- by Carrie Shaw
- on July 9, 2025
Anyone who knows me well will know I’m a bit of a sucker for TV shows that trace long lost family, connect up missing relatives, follow the trail of family ancestries, or discover biological connections through DNA. To say I could watch them all day long is probably not an exaggeration.
It never fails to surprise me – the depth of emotion that most people feel at being disconnected from biological family, and the desperate need they carry for belonging. Even those who grew up in happy adoptive families, with loving parents and siblings, still yearn to connect with people with whom they share physical traits and biological similarities.
And its equally surprising how many of those who end up connecting with biological family report feeling an instant connection – like the strangers they’re meeting are somehow not strangers – and how much love they express, within minutes of reuniting, for people whose existence had previously been only a mystery.
The need to belong, to feel loved, to be connected on a deeper level is strong. While love for adoptive parents often runs deep and is a uniquely special bond between parent and child, the connection between a biological parent and child, and, by extension, birth family, is not something easily explained by logic or science.
It gets me thinking a lot about family, about belonging, about nature and nurture and what makes us us.
Thoughts naturally digress wider: why do we love or feel emotional connection to people, strangers though they may be, who just happen to be biologically related to us? How is it that we feel connected to ancestors long since departed, after hearing their stories or learning their histories?
How do we explain the bond that exists between biological siblings who may only meet as grown adults? And, conversely, how do we explain the bond between adopted siblings, unrelated by blood but connected through shared life and parentage, and who love one another fiercely?
Nature And Nuture Both Inform Belonging
My grandmother was adopted and longed all her life to know who her biological family were and where she had come from. Her need for a sense of belonging, despite her happy childhood and loving adoptive parents, ran deep. She longed to meet her biological mother and to know who her biological father was – a deep desire to know her roots and the kind of people who had made her who she was.
And yet, she was deeply connected to her adoptive family and extremely close to her only sibling, a sister, who was not biologically related to her. Their children grew up together, as close and loving as any biologically related cousins, and remain close still, in their later years. My mother would describe one cousin, particularly, as “like a brother”, in all the best possible ways.
We are, after all, the product of both nature and nurture, as studies have shown, and the question of what is inherited (nature) and what is adopted (nurture) continues to fascinate and, at many times, baffle us.
Ultimately, it seems, it’s not a matter of one or the other, but rather the complex interplay between both that ultimately determines who we become and perhaps ultimately informs our sense of belonging.
Belonging In Rooted In Our Soul
The search for belonging – the yearning to be connected and to be loved – is perhaps reflective of our deeper need, on a more significant spiritual level, to be connected, and in relationship with the One for whom we were made.
As Augustine of Hippo, a Christian theologian and philosopher who lived during the late Roman Empire wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
No matter how much we search for fulfillment – in relationships, hobbies, job success, or even family life – we will never feel truly at peace and fill that deep need for belonging until we are connected with God.
We are all created by God and made for relationship with Him. Deep down, our souls are always longing to return to Him. We may chase all sorts of other things to try and feel happy or whole but that emptiness we feel, in moments of stillness, loss, or disconnection, is the soul’s quiet reminder that we were made for more. We were made for Him.
When We No Longer Belong…
Some years ago, I went through one of the most difficult experiences of my life. Several significant relationships ended and in a matter of months, I also found myself adrift and disconnected from community as I knew it. I struggled through deep depression, loss of identity, a painful lack of belonging, and an overwhelming, desperate need to ‘go home’ (although I could’ve have said exactly where home was).
Even in the midst of my distress, however, I knew the problem wasn’t merely geographical or physical, but deeply spiritual. At my core, I felt invisible, untethered, and disconnected at a deeper level from almost every other person in the world (the exception being my husband and children).
Things I had taken for granted – biological connection, shared history, familiar rhythms – had dissolved beneath my feet, leaving me standing on nothing more than shifting sand. I was still physically present in my life, but internally I felt I was floating just above it, observing everything but belonging nowhere.
It was as if I had lost the thread that tethered me to meaning and I was forced to ask myself, what exactly is it that defines meaning? How is belonging really experienced? Where was my true home?
