Archive Article: All In God’s Time.
January 3, 2009

Looking for lost relatives can be a long process. But then suddenly there is success. This may be a matter of God’s timing.

About three years ago, a Karen Clinch from Sydney rang Wesley Mission to get information about Dr Frank Rayward who, as Superintendent of the Mission, arranged for her adoption in 1958. She was anxious to get in touch with her birth mother.

As we later found out, her mother was Judith Elizabeth Amy Wilson who gave birth to Karen at the age of 17 out of wedlock. Karen was taken so quickly from her mother, that her mother never knew Karen’s weight or length. Dr Rayward arranged for Karen to be adopted by the Rev Jack Leonard and his wife Patricia. Karen always knew she was adopted but no great fuss was made of it. She had a good childhood and has had a successful life.

Suddenly in 1999 Karen had a feeling that she ought to try to locate her birth mother. This is not necessarily an easy task. There were the specific circumstances of her birth, namely that her birth mother’s family had decided that Karen should never find out about her mother. There are also the more general obstacles arising from the way in which under the current law, parents and children can individually decide that they do not want to be contacted and so it is illegal even to try to do so.

But two weeks later, Karen was in contact with her mother, now living in Perth. Judith, it seems, had for some years thought it would be good to try to contact her daughter but somehow it never seemed the right time. Then at almost the same time that Karen had decided to look for her mother, her mother felt it was the right time to look for her daughter. Mother and daughter have now met on a number of occasions both in Sydney and Perth and they have a good relationship.

I was speaking recently in Sydney to both mother and daughter. Judith commented that everything has to be done in God’s time. Her search would have been futile if she had tried to do it in earlier years. But as soon as she felt that it was the right time, then the first contact was made within weeks.

I have just been involved in another event where God’s timing was right. A member of one of the Mission’s congregations suddenly had a feeling that he should try to locate his brother (whom he had not seen since childhood in the late 1960s). His parents were long dead but he recalled that the brother had been put into a medical institution. I then wrote to the contact point for that institution (which had been closed down but whose files had been maintained). In due course we were advised that they had had no contact with the brother for over a decade – but at least this meant that the person had been alive as recently as a decade ago. Providentially, that Department of Health official put my letter on the brother’s file before returning that file to the system.

Some months later, that brother was found ill in the street and taken to a Sydney hospital. A hospital social worker decided to see if there were any information on the brother’s medical history. In due course, his file was obtained – and there was my letter.

That member of the Mission congregation and I will be visiting the brother shortly. As Judith Wilson noted, it is a matter of God’s timing.

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