The Thread God Never Dropped

I want to tell you something I have been holding close for a while now. And today, I finally feel ready to share it.

When I was six years old, in foster care, my foster mother took my twin brother and me to a church in Bridgeport. Prayer Tabernacle. The Pastor was Bishop Kenneth Moales Sr.

I was a little girl who had no idea what was happening in her life or why. I just knew we were at church. And at that church, my brother and I got baptized.

I had no idea how intentional that moment was.

Years later, as a grown woman, I would walk back through the doors of that same church for my foster mother's funeral. I had not seen or spoken to her in over fifteen years. And there I was, standing in the place where something had been planted in me as a child, saying goodbye to the woman who had taken me there.

I still didn't fully understand what God was doing.

In 2017 I did my ancestry DNA test. I was looking for my father's side of the family. But as the tree started filling in, my mother's side kept showing up too. And one name kept appearing that I recognized. The Moales family.

I saw it. I noted it. And I left it alone.

I wasn't ready.

Here is something people don't always talk about when it comes to being a foster kid, or anyone who has been removed from their family and their roots. The uncovering doesn't happen all at once. You don't just do a DNA test and suddenly feel whole. You open the pieces of your story as your heart becomes strong enough to hold them. And sometimes that means closing a door for a season because the grief and the anger behind it is still too heavy to walk through.

I had a lot of anger toward my birth mother. Toward my biological grandmother. Toward that whole side of my story. And so I told myself that my father's side was the only side where I would find a place to belong. I shut the other door. And I left it shut.

God, in His patience, waited until I was ready.

In 2021, while my son Jamir was in the hospital after his car accident, my inbox was flooded with messages. I was reading them but barely responding. One message came from a woman named Kenee. She introduced herself, told me she was a nurse, said she was praying for my family, and offered to help me understand what the doctors were saying.

I didn't respond right away. I couldn't respond to much of anything then.

But months later, when Jamir was home and I was slowly coming back to myself, I went back through my inbox and found her message. I responded. She responded immediately. We scheduled a Zoom call.

We got on that call and just started talking. Sharing our stories. Getting to know each other. And somewhere in the middle of that conversation I said, hey, I don't think you know this, but I think we're related.

She said, really?

And I said, yes. The Moales name is all through my tree.

That was the beginning.

Over the next few years we stayed in touch. She came to one of my events. I showed up to a service at her church. But we kept this between us, shared only with our husbands and our kids. We didn't announce it. We didn't make it a thing.

A lot of that was me. I just wasn't ready to fully open that door yet.

Then Sunday evening I got a text from Kenee

Hey cousin. We're having a legacy service Monday for my dad. I would love for you to come. I'll save you a seat.

Something in me said I needed to go. But first I needed to know, really know, exactly how we were connected. So I reactivated my ancestry account and started tracing the tree again.

Something was missing and I couldn't figure out what. I called my covenant sister Camille and told her what I was trying to piece together. She knew exactly who to call. She got Teche’ on a three-way and we started going through names together.

We started going through the names together and something began to click. Both of our lines trace back to two brothers.

George Moales Sr. and Matthew Moales Sr.

George was my great-grandfather. Matthew was Teche's great-grandfather. Both of us exactly four generations down.

I had called her to help me find my family. And it turned out she was my family. 🥲 She and I are 3rd cousins.

And from there I was able to trace Kenee’s line too. Kenee’s paternal great-grandfather and my maternal grandmother were half siblings. That single connection is what links our entire family line and makes Kenee and I second cousins.

Simple. But it wrecked me in the best way.

The enemy did not want me to get to that service. I left late. Traffic was everywhere. I was texting Kene the whole way telling her I might not make it. She texted back: I'm praying for you. Be careful. I really hope you can make it.

And then the traffic broke. And I got there.

The church was packed. And if you know me, you know I am an introvert who would rather slip in unnoticed. So I quietly accepted the usher's offer of a seat in the overflow room and I sat down and I took it all in.

When Bishop S.Y. Younger, the guest preacher stood up to preach, ya’ll, he was preaching to me. Every word felt like confirmation. Like vision. Like God leaning down and saying, you see? I have always known where you were going.

But underneath the sermon I was also sitting in something else entirely. I was sitting in the church of my cousin. At her father's legacy service. A man I never got the chance to know as an adult. A man who, without either of us knowing the full picture, had baptized me as a little girl in foster care decades ago.

Bishop Kenneth Moales Sr. baptized me when I was six years old.

And yesterday I sat in a room full of people who loved him and mourned him and celebrated him. And for the first time in my life I felt genuinely connected to my mother's side of my family. Not just by blood on a screen. But by presence. By legacy. By a thread God had been weaving since I was a little girl with no idea what her life would become.

I want to say something to anyone reading this who knows what it feels like to carry an incomplete story.

The uncovering never really ends. And I mean that as a gift, not a burden. You don't have to be ready for all of it right now. God knows exactly how much your heart can hold in each season. And as you heal , really heal, not just survive, He will open the next door at exactly the right time. Not before. Not after.

You open the pieces of your story as your heart becomes strong enough to hold them.

I spent years believing that my mother's side of my family was a door I would never be able to walk through. Too much pain behind it. Too much loss. Everyone on my immediate mother's side has passed away. I am the matriarch now. I am the story holder. The keeper of what remains.

And yesterday God reminded me that the story is bigger than I knew.

There is more to me than I have uncovered yet. And I am no longer afraid of that. I am excited about it. I am excited to keep healing. To keep opening chapters. To keep finding out who I am and where I come from in ways that don't diminish me but complete me.

I am not afraid of my story anymore. I am in awe of it.

I got to meet Kenee’s children in that overflow room yesterday. My little cousins. And I am so grateful I pressed my way through that traffic and walked through those doors.

But here is the part that makes all of this even more sacred to me.

I didn't go alone. I brought my grandson Syer with me.

So yesterday we didn't just meet my family.

We met our family.

And that is the one of the most beautiful things God has done for me.

Be Loved and Free.

🩵 Sana Cotten