Hope for Me Too

By J.K. Wilson

As a birthmother, J.K. Wilson met her son for the first time when he was nineteen years old. Their first eleven years together brought answers to many “why” questions and much understanding in circumstances that arose.

Mothers (biological, adoptive, and even those without a title) along with adopted children experience uncharte

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781640885363

Book preview

Acknowledgments

Thirty years ago, this book was birthed; I just didn’t know it at the time.

Thanks, and in honor of her memory, the church mom, who took me in while I was pregnant and was the first person who said, You should write a book! Also, thanks to her husband, who is now running laps around all his great-grandchildren.

To my son, without him, there would be no book. Thanks for coming along on so many adventures!

My good friends and many times my counselors along this journey—Ann, JoAnne, and Lyndetta, who held me together, when I was coming apart at the seams—thanks for cheering me on, especially when I wanted to quit at times over these last eleven years. My friend and a birthmother, you were a God-send!

To Jennifer Fisher, my editor, thanks for all your hard work in the beginning, helping to put all my notes and piecing them together into some order that made sense.

To Ann Bare, my proofreader and editor, you are amazing! Without you pulling me through with help and encouragement, I may not have finished the race to the finish line, or at least, not as well!

Much love and appreciation to Mom, the first person to share what true hope was with me as a child. I loved the song Mom always sang, Nothing is impossible, when you put your trust in God.

To my husband, who with loving care, patience, meekness (strength under control), humility, and courage, stayed by my side through it all. Thanks for believing in me! Love you forever!

Contents

Prologue

Growing Up

Lies of Loneliness

The Power of Peace

Nine Months

Life after Adoption

My Soulmate

Empty Arms, Full Heart

The Call That Changed Everything

His Mother’s Eyes

Meeting My Son for the First Time

No Turning Back

Music to My Ears

Connections

Holding Tight for the Ride of My Life

Too Much, Too Soon

Old Friends—Memory Lane

Adoption on Hold—Paul in Our Life

A Birthday First

Holiday—Celebrations

Steering a Course through New Family

So This Is What It Feels Like To Be a Mom

Unexpected Moments

California Bound and Illinois Summer

Good Changes and Hard Moments

No One Is a Mistake

College Experiences

Where Will Paul Live after Graduation?

Paul Moves In

Raw Emotions Explode

Was It All Worth It?

Family Secrets

The Fallout

Mountain Home Reflection

Reconciliation

Prologue

I think I grieved, really grieved, the loss of my son, when I got into my car after meeting him nineteen years after his birth. I cried, thinking how beautiful he was. As I drove away, I noticed a circle around the moon as dark clouds rolled in, forecasting what looked like a bad rainstorm.

Seeing that moon with a glowing ring around it reminded me of a time shortly after I had given birth to my son. It was at a wedding my friend Ellen and I had attended three or four months after he was born. The ceremony was in the woods, at an outdoor chapel—a magical place in a country forest with a small church that had no walls or roof, just a wooden cross, a pulpit, and two rows of hewn logs for seats. Friends from my church had chosen this simple but picturesque location to get married. Some members of the church I had attended while I was pregnant were also guests.

I felt increasingly emotional as the evening went on. When I finally got into Ellen’s car, I broke down, crying. I said to her, I hope he is okay. Do you think he is okay? I hope my baby is safe.

Just then Ellen’s car door opened; there stood a man whom I had seen only once by Ellen’s side at church. She reintroduced me to her brother. Why was he staring at me? I had seen too many people that evening that I had not seen for a while, and I was uncomfortable. They were asking where I was now and what I had been up to. I avoided their questions and changed subjects quickly. Ellen looked at her brother and told him I would be fine. He backed up, Ellen shut her car door, and we drove into the night. The setting was a little eerie as the pine trees were dense and the moon was peering through them, lighting the night and casting shadows.

We traveled down a dirt road, and both of us looked at the moon. It was like a flashlight on the dark road. All of a sudden, the moon shot out so big with a ring around it. It gave the illusion of a wedding ring. Ellen said, Someday we will get married to our forever loves! A ring is a forever symbol with no ending, I thought. We agreed when we got married, it would be forever, a love never to be broken.

