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A father-less child in North Korea, one of the many children
receiving aid through Global Aid Network
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The braided memoir Finding Sarah Finding Me on Adoption is the heart work of many individuals. Below, is the Introduction to this memoir by William Blaney, Executive Director of Global Aid Network. Following that is an excerpt from the memoir that shares the secret of why Christine Lindsay is giving ALL royalties from this book to this mission organization.
Introduction to Finding Sarah Finding Me by William Blaney, Executive Director of Global Aid Network.
I have been told that one in three people’s lives have
been touched by adoption. That would certainly be true for our family. Our
lives have been so blessed by our daughter-in-law Sarah, who was adopted and is
part of the journey shared in Finding
Sarah, Finding Me. Sarah and my son Mark are the parents of two of our
grandchildren. You see, these precious grandchildren would not have been
possible had Christine decided to abort Sarah. Sarah’s positive impact on so
many lives through her love and devotion to God and people would have been
lost, and that would have been a tragedy.
As Executive Director of Global Aid Network (GAiN) Canada, I greatly value Sarah and Mark’s
passion to relieve suffering and to practically demonstrate God’s love, in word
and deed, to hurting and needy people around the world. Their chosen profession
as registered nurses allows them to touch the lives of so many people. As of
the writing of this book, Sarah is on maternity leave from her job as Project
Manager for GAiN’s
Women’s and Children’s programs, which focus primarily on working with
orphans and fatherless children.
My wife Susan and I have known about Sarah’s adoption
story since shortly after she and Mark began dating as teenagers. We fell in
love with Sarah. It was just before Sarah and Mark were married that Christine
reached out to Hans and Anne, Sarah’s adoptive parents, to see if they would
allow Sarah and Christine to meet. This book chronicles this journey. It is a
journey with many peaks and valleys, of great joy and fulfilled hope. It is a
complex journey, but one that has touched the lives of so many people. For life
is God’s gift to us. Decisions we make will impact our life’s journey, and
sometimes these outcomes appear to be all but hopeless. But joy awaits those
who stay the course. Finding Sarah, Finding Me chronicles two lives and
decisions made that resulted in incredible joy in this journey we call life.
Being adopted has not solely defined Sarah. Her adoption
story, rather, is only one facet of her life. As you read Finding Sarah,
Finding Me, you will see that adoption does not solely define Christine either,
or Anne and Hans, Sarah’s adoptive parents. Their story is really about God’s
ever-guiding hand on each of their lives to achieve His purposes. It is, in the
truest sense, a love story. We serve an amazing God who actually uses you and
me—who make poor decisions, are weak, broken, and hurting—to touch the lives of
so many people. Our lives are a testimony to others walking the same journey,
for God brings light in the midst of our darkness, hope in our hopelessness.
I feel privileged to be part of Sarah and Christine’s
story, and to offer my thoughts on this work. Christine, having become aware of
the work of GAiN through Sarah, has shared with me that she could not accept
payment this story that is so precious to her. In the serendipitous manner that
God worked in her story of finding her birth-daughter Sarah and thereby
herself, Christine has arranged for 100% of author royalties to be donated to
the Women and
Children’s Initiative with GAiN. These royalties will be used to bring hope
and joy to the women and children we are privileged to touch with Christ’s
love, thus bringing these lives into God’s story for Sarah and Christine.
I
know that you will be deeply touched by this love story. If you know someone
who is on a similar journey, please share this book with them. For God uses
each of our stories in His great redemptive story, to bring hope and a new day to
those He has brought into our lives for that purpose.
Learn more about supporting Global Aid Network, HERE
And now, read the scene where God answers Christine’s prayer after
33 years, the secret in Finding Sarah
Finding Me, and why Christine will give ALL her royalties to the Women and
Children’s Initiative.
Excerpt from Finding Sarah Finding Me by Christine Lindsay
While in India I rode the same railways,
walked in the footsteps of some of my favorite real-life missionaries from the
turn of the twentieth century. Though I didn’t visit the part of India where
Pandita Ramabai built her Mukti mission, I’ve written a portion of my book to
feature the ministry begun by that vibrant Indian Christian so many years ago.
In this novel the romance of India acts as a backdrop for another spiritual
lesson that I’ve learned—dying to one’s own agenda.
One of my fictional Indian characters,
Eshana, is the metaphor for this principle by portraying the same
relinquishment (or death to my own agenda) that I’ve learned. It’s my prayer
that when I go through any future sorrow that I will have the faith and courage
of Eshana when she says in my novel, “I will sing your praises, Lord. Though
you have dressed me in funeral clothes, I will sing your praises with joy.”
I’m in the midst of working on the final
chapters of Captured by Moonlight
when Sarah and Mark phone, happiness brimming in their voices. They’re planning
to visit us and share some news.
A few days later I greet Sarah and Mark in
our small front foyer and exchange hugs. The hugs from both of them are as warm
and genuine as mine when I reach up to embrace them. I recognize the feel of
their touch in the same way I recognize my favorite rose when it blooms each
June in my garden. Though I only see it for a season, I know its fragrance
well, and I know its needs.
