It has been sent at 9:10 pm. Here is what it said....
My hands were shaking at this point. It was now 45 minutes after she had sent that message. I truly felt that God had planned for me to explain all of that to Flora so I would have a reason to check my other mailbox. If she hadn't come home when she did and we hadn't gone through all of that, I do not know when I would have found that message.
I quickly replied and sent it off at 9:58pm. My response said: Yes. I found your post today on Find My Family that said you were looking for a sibling. I was born in Valparaiso, Indiana on August 25, 1973. I was adopted when I was 6 days old through a closed adoption. The courts accidentally sent my parents the wrong papers so they have known all along that my birth mother's name was Carol Close. It wasn't until a couple of years or so ago that they shared that information with me.
When I went to bed that night my stomach was in knots. Jessie had not seen the message yet, so I figured I would probably hear something back in the morning. When I got up, I saw that she had seen the message but she had not replied. I waited for an hour or so but still nothing. I started feeling sick in my stomach. Then I started second guessing what I had found when I was searching yesterday. Maybe the Jessie Harvey I found was not the Jessie Harvey that put up that post. Had I just freaked someone out by telling them that I thought their mom was my birthmother.
I tried to figure out how to back myself out of this mess, making a mental note that if I ever did this again I needed to proceed with a bit more caution.
I messaged Jessie again. This time I said, "Sorry. I realized this morning that I probably should have verified with you that you had indeed put that post before sharing all that information with you. I hope I didn't tell you something that you didn't already know. Here is a link to the post I was referring to" and I shared the link with her.
About a half an hour later she responded. Here is what she said....
I responded, "Absolutely," and gave her my number.
I was relieved. It seemed that I had found the right Jessie Harvey after all.
I had an appointment at the eye doctor that morning. It was the same eye doctor that at one point told me that he thought I had Native American blood in me. He has someone in his family that was adopted and for some reason this particular morning he got on the topic of searching for birth families. It was all I could do to sit there quietly and not say anything about what was going on in my life, that right at that very moment I was waiting for my possible half sister to text me so we could talk for the first time ever.
When my appointment was over, I checked my phone. Nothing yet. I left the doctor's office and met Steve for lunch. We sat outside the restaurant talking about everything that had happened in the last 24 hours when the first text came.
"Hi. It's Jessie. SO crazy!! I want to know everything about you. How old are you? Where do you live? Do you have kids?But I do have to tell you first, mom doesn't know that you contacted me. She's always been kind of leary about talking about you... she was adopted herself. I'm going to call her in a couple of minutes."
By this time I had decided to be a bit more cautious with my assumptions so I wanted to make sure that Jessie really was my half-sister. I told her I would tell her everything that I knew about her mom to see if it matched what she knew about her. I pulled the piece of paper out of my purse that my dad had given me just the day before and started texting her the information on that page. She thought it was crazy that I knew those details about her mom and confirmed that it was indeed her.
We texted back and forth excitedly, sharing pictures and asking each other all kinds of questions. It was such a surreal moment. Jessie tried to call her mom in the middle of it all, but she didn't answer. She said she would try to call her later on. And we continued to text...I told Steve at this point that we needed to talk with my parents. So we called them and arranged for them to come over to my house that afternoon.
I got Facebook friend requests from the boys and I began messaging with them too. So much happening at one time. So many different emotions.
My parents came over that afternoon. I was so nervous to tell them. When I did, I think they were a little bit blown away by how quick all of this had happened. After all, my dad had just given me the paper with the non-identifying information YESTERDAY and within 24 hours I had found and been talking with my three half-siblings. They were very supportive and were excited to listen to everything I had to tell them and look at the pictures of everyone. We were all amazed at the similarities between me and my siblings. My dad said he had always thought that I would find my family. They also expressed again how thankful they were for Carol and for the gift that she had given them. When they left, they told me to be sure to keep them informed of everything that was going on and I assured them that I would.
That evening I had to go to a VBS meeting at church. Honestly, I did not pay attention AT ALL to the things they were talking about. All I could think about was the fact that I had found blood family. Family that shared DNA with me. And then, as if I wasn't distracted enough, I got this text from Jessie.....
"I talked to my mom.... It was pretty emotional. Are you ready for some looooonnnnnnggggg texts? Lol"
No comments:
Post a Comment