Arriving in Mountain View, Arkansas was an adventure. The road from Hot Springs was increasingly windy and steep. I guess it makes sense being that we were going down into a valley, but seriously. We have decided that in the little towns headed down into the valley were designed by the town drunk.
Mountain View however, is a little paradise in the valley. Such a sweet little mountain town where folk music is everything. We stayed in a nice little campground right outside of town, Blue Sky RV Park, and thoroughly enjoyed our stay. Nice and quiet and the owner was super nice. When we arrived, it was still cold and everything was brown. Apparently we arrived before their tourist season started. By the time we left, everything was green and the weather was beautiful.
We had a reason for venturing into Mountain View, and perhaps that is the reason it has taken me so long to write about it. This is the first time my husband would be meeting his sister. It would also be the first time our kids met their cousins. Its truly an amazing story. One that’s hard to fit into a blog post.
But the background is: my husband was adopted when he was about 2 1/2. He had known all his life he was and that he had other siblings out there. His mom passed away in 2014 and we had much of her stuff at our house. When our house came under contract we had 30 days to clear it and get stuff packed. It was about 5 days before closing I was going through a tupperware of his moms papers, pictures and notes that I came across his original adoption notes from the paralegal. In this, we discovered his birth fathers name, the birth dad’s family and detailed notes on where they were from and what they did. It was truly amazing. It put us on a path to finding his birth moms sister whom he spoke to on the phone, a potential half sister and her siblings and the employer of his birth father. We learned from his aunt (birth mom’s sister) that she was contacted by a female saying she was the birth moms daughter.
Making a long story short, we found the name of my husbands sister and we did what we knew how to do: find people with that name on Facebook and start messaging. It wasn’t until a few months later that the correct Kimberly messaged him back saying she was the right one! What is amazing, is that she knew about her brother her whole life and her adoptive parents actually wanted my husband as well. Instead, the adoption fell through at the last minute. She had been looking for my husband under his original name, but his name had been changed when he was adopted. So this is why she was never able to find him. It wasn’t until a few years ago, my husband actually knew his given name at birth.
So, a surreal several months later, we made our way to Arkansas to meet his sister and her family. I’m not sure what I imagined, siblings meeting for the first time, but it didn’t go like that. We met at her husbands restaurant with all the kids on a cold, misty day. They hugged, we hugged, we introduced nieces and nephews ( I have nieces and nephews y’all!) and just talked. After getting the stories told, from each perspective, it seemed like they had known each other all their lives.
We were able to meet Kimberly’s mom (who had almost adopted Jeremy) and her husband. Later that week, Kim’s sister and niece came up to meet everyone. It was all so surreal and have been able to spend an entire month with them all, getting to know everyone and the kids getting to know their cousins.
Its truly amazing how much the kids all favor each other, looks wise and personality wise. They enjoy many of the same hobbies, they are artsy and get along so well.
God has worked all of this out in His perfect timing and plan. I shudder to think that those notes could have been packed away without a glance into a storage unit to not be found for who knows how long. Because we are full timing, we were able to spend time to get to know each other.
My husband is over the moon that he has found his sister and he is so proud of her. Being an only child and now he has 2 sisters, brothers in law, nieces, nephews, and a whole other family who already treats us like family. God is so good and it goes to show, you don’t always have to be blood related to be family. I can’t wait until we go for another visit.