So Many Questions....

In the last post I told how I had messaged Elliott to let him know that his nephew Keith had discovered my existence on 23andme.  If you missed it, you can go read that post here.

I had hoped that Elliott would respond to my message before things escalated, but by the time I had finished writing him, I already had a response back from Keith.

"Wow. Okay....you have my attention now," was all that he said.  But I knew that meant he was going to be going into action. I lay in bed for a long time that evening, unable to sleep. My stomach was tight and I wondered how long it would be before things really got moving.

It didn't take long. After a very short night's sleep, I awoke to another message from Keith.   He told me that he didn't really know anything about the majority of his family and that nothing that I told him would surprise him.  He said he knew none of his grandparents and had no relationship with any of his aunts and uncles. He assured me that nothing would change for him or his siblings if I chose to divulge information to him.  He offered to talk with me over the phone if I wanted and then finished off by saying he had asked his wife to send me request on Facebook since he didn't have an account.

I responded to him by saying, "Believe me, there is nothing I would like more than to be able to share my story. But I made a promise that I would not until I was told it was okay by those involved.  I have messaged them to let them know you are asking questions.  I cannot help it if you figure it out (and I kind of hope that you do because then it will no longer be a secret), but at this moment there is nothing more that I can do. As soon as I can, I will share. I promise. "

When I logged into my facebook account, true to his word, a friend request from his wife, Katie, was waiting for me.

I chose not to answer her friend request right away.  Instead, I tried to put everything in the back of my mind, while I hurried to get myself and the kids ready for the activity that was planned for the morning/afternoon.  Steve was going to spend the day hanging out with his friends and the kids and I were going to stay busy by taking a four hour train ride on the Great Smoky Mountain Railway.  We hopped in the car for the 20 minute drive from Cherokee to Bryson City. Once we arrived, we parked the car and found a little cafe where we went for a quick breakfast before the train was to depart.  Then the messages started coming.

Around 9:30, Keith's wife, Katie, began sending me messages through facebook messenger.  I couldn't look. I just had to focus on finishing breakfast with the kids and making sure we made it onto the train by departure time.

We boarded the train.  We were going on a trip that included lunch, so our seats were at a table next to the window.  The kids settled in the seats closest to the window and as the train left the station, they were completely distracted by the scene outside.

I then took a deep breath and opened the message.  Katie told me that Keith had asked her to friend request me.  "Clearly you share a grandfather...," she said.  She explained how Keith didn't know much about his family for various reasons.  His paternal grandfather was an orphan.  I could be related to Keith through him, she guessed.  But then she said another theory of theirs was that I was related to Keith on his mom's side and that one of his aunts could be my biological mother.  "My husband thinks your birthmother is Ella or Janice. Is that correct?" They were Elliott's youngest sisters.  She told me if I was related to him on his mother's side, that I would have 4 more cousins besides Keith.  She had sent me pictures of each of them,, telling me who they were.   One of them, Brady, who is Keith's brother, she said I clearly took after and she was right. The resemblance was crazy! All of them shared the same mother.  Susan Martin. Elliott's oldest sister.

I read all of her messages, but I did not respond right away.  Instead, I tried again to send a message to Elliott.  Here is what it said:

"This morning I have received a message here on facebook from Keith's wife. They are desperately trying to find out our relation. I have not done anything yet, but I do not know how long it will be before they put things together.  She saw my picture and said that I strongly resemble his mom's side of the family."

I was thankful that my kids were completely engrossed in the scenery outside of the train window. and by the fact that as part of the lunch package included in our tickets they received cool souvenir mugs and could have as many refills on drinks as they wanted during the whole trip.   My mind, however, was in a completely different place.  I was texting crazily with Steve keeping him updated as to what was going on. He was being as supportive and encouraging as he could even though he wasn't right there with me.

I finally responded to Katie.  By this time it was 10:45.  I told her, "I messaged your husband earlier on 23andme and told him I am still waiting to hear back from the other people involved. I promised not to say anything so I am waiting to give them the opportunity to tell their story.  Once that happens, I will accept your friend request."

