*Most of this series is now found in Oh My Soul: Encountering God in Honest, Unconventional (and Sometimes Messy) Prayer and is available for purchase at Amazon and anywhere books are sold.
Category Archives: adoption
It’s just me. Just me behind the wheel of the Stagecoach, sitting in the parking lot, listening. I should turn off the car, but I’m staring out the dirty window at the gravel outside and this song hasn’t finished yet.
There are also – I guess I should mention this – six kids in the car with me. But they’re being quiet for the moment, and in just a second they’ll ask if we’re going in or not. So in this moment, in the quiet before the chaos, we just soak.
Breathe. Listen.
All day long, questions, questions. Needs. Messes. Arguments. Why do children – or adults, for that matter – ask you a question just so they can disagree with the answer? I dunno. But it drains me. You too?
I am empty and need refilled and so I sit. Just me, empty and waiting. Because I know what comes when I pause to listen.
He does.
When I show up, He does, too.
It’s nothing dramatic. No lit candles, no soft music, no clean, spacious, uncluttered floors. I’m learning to listen in the middle of the mess, because waiting until after the kids are asleep is way too far away to refill when my tank is empty by dinner. When you have only 20 miles of gas left in the tank and 100 miles to go, sometimes there’s only a brief few seconds to regroup.
Sometimes I coast on fumes to the laundry room and stick my head in the pantry, pretending to look for ingredients for dinner, and just wait a few minutes right there.
Sometimes Sophie comes with me. One of these days the kids will ask why it takes me so long to find the pasta, and I will tell them that we’re just having a staff meeting. That’ll throw them a little.
So today we waited in the parking lot. The song ended and we walked into church, mismatched socks and everything. At least we all had shoes.
(Some of us had sandals that showed off the mismatched socks. Awesome.)
We walk in and find Vince, who is already there and waiting for us. We sing, listen to announcements and a message. The tank is filling, filling…
And then we worship more. He’s been there the whole time, but the volume is louder now.
We are singing, singing…
All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
And I know these words of His are not for me this time. They’re for the little girl standing next to me with a broken past and questionable future, and I put my right hand on top of her head.
All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You
I fight fear all the time because I know I can’t heal the abuse, the memories, the past, the regression, the behavior. The only way to fight fear is with faith, which comes by hearing. Even when it doesn’t match what we’re seeing…yet.
My left arm is reaching, reaching upward for more of Him because we are empty, empty otherwise.
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things out of us
You make me new– Gungor, Beautiful Things
My left hand is reaching for Him and my right hand is on her.
You are making me new…
And He tells me, You are a conduit so I can fill her, too.
She needs it every day, too. She needs us to fight fear for her. She needs our words to speak life out of the chaos for her…so the broken past can be healed and her questions can have happy, healing answers.
He can’t flow through if I’m on empty. If I don’t show up, I can’t hear Him.
If He doesn’t show up, I have no words…and we can’t have that.
P.S. Next month – coming soon! – I’ll be participating in 31 Days, a challenge to blog every day through the month of October. The posts will be short(er) and our series here will be Wait and Listen: 31 Days from Chaos to Quiet. Hope you can make it…you can either check back here or go to our facebook page for links as the posts go live.
I think He’ll be showing up in some big ways to meet with us.
Act 3. The curtain rises. It is months later.
It is a hard day, and I’m holding a fighting boy who is mad at the world.
He’s mad at his choices, mad at his consequences, and especially mad at his mama for not letting him drive through the fence. (see part 1 here)
I look into dark eyes and tell him not to fight me because I am on his side, and when he fights me, he fights against himself…and he is the one that loses. (see part 2 here)
RAD is so bizarre and parenting them is so backward in many ways. It really is an experience where you learn about God’s love for us though, because it is often years of loving them with no love in return. If other adults give them attention, it only makes it worse and prevents them from attaching to the parents longer. So many parents, though, feel so judged as they try to parent these kids.
In order to parent them effectively you have to quit caring about what others may think and care only about what is best for the child. Hard to do as a first time RAD parent and I think why so many disrupt. Hard enough to have your child not love you, but then to have others judging you too is just too much for many. I try to remind people that if the child is “reacting” then it is because they are “attaching” even if you aren’t seeing it and feeling it. If they didn’t feel themselves wanting to get close to you then there wouldn’t be so many behaviors.
– Amanda, adoptive mom
We make it to lunchtime.
It’s a treat for most of us on this day because we have veggie sushi. I know Andrey and Reagan don’t like it, though, and there’s just enough cucumber in the fridge to make an alternate meal for them – tarator, a traditional Bulgarian cold soup that they love. I don’t usually accommodate with options, but we need to use the ingredients up anyway and it sounds good to me. Perfect.
I’m grating cucumber. “I don’t like sushi,” Andrey announces from the table, amid cheers from the other kids who love it.
“I know. I’m making tarator for you and me and Reagan.”
I finish grating the cucumber and start chopping mint leaves (not sure if these are traditional, but I like them).
“I don’t like soup. I want sushi.” I mix in yogurt, drizzle in olive oil.
“I want sushi.” Sprinkle salt and pepper. I’m getting tired of these announcements and make one of my own.
“Today I’m not going to feed you food that you complain about. If you complain about something, you will not get it, whether you change your mind or not.”
Silence. I can hear him coming to a realization. The wheels are turning.
I arrange seven dishes. Sushi for four kids, tarator for Reagan and myself. Bread and apples for everyone.
Bread and apples for Andrey. And he says nothing, but his mind is learning. Those wheels are still turning, and he’s trying to decide if he wants to steer down the straight and narrow, or try driving through the fence.
Someone asks for tea, and I start pouring.
“I don’t like tea,” he announces.
“That’s okay, you have a water bottle.”
A few minutes pass. We have prayed and we are eating. We are happy…six of us, at least.
“May I pwease have tea?” he asks aloud. But what he is really asking is, Did you mean what you said when you said I couldn’t have something I complain about? Or can I get you to let me get away with pushing the rules?
Can I set a moving target?
And the answer is no. No, no, and no. “You have a water bottle,” I remind him. Remember to smile, mama.
“I don’t like my water bottle.” And then he gets a look on his face that clearly says, Oh, crap.
And he is learning what I want to teach him, instead of the other way around. We have set a boundary and he is learning to respect it. To respect others. To respect himself.
We know there’s progress. There has to be. If they didn’t feel themselves wanting to get close to you, there wouldn’t be so many behaviors. But it doesn’t feel like it when we’ve hit our one-year anniversary and both kiddos seem to be regressing in one form or another.
What we’re doing must be working to some degree because they are rejecting it. Sincerity pushes them out of their comfort zone, and a year into this, suddenly basic routines are out the window and met with defiance.
Not asking to be excused at meals. Not asking to have a chore checked. Not flushing the toilet (so help me) without being reminded.
It’s a game that’s not fun for anyone. The reminder isn’t necessary.
Patience is. Also, liquor.
Just kidding.
The lunch scene replays itself shortly after our one year anniversary. Sushi for some of the kids, tarator for others.
“Oh! Yummy sushi! I wike sushi! I wike soup, too!”
Well. You don’t say.
We don’t want to over-prune, and neither can we under-prune. We must prune with a purpose, working toward the vision of a thriving life that will bear much fruit.
It’s hard to walk the line every day. We’re not heroes. We continue to covet your prayers…and your occasional gifts of coffee and chocolate.
May adoptive families find encouragement, healing, and grace as they walk the line throughout their community, in all of their days. The victory is here.
End of Act 3. Curtain closes.