Apr 17, 2024
In the past dew episodes I’ve been talking about how I tracked down my birth father and met him for the first… and last time in my life. You’ll find links to those episodes at the bottom of the show notes. Today’s show concludes this painful chapter in my life by focusing on a larger relational and spiritual principle that applies to all of us. Namely, sometimes in our difficulties God will surprise us in unusual ways to remind us he is still working for our good and for his glory.
But before we get into today’s episode, here’s what this podcast is all about.
Welcome to You Were Made for This
If you find yourself wanting more from your relationships, you’ve come to the right place. Here you’ll discover practical principles you can use to experience the life-giving relationships you were made for.
I’m your host, John Certalic, award-winning author and relationship coach, here to help you find more joy in the relationships God designed for you.
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Where we left off in the last episode
In our last episode, #216, I told how I got the phone number of my birth father through one of his other sons. After about a month of sitting on the phone number and rehearsing what I would say to him when we talked, I finally summoned up the nerve to make the call. Part of my delay in calling, I realized later, was that the search for him was what energized me, not any actual contact with my birth father. The adrenaline rush was over.
I had no illusions that he would respond well when I called. I don’t even know what responding well would have looked like. The fact the man was married seven times lowered my expectations. There was no thinking in my mind that he would rejoice at my call, sobbing, and once he composed himself would say something like,
No fantasy expectation
“Oh, I’ve wondered about you and thought about you almost every day since I first heard you were going to be born. Your mother would not return my phone calls. I even stopped at her apartment on one of my trips, but no one was home. I wrote to her a number of times, but she never wrote back. Then I lost track of her. I am SO glad you called, and I do hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for not being able to support you when you were a child. If you have it in your heart to forgive me, I really would like to see you face to face.”
A more realistic response, I thought, would be his denial that he was my birth father. He might even hang up on me. I’d be fine with either. The court records told me all I needed to know about his character.
Surprise ending to my search
“Hello, is this Jack Byrd?
“Yes, it is.”
“My name is John Certalic, and I’m doing some family history work and I think you and I might be related.”
“Really?”
“Yes, does the name Renee Morris ring a bell with you?”
“No, can’t say as it does.”
“You would have met her in the late 1940s when you were a truck driver and used to make runs to Milwaukee where she lived. She was from northern Minnesota and worked for the telephone company.”
“Hmmm. This does sound familiar, now that you say it.”
“Well, I am her son, and she tells me you are my father.”
Long silence. Dead air. Nothing. What is he going to say now? What came out of his mouth surprised me.
“Well, well,” with a jovial laugh as would come from a gentle grandfather, “I guess I have children all over the country I didn’t even know about.”
We talked for a bit more, exchanged addresses, and agreed to send pictures of each other.
Neither of us ever did.
A different surprise phone call
After tracking him down, and then my telephone conversation with Jack Edward Byrd, I was able to put things to rest more easily. That all changed about six months later when the telephone rang one sunny Sunday autumn afternoon.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Is this John Certalic?”
“Yes, it is.”
“You don’t know me, but my name is Judy Capes.”
I went silent for what seemed like an hour as I processed what I just heard and speculated what it might mean. Why was SHE calling? How did she find me? Was I going to be in trouble? All these thoughts raced through my head, like an auctioneer’s rapid review of bids on used farm equipment at a foreclosure.
What did I do wrong now? was the question that always popped into my mind at times like this. The answer was almost always nothing, but growing up as a kid, I always assumed I was doing something wrong. What other
explanation could there be for my mother yelling and slapping me in the face so many times?
“You don’t know me, but my name is Judy Capes.”
But I did know something of Judy Capes.
She is Jack Byrd’s first child from his first of six marriages. I learned about her from court records I had found in Fort Wayne.
She continued. “I was talking to Dad recently and he told me about your call to him several months ago. He wrote you a card and sent a few pictures, but they came back to him in the mail. Apparently you moved and the forwarding address expired.”
My birth father tracks me down
She was right. I had given him my office address rather than my home address, and I had moved my business to another part of town before he wrote to me. I was surprised it had been that long since I talked to him.
“Dad asked if I would try to track you down for him. So I just searched online and found you rather easily.”
“I see.”
“I guess you and I are brother and sister then,” she gracefully remarked, trying to end the awkward silence.
“I guess so.”
So Judy knew.
In my search for Jack Edward Byrd, I didn’t want to open up a can of worms for him or his other children or ex-wives. So I never tipped my hand to share with any of them that I was his illegitimate child, the one he kept secret from everyone.
“Tell me about yourself, then. And how did you find Dad?”
Now that she knew, I had no reason to be secretive, so I gave her a quick summary of my life and told her how I found the man she called “Dad,” but for whom I had no title other than the antiseptic, “Birth father.”
Discovering a surprise sibling
“So that’s me, Judy. Tell me about you.”
I learned she was living in Leesburg, Indiana—just twenty minutes from our daughter’s in-laws, a couple with whom we became friends when our kids married.
We had a long talk, a very pleasant one that concluded with Judy saying, “I’d like to meet you in person. Any chance we could do that when you visit your daughter’s in-laws?”
