My Little Blue Topaz

I have to write this moment off my soul before it leaves me.

I am out the door quickly in just a minute, headed to Newburgh to visit my brother and Sun whose due date was yesterday, who are about to celebrate very soon the birth of their firstborn, baby Ethan. What a day it will be, with God's blessing. I have been thinking about him, baby Ethan, anxious to hold this small miracle, and to see a glimpse of my brother for the first time as a baby. No pictures of him exist before he was 3 years old. At least none on this continent, or perhaps, in the whole world.

Having packed the car last night, I awoke at 5:30am this morning, ready to buckle in sleeping children and break dawn with my headlights. I instead waited. A thunderstorm was passing through. "Should I wait?" I actually prayed about it, laying still in my bed. I didn't know if I'd be stuck on the side of a dark highway wishing I would have thought through the decision. I am so glad He gave me that moment of contemplation.

Now it is almost 9am, the kids are about ready and yes, I am about to head out the door, but as I was getting ready, looking at myself in the mirror, I felt like I needed - something. What is it? Perhaps a necklace? Yes! Just recently I have been wearing a necklace that my parents gave me when I was, I think, in middle school. It is a gold twist chain with my birthstone - topaz. I never liked my birthstone growing up, for many reasons. But my parents had given me this blue topaz, knowing that I preferred its blue color over the more common goldish yellow. I wore it for a while growing up, but it never really meant anything to me. It was just a necklace.

I came across it a few months ago, coiled up in a little gray sachet in the bottom of my jewelry drawer. I've been wearing it on and off, and haven't thought much about it. It's a pretty necklace, I'll put it on, I thought, with no more thought beyond that. I took it off last week, and under a pile of clothes and random mess on my dresser, I found it this morning so I could wear it again.

I put it on. I looked at it in the mirror. Hanging around my neck. I smiled. My little blue gem. Now I know. This necklace means something more. Much, much more.

My mother told me in our living room when I was maybe 8 or 9 that my birthdate, November 17, 1980 - was just an estimated date of birth. The doctors did a bone comparison, and they believed it was accurate within a three month window. But there in that living room, my spirit emptied into a blackness I would never be able explain to anyone - not as an 8 or 9 year old, or even, just yesterday. I had already known that I was adopted, but my mother's living room revelation felt like I was being disconnected forever to the one and only strand of truth that connected me to my past, to that one and only day I knew for sure that I was connected to my birth mother. I always wondered how she looked at me the moment she saw me. But I have never been able to think of that moment without feeling like maybe it never really happened. Maybe my purpose vanished forever inside that lost day. It is something I could never explain to anyone living outside of my skin, or anything anyone could have explained to me. Until today.

My whole life I couldn't wear that necklace and believe it meant anything because I've just never understood if I mean anything. What is my purpose? When was I born and who was I born to and why was I born at all? One day I might have disappeared into the quiet night sky and no one but my brother and the lonely street wind would have missed me. It is a feeling unlike any other to try and understand, to wrap a tiny child's mind around and live with for three decades. Everyone would say: "The day doesn't matter. You do belong. You have a purpose. You are a blessing." My parents with all their love, tried. But all I could think about was how the birth of my existence was lost to a day that I could not claim as my own. I could never celebrate a moment that was abandoned to lonely street wind, a moment I could not hold inside my hands and say with any truth: "This is who I am." Party hats and streamers and gifts and nice words. These were never enough to replace that moment of life that was given to me, and then, somehow, for some distant reason, ripped apart and given away.

This necklace gave to me this morning everything I never knew. That I don't belong here, or there, across the ocean. I don't need to search for purpose, or find a purpose. I don't have to keep fighting to believe that I mean something. "Of course you do," the necklace said. "You are a child of God. Your purpose is His purpose. You belong to Him."

Now, I understand. Around His neck hangs the life of every precious gem on earth, each one of us whole in our own meaning, each one of us born to Him. I don't need to know which day I was born on, because, He already knows. He gave that day to me, and every day since. And He keeps me with Him, small and whole, wrapped around the neck of heaven. Blue or yellow or green or ruby red. It really doesn't matter. I mean everything to Him, and he told me that today, His shining message of truth.

I've been asking my birth mother, silently crying out to her for three decades - why did you abandon me? He answered for her today. "I never did."

In one mirror moment, He eased my inexplicable hurt and told me what I've been waiting to hear my whole incomplete life. He gave me this morning my missing piece, my missing life, right here inside my little blue topaz.