The messages kept coming on facebook and 23andme. I tried my best to respond without giving away any information.  My stomach was so sick.  While the lunch they served us on the train was delicious, it sat in my stomach like a huge lump.  And then, around 12:45, I got a message from Keith that sent my head into a tailspin.....

"Well, the inquiries to the family have been made....."

Out of the Shadows

Wow! I can't believe that it has been over a year since I last wrote a blog.  Life changed and got busy, so I had to take a break.  Here recently though, some people have been inquiring whether or not I ever plan to finish writing my story.  While I feel there will never truly be an "ending" since our lives are stories that continuously unfold,  I want to try to put into words my experience so it can be shared later on with my children and grandchildren, and hopefully encourage some of you along the way.

If you are new to the blog, you might just be wondering what exactly I am writing about.  It is the journey of my life as an adoptee, from birth to now....it is a journey of God's faithfulness and goodness as truth was brought to light.  May I suggest that you go here to start from the beginning?  It won't take that long to catch up. I promise. :)

If you have been following along,  you may remember that I had come to the conclusion through DNA testing and doing research on Ancestry.com that a man named Elliott Martin was a possible candidate for my birth father. I wrote him a letter and turns out my research had actually been accurate.  Because his wife was not exactly thrilled with my appearance and did not want the rest of the family knowing about me, I told him I would not reveal myself to any of them without his permission.  The only possibility of anyone finding out about me was if the first cousin DNA match on 23andme who had been anonymous for the two years I had been on that site would somehow log on and find my profile.  

Fast forward six months to August 13, 2016.....and that is exactly what happened.  Steve, the kids and I had gone away for the weekend, when I got a message from that cousin, Keith Denton.  He told me his mother was Susan Martin, who was Elliott's sister.  I had been found.  You can read all about the events leading up to that here. 

It was dark in the hotel room and the kids were sleeping. I was frantically relaying to Steve what had just happened. I decided to respond to Keith, but did not divulge Elliott's secret since I had made a promise that I wouldn't.  Instead, I wrote this:

"Hey Keith!! Actually, I do know how we are related and we are first cousins. At the moment, I am not at liberty to explain how, but as soon I can, I promise I will let you know."

I was a bit excited. Who wouldn't be? Here was an opportunity to open the door to family that I wondered if I would ever get to know. I had made the promise to Elliott and intended to keep it. He was hoping his wife, Hazel, would come around and he would be able to tell his family himself. She had not moved in her stance at this point and I wondered if something might happen to him before I had a chance to meet any of the rest of the family. What then? I had a half-sister and half-brother that I knew about and frankly, I was curious. I wanted to get to know them and wondered what they might think about me. At the same time though, I knew that the poop was about to hit the fan. Since Elliott had told me of his recent conversation with Hazel about me, I knew there was no way this discovery by Keith was going to be a happy one for her. And I really wasn't sure how Elliott himself was going to feel about being exposed.

Hoping to give him a heads up about the situation and a chance to prepare for what was inevitably to come, I immediately messaged Elliott. It was 10:50 p.m.

"Hey Elliott! I just wanted to let you know that your nephew Keith Denton has just contacted me on 23andme which is the other DNA site that I had done testing through besides ancestry.com. He has showed up as my first cousin since the day I was on there. Only today he has messaged me to ask me how we are related. I told him that currently I am not at liberty to say how we are connected. I wanted to let you know, because I am sure he will begin pursuing finding out how."

I sent the message desperately praying he would see it before things escalated.

But they already had.

By the time I finished writing Elliott, Keith had already responded on 23andme.

The Story of My Life: A New Awakening

In the last post, you read about my contact with Elliott.  He told me in an email that he had been in a brief relationship with my birth mother and that he was not for sure he was my father.     I however was convinced because of the DNA evidence that I had and the fact that he knew Carol. You can read our whole email exchange here. 

After a restless night's sleep, Sunday morning came and I had to get myself up and ready for church. I was playing the piano in the worship team that morning, so I had to be at church for practice by 9:00.  As I was getting ready, all of my thoughts were consumed by the events of the previous night.  