“Possibly,” I said. “We don’t get down to Indiana as much anymore now that our daughter moved back to Milwaukee. But I would like to see you, too.”
Shortly thereafter, the conversation ended. I thought, Do I have room for another relationship?
Within six months, Janet and I were visiting Judy. Meeting her renewed my curiosity about Jack Edward Byrd, the one person we had in common.
The Saturday afternoon of our meeting, Janet and I drove up the gravel road to where Judy lived in semi-rural Leesburg, Indiana. We turned a bend in the fire lane that separated two rows of one-story homes on small lots in between two channels of a lake we later learned was good for fishing. Within a minute of pulling up to her tasteful and well-maintained yellow home, she came out to greet us as we got out of our car.
She’s very tall, just like me, was my first thought. Just like her father, as described to me by his former daughter-in-law.
“She looks like you. I could see the resemblance right away,” Janet would tell me later.
As we got out of the car, Judy walked over to us, welcomed us, and gave me a big hug.
A surprising family reunion
Months passed and one day I got an e-mail from Judy, saying she was going to arrange a family reunion at her house some Sunday afternoon in the fall.
“I do hope you and Janet can come. We are flying Dad up, and Jim and I are going to drive down to the Indianapolis airport to pick him up the Saturday before.
“He doesn’t know anything about this, and I’m not going to tell him until he gets off the plane. If I told him now, he probably wouldn’t come. So that’s why I’m going to spring it on him once he’s off the plane. There’s a distinct possibility, though, he might turn around and fly right back home to Florida. I’m willing to take the risk, though.”
Judy continued. “I’ve already talked to my other brothers and sisters, and all except one plan to come. Some of them have not seen or talked to Dad in over thirty years. I sure hope you can come.”
That call set the stage for the most awkward afternoon I have ever spent in my life.
As we sat in Judy’s living room, I talked a little, but mostly listened and drew people out to learn about them. They comprised an interesting group, and
was enjoying myself. Then the door bell rang, the front door opened, and in walked a tall, slightly hunched over, silver-haired old man.
It was Jack Edward Byrd.
I meet my birth father
Wearing a white and peach-colored Ban-Lon sport shirt, gray polyester pants, and white shoes, my birth father looked every bit the part of an eighty-year-old retiree from Florida.
“Hi, everyone,” he announced to those in the living room. He straightened his shoulders and began walking around the room, extending his handshake to some. He walked past me with a fleeting “Hello.” What a terribly awkward moment.
He seemed like the next-door neighbor who just stopped over to borrow a plumber’s snake to clean out a clogged drain.
I watched him engage with the others in small talk. He appeared comfortable, while most of the rest of us looked ill at ease. It was a meeting of strangers. Judy later told me some of her siblings, who live within forty miles of each other, had not seen or talked to each other since high school.
Though I dislike ice-breakers, I felt like we needed one at that moment. Something like, “Share with your partner a favorite childhood memory.”
It was an afternoon of small talk around a really big elephant in the room—Jack E. Byrd, the father of us all.
Sharing the search results with two trusted friends
More significant than all the details of locating, and then meeting my birth father, is how I finally moved passed this I never should have born - it’s not how it’s done chapter in my life. It’s significant because it illustrates a relational principle that can be applied in many different situations when we want to help people close to us going through a difficult patch in their life.
For me, help came from my wife Janet, and two friends, Brad and Kathy. The four of us would get together for dinner occasionally during the search for my birth father. They would ask how trying to locate him was going and I’d update them on my progress. It was something I didn’t want to talk about, yet I wanted to at the same time. It was always upsetting to me.
One particular evening we made arrangements to meet for dinner. Driving to the restaurant, I vowed I would not talk about what I was going through. It weighed so heavily on my heart that I needed a break from it all. We had gone out with them twice before, and both times when they asked how I was doing, I couldn’t hold back the tears, for it started the playback of “I should never have been born.” I didn’t want to hear this song again, so I rehearsed in my mind that if they brought the subject up, I was going to stay calm and either say “I’d rather not talk about it,” or just give some cursory facts to be polite.
A dinner surprise
It was a dark, wintry Saturday night when we pulled up to the restaurant. I dropped Janet off at the door, then drove down several rows of parked cars before I could find an empty stall for mine. When I walked in the door, I wasn’t able to see Janet, nor Kathy and Brad, anywhere. They must have gotten a table already, I thought. So I began looking for them through the dim light. It took a while for my eyes to adjust, but I spotted them over in the corner at a round table. Table in the corner of a dark restaurant—good
choice, I thought, given how I had been at the more recent times we’ve eaten out together. Besides faintly seeing their silhouettes through the dark light, I also spotted something else at the table.
As I neared the table, I could see tied to the empty chair they saved for me a yellow, helium-filled mylar balloon emblazoned in very large letters, “He’s here! It’s a boy!” Just like the kind of balloon you find in a hospital gift shop you give to parents of newborns. It caught me so off-guard it took my breath away.
I sat down stunned. On my placemat was a card from Kathy and Brad, which on the front read “A baby is a gift of love—it’s a boy. Congratulations!” And on the inside, they had written, “We are so happy you were born.”
