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Written by Karen Meeker
I found the television interview powerfully disturbing. But the determination of two courageous women to triumph over such grievous emotional wounds, plus God’s profound promises, gave me reason for hope.
Imagine yourself as Steve Gibbons, a California highway patrolman, pulling off the Interstate to take a break and stretch your legs. It’s a chilly 40-degree day in December 1987. You spy a brown paper bag, noticeably out of place, and then you hear a tiny whimper.
You immediately look inside and find its shocking contents—a newborn baby girl just hours old, wrapped in a bloody towel, her umbilical cord still attached. You quickly wrap her in your patrolman’s jacket and race to a nearby hospital and help.
Next imagine yourself as Ronderlyn Carr in your Bronx neighborhood home on a snowy February morning earlier that same year. You are looking out the window as two neatly-clothed teenage boys on their way to school are distracted by a beer crate left in an alleyway. Attracted by a little sound, you watch them investigate its contents and find—a newborn baby girl, umbilical cord still attached and in the throes of hypothermia.
According to subsequent news reports, they clean her up, deliver her into helping hands and then disappear, so far never to be found again.
Now fast-forward to Sept. 14, 2011, and a new daytime television show hosted by Anderson Cooper. The host introduces two young women, Ashley Wyrick, a lovely, articulate redhead, and Alison Dolan, an attractive, poised brunette, both born in 1987. They have never met before this show, but one can sense an immediate bonding as they begin to share their remarkably similar stories.
Proof of ID
Each carries with her a copy of a cherished newspaper clipping reporting the discovery of an abandoned infant girl in 1987. The stories above were their stories. The newspapers had dubbed one baby Miracle Mary (Ashley), the other Baby Jane Doe (Alison).
Those clippings are all they have. There are no birth certificates, and their parents remain unknown. If it weren’t for the kindness of a highway patrolman and a couple of schoolboys, they would not be alive, sitting on the couch that day.
Without roots
Abandoned babies are sometimes referred to as “children without roots.” That is certainly true of Ashley and Alison.
Fortunately both babies were adopted by couples who truly wanted them, but even at that they have essentially entered their life story in the second chapter, the first being a blank page. For them there was no looking forward to reaching the age of maturity when they could have access to adoption records and the names of their birth parents. There were none.
Hard questions
As the interview unfolds, viewers hear each young woman retrace her steps back to a beginning and sense the nagging frustration each has with two overarching questions that thus far remain unanswered:
Who are my parents? And more poignantly—why?
“Why?” is often fraught with emotion and urgency, but its answer can remain elusive, depending on the circumstances, even over the span of a lifetime. Hopelessness and despair can become unwelcome companions. Ashley can attest to that.
Knowing who our Heavenly Father is, on the other hand, enlivens hope, strength, endurance and stability.
Blessed assurances
Hope and endurance thrive on assurances about the Father, some of which are revealed by the following scriptures:
- “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
- “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
- “But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You; let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them” (Psalm 5:11).
Knowing the Father is there, nearby, makes all the difference.
Moving forward
Ashley and Alison are dealing with the unknowns in their lives the best way they can. Both are pursuing careers—Ashley is a recruiter for a technology company, and Alison does voice work for dubbed TV shows. And while nagging questions still remain, they are determined to move forward.
That newspaper article “doesn’t define me,” says Alison resolutely.
Being abandoned and rescued “makes me want to do something with my life. … It makes me want to help others … because someone helped me. … I need to reach out and change someone else’s life,” Ashley asserts with determination. Cooper follows with, “I know you’re going to do that. I can tell.”
There is yet a chance for a “happy” ending for both of these young women—one of revelation and forgiveness and reconciliation—but the timing and the way remains in our Heavenly Father’s hand.
Karen Meeker was fascinated by the journey of these young women and was reminded that Psalm 68:5 shows God’s care for them and others like them: “A father of the fatherless, and a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation.” Verse 6 continues, “God sets the solitary in families,” which He did do for Ashley and Alison. How encouraging!
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