Then it hit me, for the first time ever in my life, I had woken up knowing were I had came from.  I didn't know all of the intimate details, but at that point, I didn't need to. I knew who and the basic reason of why and that was enough. It was more that I had ever dreamed I would know.  And it was overwhelming.  I felt so truly blessed.  So many adoptees never have this opportunity and I didn't know why I had been given this chance. I knew God had allowed this as his hand was evident throughout all of my searching. I felt that he had guided me along the way, giving me just the right piece of information at the right time or using someone to help guide me in the right direction. 

When I arrived at the church for band practice, I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to hold it together. The pastor's wife, who was leading worship that week, came over to the piano where I was and said, "Is it a good thing?" My eyes welled with tears and I told her that I just couldn't talk about it right now.  Somehow I made it through practice and the service.  I don't remember much about the rest of the day. I am pretty sure I spent much of it just sitting and staring into space, consumed with a wide variety of thoughts, mostly about Elliott.  

I had begun at that point in time to really think about what this discovery might mean for him.  He said he wasn't sure I was his.  Although he had questions, I didn't. I would have to be patient and allow him to come to his own conclusions.  But also, what kind of impact what this going to have on his family. Obviously from his email I realized that no one else, except his wife, knew about me.  I figured that was why his brother, Dave, never responded to my Facebook message, because he had been completely unaware of the situation. I had thought maybe a family member would have known if Elliott was in a relationship with Carol, but I had thought wrong.  What exactly had gone on with him and Carol that his family didn't know about her? All kinds of thoughts started whirling around in my head.  

As the day wore on and I hadn't heard anything more from Elliott, I began to grow concerned.  What was he thinking? Was he ever going to contact me again?  Did he think I wanted something from him? Did he think I was going to try to push myself upon him and his family and demand to be a part? Was he even okay because of this or had I hurt him through this process? Fear began to creep in along with some anxiety. I began to realize that just like Carol, he ultimately had the choice of whether or not he wanted to have a relationship with me. And he may very well choose not to and that thought scared me.  He didn't know me or anything about me.  He didn't know what kind of person I was or what I was expecting. So I decided to send him a letter to let him know what I was thinking about the whole situation and hopefully alleviate any concerns that he might be having.

Here is what I wrote:

Hey Elliott!

I don’t want to bother you as I am sure you are bit overwhelmed and full of questions at the moment. I am sure you are thinking what to do from here forward. I am hoping maybe what I am going to say will help lay aside some of your concerns and that you will find it helpful.

My motive behind looking for you was solely for information. I just wanted to know who you were, how you met Carol, what happened that I came to be. Up until four years ago when my dad suggested I look for Carol, I had never considered looking for either of you. I was happy and content with being adopted and resolved to the fact that there were a lot of things about myself that I would never know.  But once I began searching and starting learning things about myself, it lit a fire in me to try to fill the holes from questions that I had always assumed would never be answered. I have told several people that being adopted is like reading a book starting with the third chapter. While the story basically makes sense, the beginning is missing. That is how I felt about my life. I found Carol, and that answered some questions. But there were a lot of details that were unaccounted for….mostly concerning my birth father.  For that reason, I studied my DNA tests, did countless hours of comparing family trees of people who matched me trying to figure out how it was all connected.  I truly believe God led me to you through the suggestions given to me by Cousin Anne. Otherwise there would have been no way that I would ever have even known where to begin. And today for the very first time in my life, I awoke with a peace of knowing that I knew…..I knew who I was and where I began.

With that being said, I want to apologize if somehow I have done something to hurt you in this process. That NEVER was my intent. I have tried many times to put myself in your shoes and to imagine what it would be like if someone just showed up saying they were my child. I have asked my husband how he would feel and asked him for advice many times. I have tried to picture what it would be like if someone showed up saying they were my husband’s child. I cannot imagine what your wife must be feeling at this moment. For the past month since I figured this all out, I have prayed for you daily. Prayed that God would give you strength to go through this if it was to be. Prayed that he would divinely intervene if it wasn’t. I truly believe all things happen for a reason, even if we don’t understand what that reason might be. Obviously there must be some reason for this all.