Right then, however, my forever love was my son, who was not in my arms but in a stranger’s, and I prayed he was okay. Even now, when I see a ring around the moon, I think of that night and how I missed my son.

Nineteen years later, I met my son; I didn’t have a mother’s handbook. I didn’t know how this relationship would go. I became a mom for the first time of a nineteen-year-old, not a baby—a nineteen-year-old, who called someone else Mom. We were both at a loss, in a lot of ways, especially since it is not every day you meet people with an adoption story like ours. I started this journey with a peace God had given me, but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy meeting someone whom I had never laid eyes on, had never held, but had only carried in my womb for nine months, yet there he was, right in front of me.

Thank God I did not see any resemblance in this son of mine to the man who had hurt me years ago! Shortly before my son was born, I put my hand on my stomach and wondered, What if he looks like him? A fear rose in me, thinking if he did look like his biological dad (B Dad), would I constantly remember the incident… Would I treat him poorly as a result? God must have heard my thoughts, for my son didn’t look like his B Dad to me.

Chapter 1

Growing Up

When I sat on my bed, pregnant, I thought back to when I was a kid and tried to figure out How did I get here? I would have to go back to the beginning in my childhood memories. I wanted answers for how I ended up in the situation I was in—pregnant out of wedlock, without any money, and living with a church lady and her family. I longed for something to make sense to me, so I spent hours in my lonely bedroom at the end of the house, going over my life, trying to find the root of my trauma so I could wrap my brain around what happened to me and pull out the root so as to never end up here again. I pondered things my mom and my grandmother had told me, as well as what I observed through a young girl’s eyes.

Mom got saved while we lived in Arizona. She walked into a Baptist church (where she says Dick Van Dyke attended) and listened to a message of God’s love. That night at home, she went into the bathroom, got down on her knees and prayed, asking Jesus Christ to come into her heart and asking for forgiveness of her sins. She woke up the next day a different person! She stopped smoking and drinking, not having a desire for either one. My dad thought she had lost it. Where was the woman he had married? She wouldn’t even go to the bars with him anymore. This woman was someone different than the woman he vowed to love. He decided to go to church a few times, but he still thought she was crazy.

Dad began to work more hours, and Mom got suspicious. I remember her checking out his shirt one day, finding lipstick on it. It was never confirmed that Dad was involved with someone else. Mom asked her children if they would like to go see our grandmother on my mom’s side. Well, of course, we all said yes! Mom and all three kids (my ten-year-old sister, my baby brother, and I at age five) left Arizona soon after that and went to live with Grandmother in Illinois.

Because I knew no one in that small town whose parents were divorced or separated, I was embarrassed in grade school and felt some shame of my parents’ divorce. I made up stories to get kids to like me. I told them I had a turtle in my garage—a turtle so big you could ride him. Also, I would bring fun items to school, asking my girlfriends if they would go up to a boy and let him know I liked him. Then I would give what I had brought to my girlfriends to keep for telling the boy.

With my dad no longer in my world, did I really need a male image in my life that bad? I was angry with my mom for leaving Dad. I kept trying to get him to come back to us on those rare occasions we talked on the phone.

Mom knew the Bible said God hates divorce, so she gave Dad some time to change. Two years later, Mom asked him if he wanted us back; he told her no. So the divorce followed…

I would go to bed and scheme in my mind how to get my mom and dad back together again. Dad would visit our town once a year to see his parents. He was an only child. His dad drank a lot as a young married adult; however, an accidental death on his worksite was a wake-up call for him. My grandmother, on my mom’s side, told me Grandpa was driving a road grader machine and didn’t see the road worker in front of the machine. Grandpa was cleared of this man’s death, but it would haunt him sometimes. Mom told me Grandpa came to visit Dad and her shortly after the accident. He was depressed and suicidal over the loss of one of his best friends. Mom shared with him about saving grace through God’s love. She said he prayed with her to ask Jesus into his heart, and he went home feeling happier and lighter.

