Once an Ugly Duckling
by Amy Morgan

Have you heard the story of the ugly duckling? You might remember hearing it when you were growing up. To paraphrase, much to mother duck’s surprise, one of her ducklings doesn’t fit in. It doesn’t look like its brothers and sisters, and it doesn’t act like the other ducklings. It is awkward, thought to be ugly, and out of place.

But low and behold, one day it discovers it’s not a duckling, but a swan, not awkward and out of place, but created differently and beautifully to be its own unique creature.

Growing up, I felt like the ugly duckling. Can anybody relate? I was told at a young age I was adopted, and although my parents made it very clear they loved me and chose me, I struggled to feel like I fit into the family, and consequently in life.

My adoptive parents, as well as all the relatives, were quiet and reserved. There was not a lot of room or patience for a bouncy, outgoing, talkative little girl. I wanted to be affirmed, seen, and delighted in. Instead, I was told to shush. My home was not happy growing up. My dad, a successful doctor, struggled and still struggles, with alcoholism and work-a-holism. He drifted in and out of our home. Although we didn’t have a name for it then, my younger sister has mental illness. All of this created turmoil and a real lack of emotional connection between my family members and me.

My insecurities grew when my father backed away from the family early in my childhood. My parents didn’t officially divorce, but he moved out of the house, leaving me feeling abandoned and alone. My mother was lonely and unhappy.

She devoted herself to work at church and teaching pre- school, but there was little joy in her life. I did not want to be sad like she was, so I resolved to make my own way.

Have any of you ever walked down that path? You feel like your life is out of control, like you don’t fit in? So by golly, you make a life for yourself where you do fit in. One of my mottos used to be, “God helps those who help themselves.”

Like my dad, I looked really good on the outside. Varsity runner, cheerleader, academic scholarship to college, everything the world says equals success; but inside, I never felt like I was good enough. If I could just perform a little better, be thinner or prettier, then I’d find someone to love me, I’d fit in and find the place and purpose I wanted in the world.

Have any of you felt like that? Abandoned, lost, lonely, desperately trying to control everything in your world, and feeling it all slipping from your grasp. No ability to authentically connect emotionally with anyone. I still felt like an ugly duckling on the inside. Well, you can guess where all that led: serial boyfriends, drinking, perfectionism and self- control. Through college and my early twenties, my loneliness grew, and my self-destructive behavior escalated.

I looked polished and professional on the outside until the inner poison bubbled out in my mid-twenties. I made a series of very bad choices, and I was exposed, humiliated, and rejected. My family heaped shame upon me. When people saw I wasn’t as together as they wanted to believe, I was abandoned, shamed, and left alone. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been kicked when you are down?

There’s something else you should know about me. I’m a runner. I think God knew I needed to run away, my own way, until I reached the end of my abilities. I realized I ran myself into a situation I couldn’t fix, so it forced me to look toward my Heavenly Father.

I found myself at a crossroads. I could run to God, or away from Him. And thankfully, this time I realized I needed to turn in the opposite direction and run to God. I knew the right choice because I had heard all the stories about God’s forgiveness and how his Son, Jesus’s, sacrifice on the cross would fill the insecurities and sadness I felt deep inside of me.

He paid for those sins I racked up in my account, all the bad choices I made that hurt others and myself. All I needed to do was tell him I was sorry and ask Him to help me not go down that road again. I chose to believe in Jesus, trust him and ask Him to help me live in a different way, to run a different direction—one that was decent, and good, and gave me peace and self-worth.

I stepped forward, and honestly looked at what I had done, and opted to change. I faced the consequences of my actions, some of which still followed me. But feelings of shame are not from God. The more I live a life pursuing things that are good and decent, helpful and right, and things I learned by studying the most important book in the world, the Bible, the more I can be at peace.

God does not reject me. I am not alone. I am not forever dirty and damaged. I fit in, and I can hold my head up.

I don’t have to keep trying to be the perfect duck. I can be the swan God made me to be. And once I turned to God for fulfillment, rather than try to manufacture it on my own, God gave me a wonderful gift.

He led me to find my birth parents and to share my story, encouraging others about the great gift of life.

Thirteen years ago, I didn’t even know I wanted to find my birth parents, but then I came across a notice in a parenting magazine that mentioned adoption records had been opened in Kansas (where I was born and raised). I squirreled that scrap of paper away in my Day-Timer and carried it around for six years. Subsequently, I married and had two little boys.

I was grieved that I didn’t have a daughter, and I thought about adopting a little girl, maybe from China or Korea. One day my husband told me that if we were meant to adopt a child, he believed he would have that desire too, and he didn’t. He looked right at me and said he thought, instead, that I was the little girl. My desire was not to have a daughter, but to be the daughter. It felt as if a light bulb had gone off. He was right!

I pulled the scrap of paper out, miraculously still tucked into a pocket of my Day-Timer, and called the records office in Topeka, Kansas. They not only still had my file with my original birth certificate, they connected me to the social work office, which had other records. I now knew the names of my birth parents and the address where my birthmother’s parents lived.

I took a trip to Kansas, picked up the paperwork, and drove to the address listed. The house was vacant and for sale. But it looked like what I call a “grandma” house, one where people might have lived and been part of the community for a while. So I knocked on the next-door neighbor’s door, explaining that I was a relative doing some research. Not only had they known the people who would have been my birth-grandparents, they saved some yearbooks of my birthmother’s brother. As they handed them to me, I looked at the very first picture I’d ever seen of a blood relative. I felt chills run down my arms.

And then, miraculously, the neighbor returned from the other room with a yellowed newspaper clipping from several years previous, an obituary for my birthmother’s mother, who had been a second grandmother to the neighbor’s children. The clipping revealed my birthmother’s married name—another step closer. The name was very unusual. On my first call, I reached her brother-in-law, who forwarded my information to her.