I began to realise that the ache I felt wasn’t just about broken friendships or lost identity. It was deeper than that. It was homesickness for something eternal, for a city I had never seen and a presence that I hadn’t fully stepped into.
For the longest time, I had one song on repeat. It wasn’t an upbeat number by any means, but it spoke deeply to my heart during this painful season: C S Lewis Song, by Brooke Fraser,
“If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude that I was not made for here. If the flesh that I fight, is at best only light and momentary, then of course, I’ll feel nude when to where I’m destined I’m compared…
I was made to live. I was made to love. I was made to know you.
Hope is coming for me.”
And as I began to let go of trying to make everything make sense – the relationships, the hurt, the silence – and to slowly surrender all those things into the hands of a faithful God, I began to find Him in the cracks.
I heard Him say, “Dearly beloved, set your feet upon the rock – on Me. Find your identity in who I say you are. You belong to me – my dearly loved child. Trust me, walk with me, and find peace for your soul.”
God was there. He had always been there. I didn’t know it then, but I’d tied my sense of belonging to the people and places I thought would never change. And when they did, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
And as all those things were stripped away, I discovered what remained: the unshakable truth that I was already known, loved, and held by the One who made me.
“There is written in the book of life, and on the palm of Jesus’ hand, in the story of redeeming love, there I recognise my name. On the day I chose to trust in him, when I turned from death to life, he was waiting with a robe and ring and now I can testify, I belong…
I belong to Jesus.”
I Belong To Jesus
A long time has passed since I found myself, without warning, thrust into that desert season. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Dry. Brittle. Lonely. Debilitating.
Yet in the vast emptiness, I found I was not alone. I discovered that belonging – true belonging – wasn’t dependant on people or circumstances or anything external. It was anchored in something – in someone – deeper than that, and in knowing and being known by God. And in that recognition – quiet, sacred, and deeply personal, I found home.
It’s a feeling and a reality that I continue to fall back on, to firmly plant my feet on.
It’s true that we are relational creatures, made not just for God but for each other. And so we look to those around us, to connect, to belong, to find meaning.
But we humans are flawed individuals, living in a desperately broken world. We will never, in this life, find true belonging and meaning in those relationships. It is only as each person looks to God and steps forward in faith as a member of His family, that we are able, through His Spirit, to connect with one another on a deeper, more eternal level. And, even then, it is only in realising how God has loved us and sees us for who we really are that we are able to love one another deeply, despite our faults and failures.
“The origins stories of Scripture remind us that we do belong – to a very large and very old family that has been walking with God from the beginning. Even when we falter and fall, this God is in it for the long haul. We will not be abandoned.” | Rachel Held Evans (1981 – 2019)
The solid, unchanging reality of God’s presence in a life that has been anything but linear in the last first years has been one of my biggest lessons.
As too, has been the reality that growth doesn’t happen in our comfort zone. That an isolated body of water simply grows stagnant. That pain isn’t our undoing but perhaps the only way to reach truly meaningful happiness. And that detours aren’t accidents but necessary paths we must take on the journey home, to our ultimate place of belonging in the presence of the King.
“Through it all, my eyes are on you. And it is well with my soul.”
Coming Home
If you’re walking through a season like this – one where friendships have changed, community feels distant, or you just feel a bit lost and alone – please know you’re not forgotten. You’re not invisible.
I’ve been where you are and I know what it is to ache for connection, to feel unmoored and unsure where you belong. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here – truly. And even more than that, Jesus is here. He sees you. He knows you. And he calls you his own.
You belong, not because of who accepts you, but because you are already known and loved by the One who made you.
And He is not going anywhere.
And if you don’t yet know Him – if you’ve never really belonged to Jesus – the invitation is always open. You were made for this kind of love. You were made to come home.
Please reach out – I’d love to chat with you.
Belonging is never about finding the perfect place or people. It was always about being found by the One who made us. And in Him, we are finally home.
“There is a place prepared for me, more beautiful than eyes have seen. There is an end to suffering, where I will rest in perfect peace and in the presence of the King.
Grace will lead me home.” | David Dunn