Growing up, my dad didn’t have a healthy father–son relationship, so how could I expect him to be a good father? How could I expect him to want kids when he was an only child? Through these realizations, I learned to forgive the man for not being there for me like a father should be for his kids.

No matter what, I loved my dad and wanted him in my life. After all, I was named after him, which made us bound together so much more. I would think of Dad every day as people called my name. People close to Dad nicknamed him Johnny. My parents wanted their second child to have his name, but since I wasn’t a boy, Mom added my aunt’s name after it to make it sound more like a girl’s name.

Dad didn’t want to have any more kids after my sister was born. So when I came along five years later, Dad stated again to Mom, No more kids! However, Mom secretly still wanted another child, so she would say years later, I got another one out of him. Five years after my birth, my brother was born. She wanted to have her children five years apart, so she could spend time with each of us individually before we entered kindergarten. I sometimes joke my brother should have had my name.

When I was about eight years old, Dad brought a lady to Illinois to visit his parents. When I met her, I realized my mom and he would never get back together again. Dad had married this woman! I decided at that point not to fully trust a man.

Maybe my dad’s absence caused me to date so many guys. I would get bored easily with them, or they would end up trying to go against my morals or beliefs, and I would end the relationship. I always dated older guys (maybe subconsciously looking for the father figure in my boyfriend). I found immaturity so quickly in guys. Maybe I was setting the bar too high, but I was sure of myself here. So the initial excitement would fade away after a few months, and I would break off the relationship. The couple of guys I dated who were my age or a little younger seemed too childish for me. I needed someone more mature, so I would date only guys at least two years older than me.

Beginning when I was five years old, I had a recurring nightmare that didn’t end until the year after college—when the nightmare became reality. The first time I noticed something out of my control in a realm I had never been in was when I was alone in my bedroom the year after my parents had separated. I felt a cold chill come over me, and I couldn’t speak. My mom came into my room and started a conversation with me. I tried answering her, but no words would come out of my mouth. She got frustrated with me and went downstairs to let my grandmother know what was going on. When Grandmother came up the stairs to my bedroom to talk with me, I tried answering her, but again, nothing came out. She thought I was playing around and told me to stop this nonsense! I really couldn’t speak as I lay there on my bed. She left the room in a huff.

I remember being very upset with Mom because I wanted to be with Dad. What happened to us going back home after our visit with Grandmother? I lay there on my bed angry, contemplating how to get them back together. Was there something more to this coldness entering my heart, unbeknownst to me as a child? Did I allow, through holding onto my anger, something dark to enter my room, something that held my tongue, not allowing me to speak? The house where we were staying was a rental house owned by the lady next door. This house always felt like a house and not a home.

Later that year, Mom shared with me about Jesus’s love. We had started going to a Bible church in town. She told me Jesus died for me on the cross for my sins and let me know how I could pray to ask Him to come into my heart. I sat on the couch listening and watching the ants on the floor that had somehow found their way into the house. What Mom said was bringing me comfort and peace; it made sense to me. So Mom and I prayed together—she, saying the salvation prayer, and me, repeating it after her. Years later, I came to learn a little about a spiritual realm with angels and the devil, but our church rarely talked about this supernatural realm.

Lying in bed at night when I was in grade school and high school, I started to have a dream that was more like a nightmare. A black darkness would come over me, and my body would freeze. I couldn’t move, and when I tried to speak, I couldn’t. I would try to wake myself out of the dream. I would be half awake and half asleep; the minutes seemed endless as I struggled to free myself of what held me down, trying to make this nightmare end. I told Mom about the nightmare. She told me, whenever I had a bad dream, to pray in Jesus name, and then, it would go away. So I would struggle getting the words to come out, In Jesus name be gone or simply Jesus, please help me. It worked; I would wake up out of this dark hold on me. This dream happened irregularly for years. When I started junior high school, Mom told me I was too old for her to be coming in and tucking me in at night. I was sad to hear this. At times, I felt alone and still needed her to pray with me at night before going to sleep. I didn’t know how to tell her my true feelings and thought even if I did, would it help? Would she change her mind? I wouldn’t talk to her about it again.