With all that said, while I am not at all opposed to the thought of getting to know you better, I want you to know that I believe that choice is yours and I plan to respect whatever you decide.  You were not looking for me. You were not asking for me to show up and alter your life. It is a completely different situation than it was when I found Carol. She had told my siblings about me. They had been looking for me for years. They wanted to find me.They knew that if they ever found me, their lives would change and they were ready for that.   I would never be able to forgive myself if by doing this I somehow caused harm to you,  your marriage, or your family.  I have no intention of going to any of them to proclaim who I am. If that is to be known, it will come from you. It is your story to tell, not mine. 

Thank you for helping me know who I am.

Lorena

I sent the email and then all I could do was wait....

The Story of My Life: Almost Certain

Last time you read about how I began searching and found the obituary of George Martin from Findlay, Ohio.  He had five children, two of which were sons.  The things I found out about his one son, Elliott, seemed to fit the description provided to me by the adoption agency.  So thinking that maybe I had found my birth father, I wrote him on Facebook Messenger and then waited.  You can read all about that here.

I had dealt with Facebook Messenger and the difficulties with the other party not receiving your messages if you aren't "connected" on Facebook before when I was trying to first contact my half-brother Brent's wife, Alyssa.   This was a couple of year prior to the time I was writing to Elliott.  When I had written to Alyssa, my message had gone to her "other mailbox" until I paid a dollar for it to go directly to her inbox.   This time, Facebook did not offer me the option of paying the dollar.  I knew from other experiences that Elliott probably would not see my message unless it was by some random chance. I even did the whole "Invite Elliott to Messenger" thing in hopes that would alert him that I had written to him.  Still nothing.  

In the meantime, I started thinking about what I had done.  I mean, really, what are the chances that I could go through someone's family tree, find a family that appears to fit the description of my birth father's family, choose one of the men in the family and think he was my birth father?  It was so crazy and I knew it.  The more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt my discovery.

Then a thought occurred to me.  If I was related to Elliott, then my relation to fourth cousin Anne was through his father's side.  If I was related to Elliott, then how would I be related to the second cousin, called J.S., that was on ancestry.com?  Somewhere, there would also have to be a connection between Elliott and him.  It wasn't through Anne's side of the family, as J.S. did not share any DNA with Anne at all.  I figured that maybe the connection came through Elliott's mother's side of the family.  I began looking for that connection. The family trees would have to cross or my research would have been faulty.

It is now about a week after I have written Elliott.  I am sitting at home working on the research.  I started with Elliott's mom.  I will call her Mary Alice. She had died in 1995, so I was not able to find an obituary to help me with her parent's names. I turned to ancestry.com's database in hopes that I would be able to find something. I searched and searched, but it was like her parents were not to be found.  Then somehow, I don't even know how, I stumbled across something.  It had her name written as Alice Mary.  I thought it would be worth a try to put her name in backwards from what I had been doing and when I did, what popped up on the screen made me about fall out of the chair.

I am tempted to end this blog right here, but for the sake of many that I know who would struggle with that, I will continue. ;)

Remember when I told you I had been researching that second cousin, studying his family tree for hours on end because so many of his family was from Ohio??  I probably could have almost drawn his family tree for you from memory.  So when the information popped up with the name of her parents on it, I immediately recognized them from J.S.'s family tree.  It was a set of names I had looked at over and over and over again with no results.

Now I was shaking. I called Steve and again tried to explain to him what I had discovered and mostly what this discovery meant.   Since I was related to Anne and I was related to J.S., the cross of the two family trees happened right there with George and Mary Alice. With the cross being at their parents,  the only possible people that could be my birth father were Elliott or Dave.  There were no other options.

