Together Joyful

It is March 1951, the week of Easter, and a young woman Helen with her 3-year-old daughter Marie are in Michigan in a store shopping for food.  Helen had been beaten and is also 9 months pregnant and ready to give birth any day.  Little Marie sees a bunny she wants and is asking for it as Helen tells her no that they don’t even have enough money for food.  A gentleman, Joe, standing nearby hears this conversation and offers to buy the bunny for Marie.  He also tells Helen that he and his wife Pearl would like to buy them groceries and oil for their heater as well.

Later as they deliver the groceries to Helen, Pearl tells Helen that her sister Ernestine and her husband Floyd couldn’t have children and she asks if Helen might be willing to give her baby up for adoption.  Helen says yes, and Pearl and Joe go home and call Ernestine with the news.  After consideration, Ernestine calls Pearl back and tells her that they want the baby.  Pearl and Joe drive Helen and Marie to Kentucky where they stay with Ernestine and Floyd until Helen gives birth to a beautiful baby girl on March 26, the day after Easter.  After the adoption was finalized a few weeks later, Ernestine and Floyd give Helen money for food and bus tickets for her and Marie to return to family in Michigan.

Beginning on her first birthday, the baby girl, Floyde Anne, is told that she is adopted.  Helen’s only contact with them came 9 years later in a letter postmarked from Reno, NV en route moving to Arizona.  Ernestine was too afraid to read it and instead tore it up without even opening it.  No one will ever know what that letter said.  After the letter is destroyed,  Floyde Anne is told that she has a sister, so she grows up always knowing that her birth mother and older sister are out there somewhere.  As an adult, Floyde Anne begins the search for her birth family with no success…until…

This is where our journey begins.  My next blog articles will tell the story of our reunion Thanksgiving weekend 2018 from the point of view of the individuals who now call themselves family.  Enjoy!  Encourage yourself that in 1951, in Helen’s moments of hopelessness and desperation, when it most likely seemed that there was no way out, God already had the end planned and it was an end that brought joy for everyone involved.  Whatever trial you are in right now, the end is planned and your present is the story.