In college, I didn’t have the nightmare again until my sophomore year. My boyfriend, Caleb, took me to meet his family in Chicago. I was to sleep in a twin bed setup for me in a partially finished attic space. Around me were boxes piled up in storage. Caleb had gone downstairs to sleep on the couch for the night. His sister and her husband were sleeping in the guest room upstairs. As I was in that half-in/half-out realm of sleep, I felt the boxes start to shake around me. I was fearful they were going to fall on me. I froze and then saw a black face over me, much like a silhouette, with a black hat on. I couldn’t make out any features. I was unable to move, as hard as I tried. I prayed in my head for Jesus to help me since I couldn’t get any words out. With a struggle, I was able to quietly release the words In Jesus’s name, be gone. I felt free from the image and woke up completely out of this scary (and too real) dream. I wasted no time and rushed down the stairs and nudged Caleb on the couch, where he lay asleep. My insides were racing as I forced myself to speak softly, so as not to wake up his family. I told him about the nightmare that kept recurring for a long time and how this was different and more real than ever. I couldn’t understand why I was having it here, at his house. He sat down next to me on the chair and hugged me as I quietly cried into his chest. He then took my hand and prayed for me. Caleb knew how to pray, calming me down; I felt a peace as I went back upstairs. I lay there with my eyes open as long as I could until I fell asleep. This would be the last time I would have the nightmare. The next time… it became reality.

While in college, I volunteered at my church, working with the youth group. I got to know a teenage girl who was struggling with drugs. I started mentoring her outside of the church. While I was sitting on my bed in my dorm room one night, she told me on the phone how I couldn’t understand what she was going through, how I just didn’t get it. She had no idea I was dealing with a sugar addiction at the time. (I would eat a whole bag of chocolate chip cookies throughout the day.) Hanging up the phone, I thought to myself, I wish I had a good story and had really been through something. Little did I know those thoughts would come back to me—those words! There is power in our words.

My freshman year in college, a couple of the guys I liked already had girlfriends, so I stayed friends with them, hoping they would maybe break up with each other down the road. Unfortunately, I had two guys and a staff leader in a Christian organization who liked me, and they let some of my friends know. I tried to be nice, but I also tried to shake them. They were rather persistent at times, but in a respectful way. I just wasn’t the least bit attracted to them, and attraction was high on my list. There wasn’t a big selection of Christian guys to choose from in our campus Bible study or in the Christian campus organization I was involved in.

Then I was introduced to Caleb, who was in another Christian campus group in college and looked like a dreamy blond Hollywood movie star. I got quickly involved with his group as well. We soon found ourselves liking each other and ended up dating for two years; even though I (and many of my friends) thought he may be the one, in the end, he was not. We both realized we needed to separate for a while, to pray and ask God what we were to do—get married or break up for good? The passion was so strong; we knew we were going to find ourselves having sex if we did not make a decision soon. After seeing a college couple, who were our friends, get married after an unexpected pregnancy, we promised ourselves we wouldn’t let ourselves get into a situation where this would happen to us. We attended their small wedding ceremony that our campus minister performed. A year later, Caleb and I ended our relationship, both feeling God had shown us marriage wasn’t His will for us.

After we broke up, my world started to fall apart. My senior year in college wasn’t fun without Caleb, especially watching a friend of mine start to date my ex-boyfriend. At least, Caleb did have the consideration to ask me if I would be okay with him dating her. What was I to say? I knew it was right and he did too. Getting over us completely took a while; a year and a half went by before I felt I could move on.

When I entered a four-year college, I had the expectation of being married right after graduation; as a senior, I was shaken, knowing this would not come to pass. I learned from this heartbreak never to set myself up for another emotional breakdown, stemming from having expectations not come to pass. It was better for me to not have any expectations.

I started my career, but it wasn’t enough. My desire to have a husband to protect me and love me never left my attention.

