How God Reunited a Birth Mom and Her Son

Hi, this is Jim Daly with Focus on the Family. I want to let you know about an online experience called SeeLife 2021. In this six-episode video series, we're sharing stories and encouragement that will inspire and empower you to live out your pro-life views. You'll also discover valuable resources to help you step up and get involved in the cause.

This is a digital experience you and your family won't want to miss. All the details are at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash SeeLife. God gave me my experience with life to minister to countless young women for 43 years.

To talk to them about life and even when it's hard, God is God and He honors choices. That's Nina Hendy describing how her own unplanned pregnancy has given her a platform to share her faith and her pro-life values. Today on Focus on the Family, you'll hear more of Nina's remarkable story and how God orchestrated a reunion between this birth mom and her son 48 years later. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, this is a remarkable story and a great reminder of how God answers prayer, even when we don't know all the details about who or what we're praying for.

God is faithful, and I'm so excited about our guests and their powerful pro-life message that we all need to hear. In a short time ago, we met with Nina Hendy and also Kyle Polson in this studio. Nina and her husband, Ed, are the owners and operators of the Taste of Texas restaurant in the Houston area. The Hendy's are very active in their community. They have a large family with four grown children and 12 grandchildren. Kyle is a commercial real estate advisor and investor for TransWestern in the Fort Worth area of Texas and serves as a board member and coach for a number of local organizations.

Kyle and his wife Erin have two children. And Jim, here's how you started the conversation on today's episode of Focus on the Family. Well, let me say welcome to both of you. Thank you.

I'm already smiling from ear to ear because I know this is going to end well. And it's such a great story. Nina, let's start with you. The year was 1971. That's just a couple of years before Roe v. Wade. But like with my mom, I was born in the 60s and my mom in California was encouraged because she was 42 that she could get an abortion because of her age.

And it was my dad, my alcoholic father, who talked her out of that. And so take us back to 1971 and what was happening in your life. Well, I was a junior in high school and at Christmas, I found myself pregnant and As a junior in high school.

As a junior in high school, I was 16. And I was terrified. I grew up in an amazing family, a family of faith. But in 1971, you did not get pregnant.

It was unheard of and quite the social stigma. And so I made a decision when I realized that I was pregnant and it really was life changing. I knew the Lord.

I love the Lord. And standing in my front yard, going in to talk to my family, I made the decision that I would choose life. There was something your mother said to you that I saw as we prepared for the program today, which really was amazing. What did your mom say to you that was kind of the statement?

It really was. She said, you do not cover a mistake with a tragedy. Wow. You choose life.

Right. Boy, that's the thing we and so many other Christians have talked about for so many years, especially since Roe v. Wade, because life is the better choice. You may have a choice in this country right now and hopefully that will be reconsidered, Roe v. Wade.

But the idea of giving life to that child, even if you have to give that child up for adoption, that's the far better choice. You were sent to a school back again in 71 where young women went to have their babies. And describe it for me, what that was like.

They were very common in the 60s and 70s. They were homes for unwed mothers. And you lived there.

You went to school there. You had counseling. You had all of your classes, all of your support was there. I lived with, I think, probably 40 young women that were in the same situation, as young as 14 and as old as probably 21.

And so I was there from January until Kyle was born in June. And in that context, the counseling that was provided to you, again, it was good, but pretty rules-based, I guess. It was very rules-based. So you were told legally that an adoption was closed. They prepared you for surrendering your child. And at that time, adoptions were completely closed in this country. From, I think, about 1965 to about 1972 or 73, you had no way to open an adoption.

So we were schooled on the rules. Right, and what that meant for those that may not have been through the adoption process is that you have no way of knowing where your baby's going, who's adopting them. You're encouraged to never contact your child ever in the future. That is a closed adoption, and that's what they schooled you on, is this is what's going to happen. And schooled that it would be detrimental to the child because they were placed in really wonderful families and given a lot of reasons why you could not reach out.

And in that context, one of the things that occurred at the point of birth is that the baby would come into this world and be swept away, and most moms would never have a chance to hold the baby, et cetera. It just was complete separation right from that point. But you had a little different experience.

I did. I was in the hospital, Kyle was born, and they didn't even want you to know if it was a boy or a girl, so you were behind the drape, and the baby was taken away. And the day before I was released from the hospital, a nurse brought Kyle into my room, and that was against all of the rules. And this amazingly compassionate woman walked in and placed my child in my arms. I had spent the past six months praying over my child. And for 20 minutes, I got to hold him and love him and pour out my desire for his life, pray over my baby, knowing that I might never see him again.

