12.5- Melissa Highsmith went missing when she was kidnapped at her parents home in Fort Worth

 12.5-

CBS news in DFW reported this story this weekend.

Melissa Highsmith went missing when she was kidnapped at her parents home in Fort Worth in 1971. She was just 22 months old. Over the next 51 years her family and police searched diligently for her. Through DNA testing it was confirmed at age 53 she is indeed this kidnapped baby. It’s overwhelming but it’s the most wonderful thing in the world. Jeffrie Highsmith, her father, recalls the moment he heard his daughter had been found. “They said ‘Dad, she’s alive’, and I started crying…after 51 years, it’s so emotional.”

A DNA test from 23andMe connected Melissa’s children with their family. Her family reached out to her on Facebook, Melissa thought it was a scam at first. “My father texted me on messenger and he told me, “You know, I’ve been looking for my daughter for 51 years.”

This whole time, Melissa never knew her real family was searching for her.

“The person that raised me, I asked her, ‘Is there anything you need to tell me?’ and it was confirmed that she knew that I was baby Melissa so that just made it real,’ Melissa said. She agreed to take a DNA test and on Thanksgiving she was reunited with her brothers and parents.

Melissa says she feels the love from a family she never knew but was never that far from. She spent most of her life in Fort Worth. “My heart right now is just full and bursting with just so much emotion. I’m just really, really happy.” She says she plans on changing her name back to Melissa.

Once Jesus was asked why he spent so much time with sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors. His answer was that the thing that made the angels in heaven rejoice was when people who are lost from where they belong are brought home. He said it was like the feeling of finding a lost animal, or money or even a prodigal son coming home.

When we discover who we really are we come to know that we are a child of God. This is our real identity. Though all of us stray and wander off we can choose to come home. His family is our family. He is our heavenly Father and we are His beloved children. This is the greatest day in our lives. I can think of nothing that brings such joy to heaven and heavenly minded people than people reconciled and joyfully loving their God and their family. That a happy thanksgiving story.

John 17.

20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you[e] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”