Psalm 27:10 – “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.”
There are verses in Scripture that feel like they were written just for people like me—people with wounds that reach all the way back to childhood. Psalm 27:10 is one of them. It doesn’t explain away the pain. It doesn’t dress it up in religious language. It simply names a reality: sometimes your mother or father leaves you. And that is a kind of soul-deep abandonment that no child—no human—was made to carry alone.
“When…”
Not if.
Not maybe.
But when.
That word alone acknowledges a hard truth: forsaking happens. To some of us, it happened in a hospital room. For others, it came through a courtroom, or an addiction, or years of silent neglect. For me, it came through disconnection, dysfunction, and a thousand little ways love didn’t show up. And for a long time, I thought that was the end of the story.
But it’s not.
“…then the Lord will take care of me.”
It doesn’t say then the Lord will scold them. Or then the Lord will erase the memory.
It says He will take care of me.
That’s personal. That’s present. That’s parenting.
You see, recovering orphans like me live with a tension: we bear the ache of what we never received and the wonder of what God now provides. We carry the story of being forsaken, but we are also being fathered—right now—by a God who doesn’t abandon His children.
I have learned that “the Lord will take care of me” isn’t just a theological claim. It’s a lived reality.
He took care of me when trauma left me numb.
He took care of me through mentors, foster parents, faithful friends, and therapy rooms.
He took care of me when I couldn’t take care of myself.
And He still does.
For those of us who were handed the identity of “orphan” far too young—whether by death, desertion, dysfunction, or disaffection—Psalm 27:10 is a lifeline. It tells us we are not forgotten. We are not throwaways. We are not cursed.
We are seen. We are wanted. We are loved.
So if today you feel the sting of being forsaken—maybe by parents, or maybe by people who were supposed to protect and nurture you—don’t stop reading at the pain. Let the promise speak louder than the wound: “Then the Lord will take care of me.”
I’m living proof that He does.
From the journey of a Recovering Orphan
Still healing. Still held.
Still learning how to be taken care of.
