By Lucille Rowan Robbins as told to Elsi Dodge
And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, "Rejoice with me for I have found the piece which I lost!"
~Luke 15:9
"I've got something for you." I set down my cup of tea to take the thick manila envelope my co-worker held out to me. I tipped out a pile of papers, recognizing one as my son's official adoption certificate.
"Edie, where... where did you get this?" I gasped.
"At the children's home."
"What?"
She smiled at me, the same friendly smile I'd seen for three months as she and I answered phones for Trinity Broadcasting Network, praying for callers.
"Who are you? Are you... are you Ron's mother?" I almost whispered it.
"No," she said calmly. "I'm his sister."
I threw my arms around her. "This is unbelievable!"
We'd adopted Ron in 1958, when he was five. Our daughters loved him and enjoyed teaching their new brother about life on a Colorado ranch. Ron looked enough like me that one teacher accused him of lying when he said he was adopted.
But as he grew older, he asked the questions adopted children often have. "Why didn't my parents want me? Where are they now? Do I have sisters and brothers somewhere? Can I meet them?"
We'd tried to find his birth family, but the records had been sealed. There was no hope.
"They probably don't want to know me anyway," Ron finally said bitterly.
The morning after Edie's revelation, my husband and I met her for breakfast, carrying family photo albums. Joy in her eyes, Edie laid a handful of photos on the table and I put mine beside them.
Ron's little-boy pictures matched Edie's perfectly. His adult pictures resembled Edie's brothers. We read the reports from the orphan's home. There was no doubt. Edie really was Ron's sister.
My husband put his arms around me as I wept. Edie started to cry, too, and I took her hand. "How did you find us?"
"Our family was having trouble, and my parents placed Ron at the children's home when I was a teenager. The social worker persuaded them to relinquish all rights so Ron would have a real home, with a mother and father. My sister and brothers and I have been praying and searching for Ron for over ten years. We've asked and written and phoned and visited the orphan home, but the information was sealed."
"That's what Ron was told when he tried to find you," I told her. "So what did you do?"
"I called the children's home again," Edie said. "The woman who answered said they destroy all records after seven years, but she was willing to check the files anyway. When she called me back, she said she'd found the paperwork! I went there and she allowed me to copy everything. I couldn't believe it when I saw your name on Ron's adoption certificate."
"God connected us at work," I said, "so you could find me... find Ron."
We decided Ron's upcoming thirty-second birthday would be the time to introduce him to his long-lost family. This would be the best surprise birthday present ever.
Edie joined our family as we gathered that day. "Listen to this," Edie said when everyone had arrived. She started to read from Luke 15. "Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin!'"
Her unsteady voice continued, "I too lost something very valuable twenty-seven years ago. Today the Lord is restoring that which had been lost to me."
She put a fat brown envelope in Ron's hand. He shuffled through the sheaf of papers, stopping at the social worker's report of his stay at the orphanage. There wasn't a sound in the room.
"If this is a joke, it's not funny!" Ron looked around in desperation.
His dad and I smiled encouragingly.
"Are you trying to tell me that you are my sister?" he asked.
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"Yes," Edie said, wrapping her arms around him. "Our father passed away several years ago. Our mother lives in Lakewood, just a few miles from here. You have three older brothers, Vern, Danny, and Richard, and another sister, JoAnn. The family's waiting at Danny's house."
"How far is that?" Ron stammered.
I spoke up. "It's just behind the nursing home where Grandpa has been the past several years. Every Sunday when we visited him, we were driving by your brother's house... and we didn't know it. If it's okay with you, they're coming over now."
When Ron's brother Danny arrived, he stopped and stared at our daughter Rosanne. "You... your son's on our son's baseball team!"
We were astounded to learn more Divine coincidences. When Ron drove a truck years before, he had frequently gone by his sister JoAnn's home in Albuquerque. And Edie lived within walking distance of Ron's house.
I started to put out refreshments for the birthday party. I cut the cake, scooped ice cream, and handed plates to all the strangers in my house, strangers who were now my family too.
When Ron's mother arrived, Ron ran outside to greet her and her husband. He brought them in saying, "Mom and Dad, this is Bernice and Rich, my mother and stepfather."
We'd all been praying silently, asking for the right words, and those prayers carried us through the momentary awkwardness. I offered them coffee and birthday cake and we sat down to share stories of Ron's growing-up years.
From the birthday party on, our family activities included both families and their extended families. When Ron had back surgery, we were all there.
"What a wonderful family you have," a nurse said.
Ron smiled. "You don't know the half of it."
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