I have told this story before about a year ago. I sense it is time to share it again. My mother was adopted before turning five years old. Her mother lost a battle with cancer in 1932. Her father was forced to place his son and daughter for adoption. He was unemployed, Native American and had begun to drink heavily. This was the second young wife he had lost and the second crop of children. The first two lived and died in California and never knew their half-brother and half-sister in life. After researching my mother’s biological roots, however, I managed to reunite both families in the 1990’s even after all 4 siblings had passed on. Grandpa had land before Oklahoma became a state. He lost that land and lost all he had, including, eventually, 2 wives and 4 children. I wanted to know his side of the story and will always be glad that I was persistent enough to seek the truth including the fact that Grandpa Oscar and I shared the same birthday, January 25th. My mother’s adoption meant having two maternal grandmothers—the biological and the adoptive. It was my adoptive grandma, an Amish woman, whom I knew as a child and until her death in the 1980’s, who offered me the most impressionable moment I ever experienced regarding faith and religion. It came during a visit to Grandma Salome’s house in Indiana during my first Thanksgiving while away at college. I decided to ask Gram Salome about religion. “Grandma, should I dress like you to please God?” Without hesitation she smiled and responded, “I don’t know.” I had expected at least a hint. Well, she explained, she had made a commitment to dress in a cape dress and bonnet and if she didn’t, she said, then she would be sinning against God. “ Well how do I find out what I should do, “ I asked with genuine curiosity. “Ask God” she explained simply. “Only God knows and that is between you and God what you will be called to do with your life.” Then she pulled out her scripture book, a Bible, and read me the following verse which she believed defined what a calling is: First Corinthians 7: 17, 19, 20. “Each of you should go on living according to the Lord's gift to you, and as you were when God called you. What matters is to obey God's commandments. Each of you should remain as you were when you accepted God's call. My friends, each of you should remain in fellowship with God in the same condition that you were when you were called.
” OLD SAYING: “ GOD KNOWS…” ~ M. Nanhi Morrow-Farrell,MA
