Paralympian Jessica Long chose to forgive her birth parents for giving her up for adoption.,,,
Paralympian pool star Jessica Long has overcome much on her way to 16 gold medals – but one of her biggest battles was walking on a pavement toward the distant sound of sobbing.
The pavement was in Russia, and the cries from her birth parents who gave Long up for adoption when she was a baby. She’d agreed to meet them, but could she forgive the parents who’d abandoned her in a Siberian orphanage?
“I felt really scared,” she said. “I took my sister’s hand and we walked together on this snowy, icy sidewalk and you could hear my birth mom, Natalia, and my birth father were crying.”
Turn back? Not for someone driven by faith.
“She kept saying she couldn’t forgive herself for giving me up for adoption, and I think if I had not accepted Christ as my saviour, I don’t think I would have forgiven her either.
“But in that moment I realised God has forgiven me, my whole life, and I did – I forgave my mom.”
Her birth mum and dad were unwed teenagers when they gave her up. She was adopted by American parents at 13 months old but, five months later, fibular hemimelia meant she had to have both lower legs amputated.
Only 11 years later, she was the youngest Paralympic swimming gold medallist.
“I found I was really good at sports. I excelled in swimming and when I first joined the swim team I was 10 years old and the only disabled swimmer. I kept going back because, honestly, I liked beating these girls with legs and it started to fulfil something in me, just earning love. I wanted to be perfect in everything I did.”
But success brought failure. “It’s taken me a long time to really work on this. I love swimming, but swimming can’t be my entire identity, my entire world. My worth was in swimming, my identity was swimming. But at the same time, I was broken.”
She turned to Jesus. “I was at Bible study and I couldn’t do it alone any more. I made the walk to the front and said I want to give God my whole heart for once. As soon as I prayed, it was the first time in my entire life that I felt enough.”
Now aged 30, she’s prompted daily to trust in the Almighty.
“I am constantly reminded every day that I need to give it to God. Every day, when I put on these two prosthetic legs that are heavy and they still hurt my legs, still cause me pain, it’s honestly this beautiful reminder that I can’t do it on my own.”