Chapter 2

Lies of Loneliness

The summer after graduating from college, I started looking for another guy to date—a mature man who knew what he wanted.

After college, I didn’t want to go back and visit my college groups because I was no longer a student. So I went to the singles group that met at the church that sponsored our campus ministry. I saw only one male friend from the group I had attended on campus; he was playing the guitar while sitting in a circle and singing with about twenty people. He and I were friends but nothing more.

With my mom and grandmother two hours away, I didn’t see them often, and I began to feel alone again. So I started lifting weights in a fitness gym to get out around other people besides those at my job. It was my out, along with trying the singles group at church.

One night, I wore jeans and my Gold’s Gym sweatshirt with a cartoon muscle builder man standing under the lettering to this same singles group at church. I wasn’t dressed up at all and felt looked down on; the girls barely spoke to me. Most of them had attended this church together for a while, so they knew each other. In a word, I felt snubbed. I decided not to go back. I had told myself before I left college I was going to get so much of God and learn so much about Him that if I didn’t find a church for a while, I would be okay. I later realized that was a wrong move on my part. There is a lot of truth to the scripture, Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much more, as you see the day approaching (Heb. 10:25, KJV). I went back to the gym determined to find friends there.

I had a couple of black friends in college who were like family to me. After getting to know them, I wished I wouldn’t have attended an all-white high school. I missed out on having friends of a different color. I loved their charisma and fun nature. My black girl friend was so much fun, and I admired her faith. My other black friend was a guy deeply in love with Jesus and was like a brother to me. I so enjoyed our spiritual conversations. We frequently would see one another on campus at the indoor track. He was into fitness, too, and I would see him reading his Bible after he was done working out.

After I graduated from college, I began working out at another fitness center in the city after leaving Gold’s Gym. I decided to do a bodybuilding competition and started seriously training four hours a day, five days a week. As I began my training, I noticed an attractive black guy over and over again, walking around the gym. He had long, wavy, thick black hair with gel in it, and his muscles were rock solid. I spoke to him a couple of times and thought he was cocky and stuck on himself. Yes, he was good-looking.

In time, my head started to turn, and I began to see more than my first impression of him. I found out Bourne was the manager of the fitness center. As I worked out, I thought about going somewhere with him outside the gym. We had only gone for a bite to eat during his lunch break at a fast food place right next door to the gym and ended up having brief small talk. Beginning to wonder if I was starting to like him, why did I tell my sister on the phone that I felt like I was in a trap and I couldn’t get out? Here I was, thinking of dating someone whom I knew in my heart I shouldn’t. I was seeing red flags (like he was two different people), but because of the loneliness and not being able to get away from him at the gym, I continued having conversations with him.

I asked staff at the gym about Bourne. Also, his ex-girlfriend, who had dated him for a short period of time, told me he was a nice guy. She really had nothing negative to say about him. For some reason, in the back of my mind, I wondered if they had slept together. She wasn’t a Christian and led me to believe she was promiscuous.

The aerobics instructor thought he had some kids but wasn’t sure. Hmmm, I thought, he’s never talked about them or mentioned them at the gym. Was there truth to what she said?

I was talking to Caleb on the phone one night as I lay on the floor in my apartment. We were catching up with how things were going with each of us. He was student teaching. Caleb told me, There is someone better for you than me. Really? What does that even mean, I thought. I wanted to give a rebuttal but knew at that point God had already let me know through prayer Caleb wasn’t my forever love, so I pondered what he said. He was dating my friend, and they seemed to be getting along really well. I told him I started working out at this fitness gym and was planning on picking up some hours to work there as well. He told me he had worked there for a while. I asked him if he knew the manager, Bourne. He did know him and told me to stay away from him. I hung up the phone, wondering why he said what he did. For some reason, I never asked Caleb why. I thought, Ex-boyfriends should never tell their ex-girlfriends to stay away from a guy. Usually, they are still hurting and will do exactly what you tell them not to.

