A Missing Puzzle Piece

A few days ago I got an unexpected phone call.  It came from an uncle that I only knew in photographs.  It was a delightful conversation, and was a very important puzzle piece that was missing in my life.  We talked for probably at least a half an hour.  It was kind of strange, this person with a voice sounding much like my own brother's.  "Was this the way my own father's voice would have sounded?", I wondered.(My birth father had been absent from my life.) Strange, because my brother was only a year old and I only three years old the last time we may have seen this uncle, so there's no way this could be a learned trait on my brother's part.  My "new-found" uncle even said "Oh, really?" just like my brother says it--wow, so uncanny it almost gives me goosebumps to think about it even now.   

Bill, the name of this long lost but not forgotten uncle, apologized for not being in touch with me all these years, but he was so kind and sweet I couldn't help but reassure him I was just so glad to hear from him now.  We talked about my life and his life, each one of my kids and his kids (my cousins who I also have yet to meet), how my mom is doing, about my brother, basically 45 years boiled down to 30 minutes.  But in that 30 minutes, I found out about what my own birth father might have been like (my mother and he were divorced when I was three years old).  It had been the desire of my heart to know more about my own birth father whom I was not able to see since I was four years old, and he died when I was eleven.  He has remained mostly a mystery my whole life, since my mother did not like to say much about it.  I had to know what nobody was willing to tell me.  I begged God to give me more of an idea of what my father was like, and although I met my paternal grandparents and aunt, my uncle remained somewhat of a mystery all these years.

And so now I feel like God blessed me in such a wonderful way to let me have the desire of my heart, which was to know more about my birth father.  Uncle Bill (can't get used to saying that yet) wants to know if my brother and I would come down to my Grandpa's (his father's, of course) in Iowa to meet him this summer when he flies in from California.  To my brother and me it will be like the first time meeting him since we don't remember him at all, but I look forward to it, and so I'm sure in May I'll be blogging again about our meeting.  Stay tuned!