I always fantasized about my birth parents. Who they’d be and what they’d look like. I’d always wanted to know my heritage and ancestry. Did I have half siblings? I steeled myself for more rejection. After all, they had given me up. There was a reason for that. Maybe someone assaulted my birthmother. Maybe my birth parents were awful! What would I find?

Barely two weeks after starting my quest, I found myself sitting in my birthmother’s living room in the southern suburbs of Kansas City, just one school district south of the one in which I had grown up. She told me her story and confirmed my birthfather’s information. He attended a boy’s prep school where eighteen years later I would be invited to prom, the one he and my birthmother had missed because, by then, she was well advanced into her pregnancy with me.

She told me they had been high school sweethearts. After dating several years, one thing led to another, resulting in an unplanned pregnancy. Things weren’t easy for an unwed couple in the conservative Midwest, even in the mid- 60s. She was living in a dorm as she pursued career training after high school. Her parents told her not to come home; they didn’t want her younger brothers to see her pregnant. They did not support her emotionally or financially.

Fortunately, she said my birthfather stuck by her. Partially because of his Catholic upbringing, he encouraged her to deliver me and place me for adoption. My birthfather was living on his own during his senior year of high school. He was present at the hospital when I was delivered, and he made it a point to see me and say goodbye.

I was born a few short years before Roe vs. Wade; abortion was still illegal in the United States in 1967. My birthmother saw, first-hand, the results of illegal abortions working at the hospital—and didn’t need too much convincing to avoid that route, despite the physical and emotional difficulties of the pregnancy.

My birthmother worked and attended school at the very same medical school hospital where my adopted father was a medical resident. Who knows, the two may have passed each other in the halls, never knowing that the child in her growing belly would be the daughter he would adopt.

An OB/GYN physician at the medical school was the go-between. He provided medical care for my birthmother’s unplanned pregnancy, and he knew my father and mother wanted a child. A private adoption was arranged and handled properly through the state of Kansas system. Five days after delivery, my parents came home from the hospital with their baby girl, me.

My birth parents continued dating, but drifted apart during the next few years. He followed his dreams to build a career out West, married later and had children. She did the same, wisely waiting to start a family until she was settled and could raise her children as she had hoped.

My birthmother lost touch with my birthfather by the time I met her, but God intervened again. I walked into the records department of his former high school on a Saturday afternoon in the summer. For some reason, the alumni relations director was there and cheerfully handed me a printout of all my birthfather’s information. Now I could contact him.

I returned home and placed the phone call. After exchanging information, my birthfather said words that would impact me for the rest of my life: “What took you so long? I’ve been waiting for you for 36 years.” At that moment, I felt such an overwhelming rush of love and healing. I felt like I had been lost and was now found, like the story of the prodigal son who is warmly embraced by his father upon his return to his family. And the feeling was mutual. In fact, my elder son shares his first name with my birthfather, something we did not know when we named him six years prior to our knowing each other.

I truly feel that God used the reconnection of family ties and the love of an earthly birthfather to teach me about the depths of His love for each and every one of His children.

Later, my birthfather invited me to meet his entire extended family, including his 84-year-old mother, who had not known about my existence. At one point, the whole gathering, from the smallest grandchild to the oldest grandma, started dancing around the house, pulling out hats and loudly requesting favorite songs. I was astounded! These were my people! I wasn’t the overly demonstrative, talkative child who needed to shush. I fit in.

Again, huge waves of love, affirmation and belonging crashed over me. I went outside and looked at the sky. God painted a beautiful sunset over the house in my favorite color, coral pink. I knew He was telling me I was beloved, and I could tangibly feel it.

I am eternally grateful and thankful to my birth parents for choosing life, for making the difficult decision to go ahead with an unplanned and problematic pregnancy. They are delightful people, and I am so grateful that the Lord opened the doors for me to find and connect with them at the age of thirty-six. I have great peace and comfort filling in the gaps of my story, my history, my genealogy, and my genetics.

If you want to know how I feel about my parents and my birth parents, please know, love multiplies; it doesn’t divide. Nothing replaces my relationship with my adoptive parents. They are my parents. Sure they made mistakes, but haven’t we all? I am grateful the Lord put me with them in a Christian home where I was loved and cared for. I am grateful for the love and care they’ve given me. And any child would feel the same, eternally grateful for the sacrifice and greater love of being chosen.

A yet-to-be born baby growing inside is a person just like me. I work part-time and, following the footsteps of all members of my family, biological and adopted, give back to society in many ways as a volunteer. Both nurture and influence the person I am.

I realize now how valuable my life is as evidenced by the service God calls me to: every meal I make to serve the homeless or elderly or impoverished; every article I write sharing how God is working in our community; every family I’ve touched through prayer group leadership; every widow in Rwanda I’ve visited, encouraged and supported; every soul I’ve led to Christ through teaching Sunday School or Bible study; every Ugandan child who’s found hospitality in my home; and yes, every cookie I’ve baked and carpool mile I’ve driven. What would have been lost if my life had been deemed worthless or too inconvenient to continue?

No matter how messy, life is always the right choice. God works all things for good; he makes beauty from the ashes. What seems like a tragedy today can be a triumph in the future. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, ugly ducklings are transformed into swans.

Amy Morgan graduated from TCU with a journalism degree. She writes, edits, and works in public relations. Amy serves in many volunteer capacities and was recognized in 2015 as a PTA Life Member. She is running a half marathon supporting clean water in Africa, where she travelled in 2014. Texasmorgans4@sbcglobal.net.