Most likely would not. Most likely never see him again. And poured out my heart to him but to the Lord. Father God, give this child the life that I cannot provide for him. Nina, I want, just before I move to you, Kyle, I just, for you to express the anguish that you were going through, I just think for women listening, it'd be so good that it was a struggle. It was an incredible struggle because mothers love their children.

It doesn't matter your age. You love your children. And the anguish is deep. But the Lord was present. I knew the Lord, loved the Lord, and that is where I learned to pray. And to pray without ceasing. To pray nonstop for him. Which I did. And I prayed for his entire life. Very specific things for his life. Even though you had no contact with him.

I had no contact. And we called him the baby. Because I had no way of knowing what his life was.

Right, of course. We would pray over him. Kyle, man, all these years later, you're born obviously in 71. And you grew up knowing you were adopted. You had wonderful adoptive parents. You can talk about that. I'd like to hear about that.

They were Christians. And they took you in. How special did you feel being adopted?

Yeah, I think a lot of adopted kids may feel different. And I felt special. And my mom would always tell me. And I had an aunt that kind of explained that I was picked, chosen. And as a little kid, you just kind of felt special. Man, this family wanted me.

Yeah. Mary Jo, your adoptive mother, she had a wish for your life. What was that wish? Well, she always wished. Every year on my birthday, she would cry and get very emotional and just say, I wish your birth mom could see you and be part of your life.

Yeah. And it was till she died. She would tell me in front of my wife and kids and other people that she really wanted me to find her. And it was just more out of respect to my mom and dad to not do that while they were here. And that's the reason you hesitated at first to reach out to Nina, your birth mom, sitting right next to you. That was kind of a gut check for you to wait until you felt a little more at ease with it. Is that a good way to say it? Yes, for sure. And I prayed about it, and it just wasn't the right time.

Yeah. And it's funny, after my mom passed away in November of 2016, I prayed about it and prayed about it. And then with some help, some family friends, I went to DePelchen, the adoption agency, just to see what the process would look like.

And I started that process, and it was tough to even get in the door. The first thing they said after I met with the sweet lady there is it was a closed adoption. She sat down with me and said, it's closed. There's records in here. You're never going to find her.

This is 1971. And she goes, but I think she thought my intentions were pure. She goes, your last step is to go to the courts, and I can tell you, is this court a 152nd court in Houston? She goes, you can check with them. She goes, but don't get your hopes up.

This is not going to work out. So she did give you a little mustard seed of hope. Oh, I was fired up. Obviously, it was enough. It was enough. Because you followed up on that, right? I did. Did you feel like God was saying this is a good thing to do?

Were you even considering what the Lord might want in this? How did that discussion go? At that point, I was pretty determined to at least go to the next step. And that was a dead end. And it was a dead end. And I've got one around.

Well, let's see. And it was done. They said, sir, it's closed.

We can't give any more records. And I just happened to look at the judge's name of the court and knew of a family friend. And I called the family members and said, listen, I think your uncle or your cousin was the judge in my adoption records.

And would you call them and just say I'm not crazy and I don't have any bad intentions? And this is 9 o'clock at night. And an hour later, he's going to open your records. Wow. After dead end, dead end, dead end.

And then I had another break in the light. So I call one of my son's classmates' moms who's a private investigator. I said, we're real close. I said, Lisa, here's this file. It's redacted.

I'm adopted. This is what I've found. This is what the court gave me.

And I can't find anything. And she was crying. She was so happy to know the whole story. And she goes, let me get on it. An hour later, 503, she calls and says, Nina Hendy is your mother. She lives in Houston. She's married and gave me. She's crazy. Social security numbers, every phone number, every address they've lived in since the 70s.

All the kids, aunts, uncles. I mean, she spit it out. So I was overwhelmed at 503 on October 30th. And so I was just trying to process. And I was like, OK, she's alive. She's not living under a bridge.

She's got this amazing family. So I just owns a restaurant. Owns a restaurant that I went into as a kid. Oh, my goodness. Wow. So we lived in Houston when I was a kid. And the taste of Texas was a mile from my house. Oh, my goodness. So several times. This is a reveal.

Our family would go to the Taste of Texas for special occasions and for dinners. She probably sat our family several times. Isn't that something? Yeah. It's jaw dropping to think you probably had contact and didn't even know it. Yeah. You know that you're related.