With this newfound bit of certainty, I became a bit more brave. I decided that I would also write to Dave.  Even though I really thought that Elliott was the more likely candidate, I knew there was still a possibility it could be Dave.  The other thought I had was this:  If Elliott had been in a relationship with Carol, then maybe Dave knew about it and could tell me so or he would contact Elliott and let him know I was looking for him.

I copied the same letter that I had sent to Elliott and sent it to Dave on Facebook messenger.  I did the whole "Invite to Messenger" thing with him as well.

I don't remember how long it was before I was alerted that "Dave has accepted your messenger request".  It might have been a week or so. My stomach was in my throat because I knew then that someone had seen the message.  But then....nothing.  There was no answer.  

I didn't really know what I was going to do.  I didn't have peace to do anything other than what I had already done.  I felt like when the time was right, God would give me direction.  I had been praying about the whole thing from the first time I wrote Elliott.  I prayed for him that if he was my birth father, he would be open to talking with me about it all. And I prayed for his wife. I knew from my research that he had been married to his wife, Hazel, for about 40 years. I knew that there was a possibility that my birth father never knew that I existed and if that were the case and Elliott was him, I knew there could be problems.  I didn't want to make problems for anyone. All I wanted was to find out some answers for myself. 

One day about a month after I had written to Elliott, I was talking on the phone with my friend, Jude, about the whole thing.  She said, "Lolo, you just need to write him a letter - good ol' fashioned snail mail."  I knew instantly that was what I was supposed to do.  I got off the phone with her, and later that day I wrote out exactly what I had written to him on Facebook.  At the end, I included my email address and phone number in case he wanted to contact me.  I addressed the letter with his address that I had found on the internet, put a stamp on it, and before I had time to change my mind, I drove to the post office and dropped the letter in the mailbox. 

The Story of My Life: Could It Possibly Be??

If you remember, in the last blog I told you about sweet cousin Anne.  She was my predicted fourth cousin on ancestry.com.  She had written to ask if I knew how we were related. The only thing I was able to tell her was that I was related to her through my biological father that I did not know since I was adopted.  She had noticed on my profile that I had said some of my family was from Findlay, Ohio. She suggested that I begin looking at the line of descendants coming from one of her sets of great, great, great grandparents.  You can read about all of that here.

Anne had been helping me some and we had decided that it was possible that I could have descended from her great, great, great grandparents, Sophia and Solomon.  I put their names on a family tree and begin working on finding all of their descendants.  As it got closer to modern times, the searching became more difficult as ancestry does not publicly list the names of anyone who is still living.  You have to search obituaries and other public listings on the internet to try to determine these pieces of information. 

Anne had first contacted me in November.  It is now the very beginning of February.  I was home working one day on all of this, when I came across a name on one of the branches of the family tree.  I will call this person George Martin.  George was from Findlay and had passed away in 2011.  Since his death was fairly recent, I was able to locate an obituary online fairly easily.  As I began to read the obituary taking notice of all of the details included in it, I began to get a funny feeling in my stomach.

It said George was survived by his two sons, Elliott and Dave, and by his three daughters, Susan, Ella, and Janice.   Now I don't know if you remember all of the details that were listed on the non-identifying information from the adoption agency , but there were FIVE children in my bio-father's family and there were FIVE children in George's family.  I kept reading....

I read that George had owned a business.  After much research, I learned that his sons had been involved with and taken over the business.  My bio father was the Vice President of a family business that his father owned.

Then I read that George had been a member of a Lutheran church. My birth father's religious preference was listed as Lutheran.

I then turned to one of my favorite research sites - Facebook.  Yes, I admit,  I may be pretty good at being a Facebook creeper. This time though, it was for research, so I did it shamelessly.  

I found profiles for Elliott and Dave.  Almost from the get go, I felt that if my biological father were one of them, it would be Elliott. His profile was private, but the information that could be seen was exactly what I needed to know. In his profile picture he was outdoors and wearing glasses.  He graduated from a university with a business degree before I was born. His birthday was listed and I realized that he would have been 27 at the time of my birth. All of this matched the information from the adoption agency. 