This surprise took my breath away
I stared at the card, still feeling the impact of the helium-filled balloon behind me. I couldn’t speak. Nothing came out of me, except the tears I had committed to stuff down while in the parking lot just a few moments before. But these were different tears. Not tears of sorrow, as the others had been. But rather, tears of cleansing release, tears that washed away the dirt of my depression, tears that cleared my eyes so I could see what was true, what was real.
No one said anything. They just watched. Their long silence was so compassionate, so caring, so tender. All I could muster was “Thank you” and a huge sigh of relief. It seems odd now, but something very heavy lifted from me that night. It was like the helium in the balloon. Everything lightened from my heart and seemed to slowly float to the ceiling, through the roof, and gently through the cold night sky up to the stars that seemed to call it away. Far, far away, where it would no longer grip me as it had for so many years.
In the days following, we continued to remain friends. Brad and Kathy knew all about my phone conversation with Jack Byrd, and then meeting him in person at Judy’s house in that most uncomfortable of family reunions.
Friends drift apart
But when we started attending different churches, we drifted apart and didn’t see each other anymore for years. But what they did that night with a helium-filled balloon and a simple card came in handy as a sermon illustration fifteen years later. I was asked to preach a four-part series on caring for others at a church we had recently started attending.
The first sermon was to be about one of my favorite stories in the Bible from the Gospel of Mark where Jesus cared for some difficult people in his life—his own disciples.
I like that story because the disciples remind me of how difficult a person I was for the people in my life during the search for my birth father. The disciples didn’t create a scene in a restaurant like I did, but they certainly needed help when Jesus told them to row across the Sea of Galilee soon after He had fed 5,000 men and their families. Maybe it was the food; I don’t know. In both my story and the disciples’ story, food brought out the worst in us—and the best in the people who cared for us.
Jesus gets in the boat with people
When the disciples did what Jesus told them by getting into the boat on the large lake that is the Sea of Galilee, a storm came up. It caused them to strain at the oars to make it to the other side. They were obedient, yet as the Gospel writer Mark tells us, they were struggling, they were fearful, and their hearts were hardened toward Jesus. The thing that gets them out of their
predicament was Jesus walking from shore onto the water to meet them and get in the boat with them. He says very little in doing so, but in getting in the boat with the obedient, but scared and hardened men, Jesus makes their problem go away. The winds die down and the seas calm, all because Jesus got in the boat with them.
As I prepared this sermon, I was reminded how years earlier my friends Brad and Kathy, did what Jesus did. They got in the boat with me, didn’t say much, but listened and cared for me by just being there. Their presence, even when I caused several scenes in several restaurants, calmed the stormy seas in my life, just as Jesus getting in the boat with His frightened, hardhearted apostles calmed the Sea of Galilee and their hearts as well.
An important relationship principle
Brad and Kathy illustrated the principle that we tend to overestimate the power of words, but underestimate the power of our presence. We think we need to say something, that we need to dispense wise, comforting, and helpful words to care for people. But on days when we’re not feeling terribly wise because we’ve misplaced the car keys or can’t figure out how to program our DVR, we feel so inadequate.
Most of caring is just showing up, but it is so hard to do when our own needs and inadequacies nag at us like dirty dishes in the sink crying for our attention. Caring for others exposes our perceived shortcomings of who we are and what we’re capable of. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I make things worse? If I can’t fix this person’s problem what then? What will all of this say about ME?
I planned to mention in my sermon that caring for others is not about us. It’s about them. It’s about being available to God to be used to draw people to
His son Jesus. It’s not about being a competent problem-solver or wise advice-giver. It’s about reflecting the image of God well and being His
representative. It’s about getting out of the way so the Holy Spirit can work in someone’s heart without interference from us.
A surprise from God
That’s what Kathy and Brad did for me, and it’s what we can all do for each other. In my finer moments, as rare as they are, I find myself asking the question, I wonder if there’s someone God is asking me to get into the boat with. Not conventional grammar, I know. But sometimes the best thoughts have the worst English.
So that’s what I prepared to talk about in my sermon that Sunday morning. Moments before the service began, I was stunned to see two friends seated in the audience I had not seen or talked to in years—Brad and Kathy.
Closing
In closing, I’d love to hear any thoughts you have about today’s episode. I hope your thinking was stimulated by today’s show, to think of a person going through a rough time who could use someone like you to get into their boat.
For when you do, it will help you experience the joy of relationships God desires for you. Because after all, You Were Made for This.
Well, that’s it for today. If there’s someone in your life you think might like to hear what you just heard, please forward this episode on to them. Scroll down to the bottom of the show notes and click on one of the options in the yellow “Share This” bar.
And don’t forget to spread a little relational sunshine around the people you meet this week. Spark some joy for them. And I’ll see you again next time. Goodbye for now.
Other episodes or resources related to today’s shows
215: Searching For My Birth Father
139: Why Should I Listen to This Podcast?
021: The Most Important Relationship of All
Prior recent episode
216: Our Past Helps Us Understand Our Present
All past and future episodes JohnCertalic.com
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You Were Made for This is sponsored by Caring for Others, a missionary care ministry.