Nina, let's go ahead and have you describe for us what was happening in those intervening years. I mean, you're praying, but what is the Lord doing in your heart? Praying without ceasing. And so I am a prayer warrior. I pray daily and I pray in order. And I pray thanking God for his love for me and asking God to search me and know me. And then I moved down the list for my sweet husband to the baby that we prayed for for 48 years and that Ed prayed for.

Your husband. My husband prayed for. That's amazing.

It is. That he had a tender heart. In fact, when he met you, that's something that he loved about you. He did.

Describe that because that sounds like that could be a little hiccup in your relationship. You would think that it would be a hiccup, but he is a remarkable man. And on our second date, I explained to him that I had surrendered a child for adoption several years before. And he loved that. He loved that story.

He loved knowing who I was. And so we prayed. That sounds like the heart of God, doesn't it? Oh, yes.

Indeed, Jim. I mean, the forgiveness is there. But hey, it's about how do we move forward and how do we bring God into the situation.

And God is able to do immeasurably more. We would have never even thought that this reunion could happen. I want to touch again on just that overwhelming feeling of guilt and shame that you still I mean, you had to have the courage to even say to your boyfriend at the time, right?

Second date. Hey, this is something that happened and describe that. The time was so harsh and there was such a such shame associated with an unwed pregnancy. But I never really felt that because God said, I have a terrified young woman. And God said, I'm right here.

Just be faithful. I was I always had peace about my decision to surrender, Kyle. And God just covered over, covered over with mercy my life. So when I thought of the baby, I thought of him with joy for 48 years. Today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, our guests are Nina Hendy and Kyle Polson describing how God orchestrated their reunion after a 48 year separation. And it's really a remarkable story.

John, I agree. And I hope our listeners are connecting the dots here, because being pro-life means that you're fully committed to the cause, even when it's hard. Choosing life may be a difficult decision to make, but it reflects the very heart of God.

And trust me, you won't regret it. If you've got questions or you're curious about what pro-life means, contact us here at Focus on the Family. We have lots of good information and opportunities for you to network with other Christians who want to protect and advocate for life.

In fact, we have a huge Celebrate Life event coming up in just a couple of weeks on Saturday, August 28th. And we can give you more details about that when you get in touch. Please just give us a call, 800, the letter A and the word family to learn more, 800-232-6459. Or find all those details in the episode show notes. Let's go ahead and return now to the conversation with Nina and Kyle on today's episode of Focus on the Family. We're going to pick up the story at the point where Kyle was deliberating about when and how he would contact Nina. So I called DePelchen, the adoption agency, and I said, I found her and she, Joni was very sweet and said, listen, you have to tiptoe through this. She said, I would encourage you writing a letter. So it's non-threatening and you do it on her terms. So I wrote a letter and I still was very sensitive that I didn't want to blow her family up. I didn't want to upset her. I wasn't trying to change her life. So I was trying to get this letter right where I'm kind of getting her very comfortable with where I came from, my family, friends, and I wasn't out after money. I didn't want her to ruin her life and even like, hey, we could have this secret.

I just want to meet you. Very non-threatening just to say thank you. And so I wrote one version, let my wife see it, let one or two people see it. I waited 30 days, prayed about it. I changed some stuff and I bet I had 25 versions of the letter. So we opened the letter.

I opened the letter on the morning of December the 16th and 2019 came in from the gym stack of mail, December mail. And there was a letter on the top that said personal and confidential. And I opened it and it said, my name is Kyle Polson and I believe you are my birth mother.

Okay. So you've got to tell us the emotions right there. I had prayed for the baby in the weeks before, just constantly, just God kept bringing the baby to my heart and here came the letter. So the letter's three pages and I quickly scanned it and turned to the back page before I even completed it. The letter said, thank you for my life. And for 48 years, God had affirmed Kyle's life. And when I thought of the baby, I had such peace because of choosing life. And then God said, and here he is.

It's one of the sweetest moments ever. So I flipped to the back page and there was a phone number and I ran for my telephone to call him. And he didn't pick up.

Well, he's a busy guy. He called, well, it was seven o'clock in the morning as well. And he called back and I was able to say, I have waited for this day for 48 years. I can't imagine that conversation, the first moments of it.

She answers the phone and says, I've been looking for you for 48 years. Wow. Yeah. I think when you look at it, the story, I mean, even the way that unfolded Kyle with the Lord's fingerprints all over this, it's obvious that he wanted the two of you to connect. And for the, I guess, as Paul Harvey used to say, write the rest of the story to be known. When you look at it now, just the idea, there's so much tragedy in the world today because of abortion, because in part, Nina, the stigma is not to give your child up for adoption. We've done some research on that and a lot of women would prefer to terminate the life of their child than give that child life, even if that child adopted speak to that very specifically, if you would. I mean, there might be women right now listening.