My heart was pounding. I called Steve. He wanted to know how I had come to the conclusion that Elliott could possibly be him.  I tried to explain, but I am not sure he completely understood. I don't think he believed it possible that I could have found my birth father on the first try.  And maybe he was right.  I wasn't sure exactly what I ought to do.

I wrote to cousin Anne to see if she knew anything about him.  She said she really didn't know too much about that part of the family. She suggested that maybe I should write him a letter. 

I thought about it and continued researching in the meantime, frantically and as fast as I could.  I found pictures of Elliott from his high school and college yearbooks.  He was skinny as could be and I could see remnants of my own face from my younger days in his pictures.  I was becoming more and more convinced as the day went on.  

So, I began to research how to write to someone when you think they might be your birth father.  I found some really helpful suggestions, the most important being that you don't come right out and suggest that or ask them directly in case someone else were to come across the letter before they do.  One person suggested that you write a letter saying that you are working on your family tree and ask if they might be willing to help you.  That sounded reasonable to me, so I sat down to compose a letter. 

I wrote to Elliott and told him that I knew we were related because I was related to cousin Anne through great, great, great grandparents Sophia and Solomon so I knew I was related to him.  I told him I was interested in learning more about relatives who were business owners in the Findlay, Ohio area in the 1970's.  Then I said I knew there was a woman named Carol Close who was also somehow connected to the family, and I was trying to figure out what that connection might be.  I asked him to contact me if he were willing to help me with my research.

After writing the letter, I sent it to Elliott via Facebook messenger.  And then there was nothing I could do but pray and wait. 

The Story of My Life: Cousin Anne

Last time I told you how Brad, Jessie and I had all done testing through 23andme.  Once our results were in, I was able to use them, along with the family tree from Carol's side of the family, to start determining which family line my different DNA relatives were from.  I had an anonymous first cousin match that I knew was on my father's side of the family, but he never responded to any of my messages. You can read all about that here.

Trying to figure anything out by using my DNA and people's family trees was pretty much like looking for a needle in a haystack.   If I had a predicted second cousin match, for example, I would have to try to figure out who on that person's family tree (if they had a family tree) could possibly be our common ancestor.  For a second cousin, assuming the relationship prediction is correct, we would share a set of great-grandparents.  We all have two sets of grandparents and then four sets of great-grandparents, eight sets of great-great grandparents, and sixteen sets of great-great-great grandparents.  The number of sets of grandparents doubles for every generation you go back.  So the further away a relation is to you, the more possibilities there are for you to choose from when looking for that common ancestor.  It would get complicated at times, because a person who shares the same percentage of DNA with me and is predicted to be my second cousin, could actually be a first cousin twice removed or a half-first cousin.  This is why 23andme originally thought my relationship with Jessie was a grandmother-granddaughter relationship. We share close to 25% of our DNA so I could have been her grandmother/daughter or a half-sibling.   I know that this is a bunch of nerdy talk, so I hope that you are able to follow me as I keep going.

I would sit and take every relative, starting with the closest related to me, who I knew was related from my birth father's line and try to find that common ancestor. I would go back however many generations I needed to for that predicted relationship and then once I found all of the however many great grandparents, I would then sit and try to construct a tree made up of all of their descendants.  Can I just say that a lot of these people that I was researching had large families with lots and lots of children?? It took forever.  If I was fortunate, someone on Ancestry.com had a public family tree which made researching so much easier.  But then to complicate things even more, if a person is currently living, Ancestry.com does not publish their name on any family tree. They are just listed as private.  I found myself googling in hopes of finding obituaries or websites that would help give information as to who those living people might be. 

I spent hours and hours and hours, looking at family trees and names, just hoping that somehow, somewhere I would come across names that would match on people's trees that would give me a clue.  If I could just figure out one common ancestor between a couple of people who matched me, that would at least start me in the right direction. I did find lots of people who lived in the Ohio, Indiana and midwest region.  I spent more time pouring over those trees and trying to see if there was any connection between them. One of those people was a second cousin match, the closest match through my father's side on Ancestry.com.  He had a tree and by the time I was done studying it, I could tell you all about the Brown family that lived in Ohio, but alas, nothing was found that was of any significance to me.

