Category Archives: post adoption

offering chocolate: the business of redemption

Posted on by January 27, 2023

offering chocolate: the business of redemption

Well, friends, it’s been a year since we showed you what we really look like. It’s time for an update. We’re a year older and wiser. We have matured.

offering chocolate: the business of redemption (copperlight wood)

Just kidding.

We have our third (out of four) post-adoption home visit coming up, and we had to whip up a fast family photo again for Spaghettia. Last time we were professional and had “real” pictures taken. These ones, of course, are fake.

offering chocolate: the business of redemption (copperlight wood)

This is me, every morning before Vin goes to work, with my very best “Noooo! Don’t leave meeee!” expression.

offering chocolate: the business of redemption (copperlight wood)

Reagan is clearly the only normal one among us.

offering chocolate: the business of redemption (copperlight wood)

How are we doing? It is up and down, forward and backward…I think that’s the same answer we’ve given for the last 18 months. It’s still hard. Progress is measured in micro-steps. We still deal with diapers and purposeful misplacement of bodily fluids and manipulation/disobedience that borders on levels of insanity.

We’ve learned that both of our adopted children are actually terrified of (and resistant to) many forms of success, celebration, and achievement (not super uncommon with kids who have similar backgrounds of trauma, neglect, and abandonment) and often regress instantly and violently after a victory. It makes things like school, potty training, holidays, and, uh, waking hours difficult. 

offering chocolate: the business of redemption (copperlight wood)

Birthdays, too. Today was our Andrey’s birthday. We had presents wrapped and an awesome, low-key dinner planned. Just us. And yet…

No bueno. Misbehavior followed misbehavior, poor choice after poor choice, and he sabotaged his special day at every opportunity to turn it around. It’s been Proverbs 26:11 almost daily for the last several months, and his much-anticipated birthday was no exception. It was pretty rough, both to watch and experience.

Last year I wrote this about our Reagan:

She is rejecting us to keep from being rejected first by us, but she doesn’t realize that. She chooses to stay in a cage with no food and water, though the door is wide open. She is like an abused woman who has been in a bad relationship for too long, but refuses to break it off because freedom and healing are just too foreign and frightening.

And it still happens with Reagan, and it’s the same but different with Andrey. We offer chocolate – love, belonging, fun times – and he refuses it, only to go back to maggoty gruel.

It breaks my heart, over and over. His birthday should have been so fun. We want to celebrate his life with him. Holy hormonal weeping, Batman. 

We notice the raised eyebrows when people don’t understand the level of trauma they came from, and don’t understand the boundaries we have to place because of the amount of healing they need (No, I’m sorry…you still can’t dote on them, pat them on the head, or give them presents. We ask adults to “kindly ignore” them as much as possible so their attention and attachment will be for us, their parents…more on this in a future post). It hurts when people ask, “You’re still dealing with that?” as though it were our fault (I know this isn’t how the question is intended, it is just how it feels on our end), and surely Andrey and Reagan should be delightfully law-abiding citizens after being in a loving home for 18 months, despite the fact that they were neglected and abused for almost seven years.

And I want to say this in as loving a manner as I can muster: Friends and family, please don’t rush us. Man, we want this way more than you do. We hoped it would be easier. Of course we hoped attachment wouldn’t be an issue. We knew it was likely, though.

There’s this annoying little reality/theory/fact/whatever out there that says for every year your adopted child was in an institution, that is how many years it may likely take him or her to heal. I did the math, and thought…By then, Mattie will be 18. He might be moving out of the house by the time our house feels normal again. 

And then I thought about binging on ice cream and moving to a convent and how bad it hurts when mascara gets in your eyes when you’re sobbing. I thought of other things not fit to print. And also how I’m married, and not Catholic, and the nuns probably wouldn’t take me anyway.

And I thought of how He feels when He offers a new beginning, and we reject Him over and over. The book of Hosea is all too real to us now…we know what it is to love and to be shunned, to pray and cry and offer redemption to people who persist in choices that hurt them and us.

I myself taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand.
But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him.
I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love.
I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him.

– Hosea 11:3-4

These kids are hurting, and we are often hurting, too. They came from awful circumstances, and they sometimes cope with that by creating chaos around them. Adoption always starts with grief, and, ready or not, adoptive parents choose to live it out with them.

It’s lonely, but so common – just not talked about openly very often for many reasons. We don’t want to dissuade people from adoption. We don’t want to be judged by the ignorant. And we don’t want advice from armchair quarterbacks who confuse watching an episode of Ellen or Nightline with authoritative experience in early childhood psychology and attachment disorder.

We want to be nice. Usually.

Whoops.

I know we’re not really alone. There are some great perspectives here and here and here. And here, too.