I was still curious about Bourne and still wanted to work out, which meant still being around him at the gym. So I got to know him more. How could I not? I was at the gym three to four hours a day, five days a week in training. Even though I thought Bourne was stuck on himself, the allure of finding out the secrets of who he really was became a challenge for me. He told me his uncle was a preacher and that he attended his church now and then. Then he asked me to work for him, to take over the aerobics schedule and supervise his aerobics teachers. Sure, I thought, this would give me some extra money. I wasn’t getting paid much for having a college degree, working under a dietitian at a wellness center.

One day, as I sat on the office floor playing with some children, Bourne sat at his desk and watched me. He matter-of-factly said, We are going to have lots of kids together.

I looked at him and laughed uneasily, as the kids were right there. As I sternly looked at him with no hesitation, I quietly said, You get me pregnant, and you will never see me again.

As the days went on, I saw a white girl come into the gym, looking for Bourne. She went back to his office, and as they came out, he handed her something, which I thought was money. I leaned over the table and asked an aerobics instructor who she was. She told me she wasn’t sure. Oddly, I never saw her again in the gym.

I almost went to Chicago with him one weekend, but then, he couldn’t go. I was so glad God protected me! I really was naive. In college, I had mainly dated guys who were Christians and shared my morals. Bourne led me to believe he was a Christian, too. Innocently, I thought nothing immoral would happen between us.

At one point, when I hadn’t heard or seen Bourne for a while, I got curious and looked for where he lived. It was an old house in a not-so-good area of town. I cautiously went up to the door; he didn’t know I was coming. Before I knocked, I noticed a board alongside the main door, the same size as the door. On it was a dark pencil drawing of a five-foot beast with teeth and scales on its neck. It startled me, and I backed away and went down the steps, wondering why on earth that would be there! As I walked back to my car, Bourne came out of the house and saw me as he walked down the steps to his car, parked in front of mine on the street. I said I was just stopping by to say hello because I hadn’t seen him at the gym. He said he was on his way to a meeting. He asked me if I knew about these people trying to get One nation under God taken off our money. He told me if they got their way, it might be off in five years. I was curious. It seemed secretive to me. What kind of meeting was he going to?

When I was around Bourne, I sometimes felt like I didn’t really know this person—like something was off. I remember the fear I felt when I bent one of his car keys. Bourne had asked me to run out and get something out of his car at the gym. I put the wrong key into his car door. I retrieved it and locked the car and never told him the key was bent; was I scared of what his reaction would be? Maybe I didn’t want him to think I was stupid. I had bent his car key!

In that time of my life (out of the college bubble and into the real world), a little vulnerable, along with my confidence being at a low point from not having a relationship anymore, I tried to never let on or let it show. The year after graduation—how do I prepare for it? I was away from family and my campus church family, and many of my very close friends had moved away after graduating. I began to feel more and more alone. I didn’t like my job or the place I lived. I still talked with God and read my Bible, but not enough, I suppose, for my external circumstances were getting the better of me. I was spending so much time working on my outer self at the gym, preparing for a bodybuilding competition, that my inner self was dying. I was losing sight of who I really was.

I felt like I was in the wrong place, but I didn’t know where else to go. I missed my talks on the phone with Caleb. I had expectations that I would be married before I graduated from college; well, that didn’t happen. Expectations can set a person up for a fall. Oh, did I learn that the hard way.

In telling my sister on the phone that I felt like I was in a trap and couldn’t get out, I was really relaying, Come help me. Needless to say, I wished she had come to my door, grabbed my hand, and helped me get away. She lived a couple of hours away, which made it hard for her to just run over, but oh, how I wished she would have made the trip. Sometimes people say, Oh this person is in a bad way, but I am praying for them. No, sometimes they get to a point where they are helpless and need someone to come and physically rescue them, take their hand, and walk them out. (I would end up doing this for my younger brother, years later.)

I knew no one to turn to. I didn’t feel like I could share my situation with my grandmother or my mom. I didn’t want to go back to my small town and live closer to family, and they weren’t coming to see me much anymore due to the distance. My roommate and I