Never Unloved: An Adoption Story
Exodus 1:22-2:10
Nathan S. Empsall, Rollins Chapel Ecumenical Service, 04-16-09
May I speak in the name of God, who is Creator, Liberator, and Sanctifier.
I am glad that "love" is the theme for this term. I was obsessed with love in high school-and I don't mean the way most high school boys are. In English and Humanities classes, whenever we discussed literature or the issues of the day, I always brought the discussion back to love as an underlying value, even as the meaning of life. And when I say always, I do mean always. After a few months my classmates got rather sick of it.
Love is important, especially for those of us gathered in this place, for it is the basis for all Christianity. Conservatives and fundamentalists who focus on salvation believe that that salvation comes because of God's love. Original sin separates us from God, but because God loves us, we are offered the cross as a way to return. Social justice-oriented Christians believe that God created us and loves us all as His children, and calls us to share that love with His other children. God bless the whole world, no exceptions.
But that is all theological, and unlike most talks I give, I want to focus on neither theology nor politics today. In an essay on George Orwell's values, literary critic Lionel Trilling said, "The characteristic error of the middle-class intellectual of modern times is his tendency to abstractness and absoluteness, his reluctance to connect idea with fact, especially with personal fact... The gist of Orwell's criticism of the liberal intelligentsia was that they refused to understand the conditioned nature of life." Like Orwell, I abhor the chasm between the abstract and the personal absolute, which is why I am not a philosophy major. In keeping with that spirit, I want today's sermon to be more personal than is normal for me. This is the story of my adoption. This is the evidence of love, especially God's love, in my life.
They say you have to be crazy to see a shrink, and since I have no problem admitting I'm crazy, I have no problem admitting that I saw a shrink all through high school. He once asked me if I ever felt abandoned because of my adoption. My answer was the complete opposite of what he expected to hear: Of course not! If anything, my adoption makes me feel more loved and more wanted. Adoptions, unlike births, don't happen by accident. This Houston couple-and my damn Yankee father would surely hate to be described as part of a Houston couple-went out of their way to find a child, and I was that child. My birthmother, who we'll call "Wendy," was no different. She didn't abandon me; she painfully yet purposefully chose to give me a better life. Everything I have ever experienced, from Cub Scouts to Dartmouth, is the result of these gifts from God: Wendy's wisdom and maturity, and the Empsalls' love and patience.
When I was born, Wendy was an intelligent but scared-to-death 18 year-old in Austin, Texas. She and my then-21 year-old birth-father, "Fred," had parted ways shortly before she found out she was pregnant. He has since found faith and lived up to his intelligence, but at the time was busy flunking out of the University of Texas, spending all day watching cartoons (especially "Danger Mouse"), and doing other things college males are often wont to do.
It could have been worse. My best friend's sister had a kid when she was just 15. By that standard, 18 is an old maid, but when you're religious, pro-life, in school, and alone, it is a very frightening place to be. Wendy could have raised me, but it would have closed off doors for the both of us. Thus, the first example of love in my life is the maturity and wisdom God gave to this woman, who was barely more than a child herself. The old cliché is that if you love somebody, you'll set them free. Though it was so painful, this teenager loved me enough to set me free.
The second example of love in my life is what came next. Nine months to the day before I was born, the Empsalls had filed for an adoption with the Austin Catholic agency Marywood. They had tried for years to have children, and spent an inordinate amount of time investigating every adoption agency in Texas. So much time, toil, and tears, all to take me home. Placement Day was twenty-two years ago yesterday. That's love.
Unlike most other kids in my shoes, there has never been a time when I didn't know I was adopted. My parents, and I am so proud of and thankful for this, explained everything when we began the search for my little brother. I was only three, so for me, adoption is just a basic fact of life. Babies, my parents told me, come from their birth-mommy's tummy - but not where the food goes! Most children's mommies are also their birth-mommies, but in some cases, those mommies are separate people.
When people hear this story, their first question is almost always the same, right down to the wording: Do you know your real parents? This could be an offensive question, but I've learned to look at it as a teaching moment. I tell them, yes, I lived with my real parents for 18 years. That was the other thing they taught me about adoption: Don't confuse your birth-parents with your real parents. Your real parents are the people who raise you and love you all your life. You'll often hear me talk about my birth parents, but when I say "parents" without a modifier, I will always mean the Empsalls. They are not my adopted parents, they're just my parents. I know who bandaged my knees when I fell. I know who crept into my room late at night for no other reason than to watch me sleep. And I know who put up with me when I flooded their friend Liza's house at a dinner party by stuffing her toilet full of random odds and ends and flushing.
But when people ask if I know my "real parents," I do eventually tell them that I am very fortunate to have a positive relationship with both of my birth parents, and that I love them both. As I said, when I was three, we began the process of adopting a second child, he who would later be known as Christopher. Chris and I straddled a cultural line: I was born in 1987, when most adoptions were still closed, and he in 1990, when most were open. We actually traveled to Austin to meet his birthmom before he was even born.
This bothered my parents. They called Marywood to say, "This isn't fair. How come we get to meet Chris' birth mother, but not Nathan's?" And here it is again, God's love and guiding hand: Wendy called Marywood with an identical request that very same day.
In preparation for the meeting, my parents told me who it was we were going to meet. Shortly after that conversation, Marywood called again to say, "Wendy is really nervous. Could you perhaps tell Nathan she's someone else - an aunt, an old college friend, something like that?" It was too late for that, but Wendy's nervousness washed away the moment she walked into the room. I'm told I leaped up off the couch, ran over to her, and said, "I know who you are! You're my birth mommy! I was in your tummy, but not where the food goes!"