I lead them into the living room where a
square dance of sorts begins with more hugging between them and David and Lana
and James, and I note Mark and Sarah have hardly changed since their wedding
thirteen years ago. Both are exceptional ER nurses in the States and remain
tall and slender in their builds, and Sarah still looks every bit
twenty-years-old rather than her thirty-three.
As the square dance of hugging ebbs,
conversations erupt with the same noisy din that flavors all my children’s
gatherings. James and Mark are yacking up a storm as they sit close together at
the ends of two different sofas, and Lana and Sarah are chatting just as
vigorously from the far ends of the room. David beams as he interjects jokes
into the two different conversations. In the kitchen nearby, I listen as I put
a tray of drinks together, not needing to add a word. I glow on the inside like
the gentle June sunshine on my rose garden, though I hope none of my old
maternal neediness for Sarah shows. Nice and easy does it, I remind myself.
Once I’m satisfied everyone’s comfortable and
has a glass of something cold, I catch Sarah’s eye and smile. “Are you going to
tell us about your plans?”
Sarah’s eyes smile as she sends me a brisk
nod. The eruption of chatter in the room simmers down.
Together Mark and Sarah share their desire to
work full time with Global Aid Network and present the mission as the rest of
us listen intently. Their voices ring with energy as they explain how they’re
not going out like traditional missionaries to live on the foreign field but
will do the administrative work here in Canada and fly to various parts of the
world frequently throughout the year. In a medical capacity they will maintain
standards for the care of widows and orphans in developing countries. If they
receive enough pledges for financial support, they’ll start with Sarah working
for GAiN first, and Mark will follow.
A flash of that poor woman I used to identify
with passes before my eyes. She, sitting in the dust, hungry, forgotten, and
holding out her baby, fills me with sadness. But here, with God’s help, there
is hope that poor woman will find the same joy and peace as I have found.
Sarah edges forward on the sofa, her eyes
bright, as if she’s leaning as far into our family clutch as possible. My soul
dances that she’s finally becoming the missionary nurse she’s always dreamed of
being. Here too is God’s work in a relinquished life, when God is allowed to
work through the DNA of the person he’s created.
I watch her excitement as she and Mark
discuss which video to load on our TV so we can see the orphanages around the
world that she’ll be working with. I sense her inability to remain static a
moment longer as she leaves the polite constriction of the sofa and perches on
her knees between the fireplace and TV. Her hands flutter through the
presentation materials to choose which DVD is best. Her smile comes so readily,
and a growing exhilaration sparks in me. She’s making herself at home…in my
home, with not a hint of reserve as the short film begins.
Still on her knees, she rests back on her
haunches but leans up and forward each time she points out something on the TV.
She settles back with a smile to watch the slides of children and outlines how
GAiN’s Women and Children’s ministry works in partnership with other
organizations. And I catch a new understanding in her tone. She knows that we
care about her service to God not just because this is such a worthy missionary
undertaking but because we are family.
Whenever her open gaze connects with mine,
something fizzes along my bloodstream. I know her. The pixels of that ghostly
image of a girl I met at the reunion in 1999 have developed before my eyes.
Just as it says in 1 Corinthians 13, for a long time we could see each other in
a mirror dimly, but now we are seeing each other face-to-face. Right now, Sarah
and I still only know each other in part, but one day I will know Sarah fully
as I also will be fully known to her. The same for all of us when we get to heaven,
to be known and loved by God, and by one another.
“I’ll be working with orphanages in Taiwan,
Vietnam, and Haiti, to name a few,” Sarah adds with raised brows and a happy
exhale. “And the Ramabai Mukti Mission in India.”
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Pandita Ramabai and her daughter,
Ramabai is the founder of Mukti
mission in India, the same mission God
used to draw the hearts of Christine
and Sarah together.
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That fizzing in my bloodstream rises up like
a geyser in my chest. While she goes on to explain her goal to defend the
rights of the fatherless and the weak and the poor, I push out a breath in a
rush of adrenaline, and give one loud clap of my hands and laugh.
Sarah looks at me with a little grin, a
half-knowing look in her eyes. “I think I remember now. You know about the
Mukti, don’t you?”
“Yes.” My pulse leaps like a hysterical
rabbit. “I’ve been interested in that mission for years. In fact, a portion of
the book I’m currently writing features the Mukti.”
She gives me a wide, uninhibited smile,
complete with the shared knowledge that God has entwined both of our
callings—me as a writer and her as a nurse—for this one shining moment in time,
upon this one mission in India…of all the missions in all the world.
That bond with Sarah I have wanted for so
long is here at last. Not the bond of mother and babe that I lost and strove to
get back. This bond is brand new for us, but it resembles to a smaller extent
the bond I share with my other children, that shared interest in what God is
growing in them. My maternal love for Sarah that I’ve never known what to do
with now has an avenue to flow upon, just as it does for Lana, Kyle, and
Robert.
Purchase links for 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.
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.
Click HERE to read Chapter 1 of Finding Sarah Finding Me
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