You might be wondering what exactly I was looking for and how I would know when I had found it.  Do you remember the two paragraphs of non-identifying information I had on my birth father from the adoption agency?  I talked about it back in this blog.  It wasn't much, and I wasn't even sure whether it was true or not, but I was trying to find a family that somehow matched this description -  a family with five children, where the father and son were in business together.  I figured if I could find that, then maybe some of the other descriptors would match too. 

After months of searching,  God sent the key that would unlock the puzzle.  Meet cousin Anne.  Anne is a sweet lady in her 60's who also happens to be my 4th-6th predicted cousin on Ancestry.com.  She first contacted me on November 30, 2015 to see if by chance I knew how we were related.  I had been contacted before by many "cousins" and I had even contacted a few myself.  It seemed that many times when I mentioned I was adopted that people were suddenly no longer willing to help and just didn't respond anymore or there was nothing that they could offer to really be of assistance.  But this time was different. 

Anne had noticed from my profile that I had said part of my family was from Findlay, Ohio.  She said that could possibly be a clue.  She suggested that I begin researching one of her sixteen sets of great-great-great grandparents who had descendants who were also from that area.  She was very helpful and gave me some tips on how to make mirror trees and figure out where my strongest DNA matches were on a family tree.  We were in contact for a couple of months, trying our best to figure this thing out. I was slowly researching that line when suddenly, one day in very early February, I stumbled across something....

Until next time. ;)

The Story of My Life: Sorting It All Out

In the last post, I told about how I had contacted Carol's half-siblings. Because of that connection, I now know all kinds of things about that side of the family. I have medical history, a family tree and stories of the sweet grandmother I was never able to meet.  You can read all about that here.

Right about the same time as I found the aunts, I had also decided to do another DNA test. I figured it would not hurt me to put my DNA out there in as many places as possible if I was hoping to figure out this whole birth father mystery.  I had originally tested with ancestryDNA.  The closest relative I had was a second cousin and I really had no clue how she was related to me.  I decided to do another test with 23andme, the other big DNA company.  Not long after I send my test in,  Jessie and Brad decided they would take one too.  We were all curious to see what kind of information we could find out about ourselves.  

One by one, our results came in. We all got a good laugh when Jessie's came back.  23andme predicted that she was my granddaughter. I went in an corrected that assumption really quickly.  I may be older than her, but I am not THAT much older.

Once everyone had their results, I was able to start the process of figuring out how people were related to  me.  If a DNA match was related to all three of us, that meant they were related through our mother.  My new aunt Jan's husband, Ray, had given me a family tree for Carol's side of the family. Using this information, I was able to figure out which of the relations were related to us through our grandmother and who was related to us through our unknown grandfather.  Turns out, the lady who was my second cousin and closest match on ancestry is related to me through our unknown grandfather.  We worked together for a while, to try to figure out who he might be, but to this day it is still a mystery.

My very closest match though, came on 23andme.  It was a first cousin match.  A male who was anonymous and he was related only to me.  Brad and Jessie were not matches. I still remember the uptight feeling I would get in my stomach whenever I would see him on my match list.  Such a close relative. He could be the key to solving this whole thing. If I could just figure out who he was, the mystery could be solved in a very short time.  I tried contacting him on a couple of different occasions and received no response. I just kept on hoping that one day he would answer.

In the meantime,  I would take every close match I had on ancestry or 23andme and try to figure out all of their close relatives to see if I could find a family that seemed to match the description given in the non-identifying information from the adoption agency. Sometimes, for days on end, I would sit at the table with my laptop and papers with people's family trees drawn all over them spread everywhere. I would work until I was so tired of researching and then I would take a couple of weeks break, only to come back to it and find myself repeating the process over and over again.  Some days, I would feel my task was hopeless, while other days I was sure the answer was just around the bend. I worked like this for a year.  And then in November of 2015, God sent someone along to help guide me in the right direction....