Yes. Even in the church who are considering abortion because they, they don't want to go through the shame of having a baby or the separation, what you prayed for, for 48 years, not knowing what's happened to that child, but it's far better to choose life. Every time the separation from the child is devastating, but the dynamic changes when the Lord is in it. Hearing what I know about the Pulsom family, how they loved Kyle, they provided a life for him that I could not possibly provide. I knew and loved the Lord and life was the option and I never regretted that, but it is a very hard decision and we've had countless adoptees and surrendering parents that have come to us in the month since we were united to say, how do we navigate this?

This is a tough decision. And you even said that they were the perfect parents. They were the perfect parents, Jim.

If we could line parents up, a hundred families and interview them and know their hearts, you would have picked the Pulsom family. Wow. Isn't that great?

Yes. I mean, how amazing, you know, something we do here at Focus, we really promote adoption, especially out of foster care, but for those women who are struggling at the pregnancy resource clinics, you know that we do as a country, we do about a million abortions every year. And from what I understand, there's about a million couples seeking to adopt infants. I mean, we just need to connect the dots and I pray for that often that that will happen and your, you know, exhibit A of the goodness that comes from that decision, even though there was such great separation between you for so long, but how the Lord has allowed that to occur for you two to come back together for your extended families to get to know each other.

Maybe that's a good place to end. Tell us about the extended family connections now you've met brothers and sisters. I've got a whole new family, aunts, uncles, sisters, and friends, and it's just been overwhelming the amount of support. Once we kind of presented this, the amount of calls, emails, texts, and it's been great. You go to the restaurant more often now? I do.

Taste of Texas. I think we're getting it. I think it really is a taste of heaven.

That's what we're experiencing here. And what a beautiful story. Dinah and Kyle, man, thank you for coming on and sharing this amazing story and praise God that it worked out so wonderfully. It's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for letting us be here. You know I'll be the one, I'll be the one searching for you. What a powerful conversation today with Ninah Handy and Kyle Polson sharing the remarkable story of Ninah's unplanned pregnancy and how she made an adoption plan for her baby boy and then reunited with Kyle 48 years later.

Forty-eight years, Jon. This story really touched my heart. And I'm so thankful for Ninah's decision to choose life for Kyle. And today they are a shining example of God's provision and grace for all to see. And I am sure there are many more examples like this in the pro-life movement.

And I pray that our listeners have been challenged by this example. And I want to invite you to stand with Focus on the Family to help protect and rescue preborn babies like Kyle was who deserve a chance at life. In just a couple of weeks on August 28th we're hosting our Celebrate Life live experience at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. And we need advocates like you to join us because our goal is to change hearts and minds about abortion in today's culture. So sign up to be there in person or join us online. We've got all the details at our website or call to learn more.

We'll also invite you to partner with us financially so that we can work together to stand for life. Yes, make a monthly pledge today to help give teen girls and women who are facing an unplanned pregnancy better options for the future. Back in 2004, many of our listeners will know this, we created our Option Ultrasound Program where we equip pregnancy centers across North America with ultrasound machines and training and resources that are ultimately transforming the hearts of abortion minded women and saving their babies.

The math is simple. A typical abortion costs around $600. But for one tenth of that, a gift of $60, you can rescue both a mom and her baby, providing counseling and ongoing practical help is needed. And today we estimate nearly 500,000 babies have been saved through Option Ultrasound.

So think about it and pray about it. And I hope you conclude that that is a great investment. Your monthly pledge of $60 can save 12 babies in a year.

I can't think of a better investment than that. And if a pledge is more than you can afford right now, a one time gift can also contribute to saving a baby's life. So please, be generous with your support today. Donate as you can to Option Ultrasound and learn more about our Celebrate Life event on August 28th when you call 800-232-6459, 800, the letter A in the word family.

Or stop by the episode notes where we have all the details. Coming up next time, an insightful conversation with Dr. Greg Smalley and his wife Erin Smalley about how to combat loneliness and to share the load in your marriage. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.

I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. I'm here asking people to define the word appreciate. It's like when something goes up in value.

It's telling someone they did a good job. Focus on the Family invites you to give a gift that appreciates when you give a non-cash gift of stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. You'll avoid a capital gains tax, get a deduction, and help families thrive for generations to come. Find out more about non-cash gifts. Just visit focusplannedgiving.com.