Twice Delivered: An Ethiopian Adoptee on Faith, Grief & the Body He's Never Explored with Isaac Melber

adoptee adoptee experience burden faith grief isaac melber survival transracial twice delivered Sep 06, 2026

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Twice Delivered by Isaac Melber

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Isaac Melber was four years old when his grandfather, uncle, and sister looked him in the eyes and told him he had to go - because staying in his Ethiopian village meant he would not survive. At five, he was adopted into a white American family. At seven, he became a Christian. And at twenty, he wrote a book about it: Twice Delivered - Two Families, Two Worlds, One Redeeming Love.

Isaac and I do not come at adoption from the same angle. My work lives in the body. His lives in his faith. And that's exactly why I wanted him here.

In this conversation, we talk about what it's like to be a Black man raised in a white family - the "whitewashed" comments, the grocery store stares, and how he turned "best of both worlds" from a burden into something he's proud of. We talk about the grief his adoptive parents made room for, including a mother who said the words every adoptee needs to hear: "I don't know how you feel - but I can help you if we talk about it." We talk about what churches get wrong when "chosen" and "God's plan" language covers adoptee grief instead of holding it.

And then, near the end, I ask Isaac a question no one has ever asked him: Where do you feel your adoption story in your body? His honest answer - that he's never thought about it - became one of the most real moments this podcast has ever captured. Because that is the adoptee experience: we can know our story, tell our story, even build a ministry on our story… while it still lives, unexplored, in our bodies.

This is two adopted people sitting in genuine difference with respect and curiosity. Wherever you are with faith - refuge, wound, or both - you belong in this conversation.

In this episode:
- Village, orphanage, America: the story Isaac tells when he speaks
- Growing up Black in a white family: what people ask, what they get wrong
- Why "Twice Delivered": delivered from physical death at five, spiritual death at seven
- Being told "you have to go" at age four, and what a four-year-old remembers
- Julie asks: where does grief live in your framework - and was there room for yours?
- The parenting moment: "You can be in my arms. Come to my arms."
- "Chosen" and "God's plan": how churches can hold grief instead of covering it
- What Isaac tells adoptive parents about nurturing kids emotionally, not just spiritually
- What shifted after reading adoptee-centered work
- The question Isaac had never been asked: where do you feel it in your body?
- Isaac's hope for the next generation of adoptees