of our lives. We all make choices, some are good and some are poor choices. One thing that I know for certain is that when I made the right choices, things worked well for me. When the choices that I made were poor, they were extremely hurtful and could have been devastating. But the single most important turning point in my life was when I CHOSE to be obedient to the truth of the Bible that I knew to be true. The intent of my writing these entries is to reveal to each visitor how the Word of God impacted my life and hopefully spark a desire in their life to serve the One True God and accept Jesus as Savior & Lord of their lives.