[kakuehl]

Life went on: I raised my kids; substitute taught; was "recalled from furlough" and "furloughed" again. I took training as a lay worship leader and eventually gave into God's call and went to seminary. I graduated from seminary 20 years after college.

The kids fought their way through teen years; I loved it when they hit 16 - they started talking to us again: "Hey, Mom, do you need the car tonight?" Our son made us grandparents when he was 17. (He graduated from high school June 1, his son was born June 24 and he was 18, July 6.) Adoption was never considered, but his brief marriage ended (it was a really toxic relationship) and her mother has raised Shaunie. Our daughter went to college on a full Army ROTC scholarship and then served 4 years in the Army. She and her then boyfriend/now fiance had a baby right before her four years were up. (I was pleased to note that the girl who always said she'd have an abortion if she got pregnant, never mentioned that possibility!)

Over the years, I thought about D a lot. I hoped he'd look for me. I had told DS about him when J was 15. He promptly told his sister. (Once again, children do NOT learn from their parent's experiences... they insist on making their own mistakes.) After I got a computer I would try to surf the web occasionally, but had no clue how to look.

Finally, in September of 2005, I stumbled onto adoption.com, registered and found D within about 10 minutes. Now I had a name! Unfortunately, it turned out that he had registered several years ago and never checked back when he didn't find anything. All his contact info was out of date. I went to a search sit and paid for the info... everything about D was out of date, but it listed his father and an address that I recognised as the Lutheran parsonage in the town where I grew up. I went to the ELCA roster look-up and sure enough - D's dad was the pastor of the church where I was confirmed and married! (Remember, all I knew was that he was a pastor, not what denomination he belonged to.) I emailed him (with fear and trepidation!) A couple days later he emailed back. I gave him some more information. He and his wife sat down with D and told him they'd heard from me. R (D's adad) told me that D expressed more "stuff" about his adoption when they told him than he ever had before. (Now that was scary.)

R and I emailed a couple times while we waited for D to contact me. (It felt like it took forever although it was only a couple weeks.) D finally emailed me on the eve of our joint birthday. Now that was a birthday present!

Next time.... the reunion.