Parts of that meeting are probably my earliest memory. Another memory almost as old is the day we took Chris home. I was three years and three months old, but I vividly recall sitting in the backseat with him on the three-hour drive, staring out the front windshield at a monstrous thunderstorm and a bright double rainbow, one that arched across the entire Texas sky. I'm not the only Empsall child touched by God's love.
Wendy and I developed a good relationship over the years. Our families exchanged gifts and I saw her once year or so until we moved to Idaho when I was 13. Wendy stayed in touch online and on the phone. She is now married with two kids, an 11 year-old girl and a 16 year-old boy. Unfortunately, until just recently, her kids had no clue who I was. Her family was always afraid of the deep east Texas backlash if word got out.
I desperately wanted to meet my half-sister. A sister was the one thing I'd always wanted but never had. The one person I did NOT want to meet, however, was my birthfather. I was long under the impression that he had dumped Wendy because she was pregnant. I truly hated him for that cowardice. This somehow came up in conversation with Wendy when I was about 13, and she set me straight: She and Fred had split well before she learned about me, yet he hung out with her as a friend at the UT pool hall and visited us in the hospital.
My opinion of him changed, from negative to neutral. I'd been just fine without him for 13 years, why change things now? If he ever wanted to contact me, well okay, but I felt no need to reach out myself. Imagine my surprise, then, at the unexpected tears two years later when my parents received a letter from the adoption agency saying Fred had asked to get in touch.
Fred hadn't actually told Marywood he wanted to contact me. He'd just checked in to update his contact information in case I ever wanted to find him. They misunderstood his intent, or as my dad says, "misunderstood." But this "mistake" was a blessed one. Over the next year, Fred and I slowly established an online relationship, routinely talking over MSN Messenger. There eventually came a point when I was interested in meeting him, but the logistics of an Idaho-Texas meeting are not the easiest thing in the world to arrange.
Yet God has a way of making things work. Katrina relief was a big part of my freshman and sophomore years here at Dartmouth. I took my first trip to New Orleans during freshman spring break to gut houses with the Navigators. As it happened, not only was Fred driving back from a family vacation in Florida that week, he was going to be passing through southern Louisiana our first night there. It was what the Evangelical subculture would call "totally a God thing." Four years after we'd first gotten in touch, Fred picked me up at the church where I was staying and took me to dinner at a nearby Outback Steakhouse.
Thanks to four years of instant messaging, dinner was hardly awkward, almost natural. I met Fred again the next morning for breakfast with his wife and two sons, my half-brothers, then three and five. They're all great, and when I returned to New Orleans for sophomore fall, I twice vacationed at their house. It's been a lot of fun watching the boys grow up. There's a story their dad loves to tell on them. His wife is Haitian, so the boys are biracial. One day Fred made them pick up branches in the yard to stop them from fighting. The dialogue is as follows, and yes, you have permission to laugh:
Boy 1: Dad, this is tooorrrture. When are we going to be done?
Fred: When I say you are done...
Boy 1 to Boy 2: Daddy's torturing us.
Boy 2: Yeah, he's treating us like slaves.
(pause) Boy 1: It's because we're black.
(pause) Boy 2 to Boy 1: I think Daddy married Mommy so he could have little slaves.
Boy 1: YEAH! DADDY, DID YOU MARRY MOMMY SO YOU COULD HAVE LITTLE SLAVES??!!
Fred: (still doubled over with laughter a year later, and proud that they could make those mental connections)
Sophomore fall was important for another reason, as well: I finally got to meet Wendy's kids. Sick of keeping her secret bottled up, she threw away worries about the rednecks finding out and told the kids all about me. My baby sister, we'll call her "Eleanor," was ecstatic. She had apparently taken to saying, "Mom, I wish I had an older brother-and NOT ‘David'!!!" This news absolutely made Eleanor's world, and to this day, not a week goes by that she doesn't call. Meeting David was just as important and wonderful.
So what's the importance of all this? Why am I sharing this story? And why this particular passage from Scripture? Moses is not the Biblical character I consider myself most like nor the one I most admire. I chose this passage simply because I know its story by heart: it's the story of a child adopted into healthier circumstances, a child who came to know his birth family and know God. While my own version of this story may not be Scriptural, it is spiritual.
My adoption is not one of the experiences that define me as a person. Those would include working in New Orleans, my dad's twenty-year battle with kidney disease, an Idaho civil rights trial, and my faith. But while I may define my house by its floor-plan, location, and environmental efficiency, it is the foundation that makes the house possible. My adoption is that foundation. I have a special appreciation for my life and for everything in it because without the love of God, Wendy, and the Empsalls, none of this would have happened.
Adoption also gives me a much broader understanding of family than many other Americans may have. My quote-unquote "real" family may not share my blood, but they are still very much my parents, my grandparents, and my bratty kid brother. Family for me is not a concept of blood, but one of love. Love is not just a part of my story, it is the story itself. To use another house metaphor, love is simultaneously my foundation, frame, insulation, siding, and even windows. There is a special place in my heart for the Garth Brooks song "Thicker than Blood" which goes in part, "Our family never shared the same last name/But our family was a family the same/And they say blood is thicker than water/Oh but love is thicker than blood."
Some would say my story is fraught with coincidences. My parents filed for my adoption exactly nine months to the day before I was born. Wendy called about meeting my family the same hour my folks called about meeting her. Fred and his family were in southern Louisiana the same night as me. And Fred's wife's nephew, who he took in, was born the same day as me.
But I'm not so sure I believe in coincidences. I do believe in faith, hope, and love.
