Many people have what I call a ‘missing piece�?in their lives; holes in their past, as if something has been punched out. I understand what that is like.

I was born and raised in Philadelphia’s inner city feeling hopeless and unwanted. Both my mother and father were alcoholics. The police showed up regularly in response to domestic violence calls.

God? He seemed like an absentee owner to me. He started my life spinning, then left me on my own. Then one day as a teenager, I stumbled into a religious meeting advertised in the newspaper. The preacher was Billy Graham. As he spoke, suddenly it seemed as plain as the nose on my face: what counts is what you do with the claims of Jesus Christ. So I made a simple surrender of my life to Him. The God who was always ‘out there somewhere�?became real.

Soon, I graduated from high school and moved to San Francisco, where I got my first job as a typist. I had not worked there very long when a salesman I met at work one morning cornered me that night and brutally raped me.

When I finally escaped, I sat in my little car on the side of the road bawling my eyes out. ‘Why, God? Why me?�?I asked. I remember thinking, ‘This is the story of your life, kid. You are a loser.�?

I made the very poor decision that night not to call the police or tell anybody what happened. It’s all over, I thought. I just need to toughen up.

But I was emotionally and physically ill for weeks. I finally went to the doctor. ‘You don’t have the flu,�?he said. ‘You’re pregnant.�?

It took me three days to summon the courage to tell my mother. ‘You’ll have to take care of this thing,�?she said. ‘I can’t handle it. Come back when it’s over.�?I got in my little Volkswagen and drove down California’s coast toward Los Angeles. I didn’t know where I’d wind up.

I remember flipping through Gideon Bibles in dirty motel rooms and coming across Psalm 139. King David was speaking to God, saying, ‘You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body, and knit them together in my mother’s womb . . . . You were there while I was being formed in utter seclusion! You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe.�?

Maybe I was an unwanted child, I thought, but apparently God is the one who decides about life. A couple might decide when to make love, but God decides when to make life. If this verse is true, then there are no illegitimate children.

That truth helped me decide what to do. So I signed up at the Los Angeles County Adoptions Court to relinquish my child at birth. I gave birth to a baby girl, whom I never got to see or hold. This became the biggest missing piece of my life.

But I have since learned that God is the God of missing pieces. When I met my ‘prince�?a few years later, he came riding along with two kids in the saddle. He knew about missing pieces, too. He had lost two wives—one to a brain tumor and another to a rare blood disease.

A few years later, I was sitting at home when the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, ‘Hello. My name is Julie. You’ve never met me, but you’re my mother. She said she had two reasons for calling: to tell me that I was a grandmother and to lead me to Christ. How wonderful it was to tell her she had already done that many years before.

She knew about the rape. She was depressed, confused and angry about it for a few days until she visited her minister, who showed her Psalm 139. If this is true, she decided, then God wanted me born.

Julie is living proof that God is faithful. He does not forget. He hasn’t lost my address—or yours. He’s able to make something beautiful out of the things that are not. The challenge for us is to place the missing pieces in His capable hands and let Him fill up the holes in our lives.