One of these years (hopefully before our oldest is eighteen) Andrey will take the chocolate we offer him daily – love, belonging, fun times – and stop going back to maggoty gruel. He will seek out and enjoy victory. He’ll be the same person at home that he is in public. The quick insta-grin he gives the camera in the midst of a sulking fit will actually be a genuine smile, instead of a mask that covers anxiety and anger.

He will be older, and wiser. Hopefully before he is eighteen, too.

We love him and long for his victory. The daily decision-making of how best to deal with each new spin is frustrating, but we have great hope. We intimately know how God brings people out of mucky history and into joyful relationship with Him, despite our initial lack of cooperation…despite a past that was no picnic.

He’s in the business of redemption, and it’s messy.

offering chocolate: the business of redemption (copperlight wood)

So…our house wasn’t meant to be normal.

offering chocolate: the business of redemption (copperlight wood)

It was meant to have lots of chocolate.

the right fit

Posted on by January 10, 2014

the right fit: how He molds a family of sore thumbs into His image (Copperlight Wood)

It is January and we are in a new year. Christmas came and went at our house, leaving behind new sleds and snowgear, and everything fits perfectly. In the yard, four inches of fresh snow is just waiting to be violently trampled by our six kids.

There is frantic donning of snowgear and the garage door slams repeatedly as they race outside, each hauling a plastic disk that promises to send them down the hill at warp speed.

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Except for one kid. Our youngest child is sobbing and wailing in depths of despair that would make Anne Shirley proud.

“This mitten won’t fit on this hand! And this mitten is on this hand” – she thrusts it at me as evidence – “but the OTHER mitten won’t fit on my OTHER hand because ITS thumb is on THIS side!!”

We can hear the bigger kids outside, laughing, yelling, breaking a path down the sledding hill. But she is left behind, left out…and her shiny red sled surely pouts in sympathy from the lonely garage where it waits for her.

She flings both her arms out to show me. “LOOK!” Her four-year-old vocabulary is limited, but what she really means is Hey! This infidel mitten dares to defy me! Behold!

I’m beholding. The thumbs do look…funny. The mitten she’s wearing also looks funny.

Because she has it on the wrong hand. Upside down.

I take that mitten off and hold both of them in front of her so she can see what’s wrong.

“This is how you had them,” I tell her. “Now, watch this.”

I slowly flip the mitten over and switch them to the correct hands…and they fit. No sticky-outy thumbs or anything, and all is right with the world.

She’s four, and learning. But she’s not alone.

We all try to put things on in the wrong places, and then fly into despair when it doesn’t fit right.

Moms, especially, learn that the discipline, training, and schooling that worked for their first kid usually won’t be a perfect fit for the next child. Due to God’s flair for comedy, every succeeding offspring is usually the opposite of their older brother or sister. It’s a mathematical phenomenon.

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Kids are designed with the irritating trait of resisting to mold perfectly to the likeness of others. They won’t be made into their older siblings, and they won’t be made into us – their parents. We may share many traits and features with them, but they were created to mold perfectly to the image of the One who made them…and He doesn’t fit into any box we can come up with.

We have differing personalities and short tempers. We have special needs and often incompetent, pat answers. We are kept on our toes and on our knees.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

-James 1:2-4

Some days we are all thumbs, and they’re sticking out in the wrong directions all over the place: This kid won’t respond to this consequence and this teaching style doesn’t work for this kid and this other kid sticks himself out like a sore thumb that is pushing my buttons…and he’s doing it on purpose.

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We are stretched and grown beyond our parenting wisdom, and we cry for more.

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

– James 1:5

So, we pray because we lack wisdom for the particular crisis at hand…but also, we pray because we have the wisdom in the first place to know that He must intervene in our lives.

Because honestly, what we’re really saying is, Hey! These infidel children dare to defy me! Behold!

We thrust the situation and these children and all of the sore thumbs at Him, and He gently shows us how to put things upright again. He shows us how He made us all to fit together.

Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

– Ephesians 4:15-16

As we pray with wisdom, for wisdom, for our kids and all of our differences, He does more than just show us how He is making our kids into His image. He makes us more into His image, too.

He says, This is how you had them. Now…watch this.

And He shows us how we are made to fit together perfectly. 

the right fit: how He molds a family of sore thumbs into His image (Copperlight Wood)

a love that grows

Posted on by November 22, 2013

 

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

Dear Reagan,

You turned eight years old today. You had little idea what it meant, and you didn’t know what you wanted for cake or presents. You knew you got extra hugs and smiles today.

You came to us full of fear and hurts and hunger and unknowns. I would lean in, you would lean away. You were wary, untrusting, hesitant.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You were afraid of stairs, of playdoh, of not being fed. You panicked at the smell of food that was not right in front of you. You were afraid of us, especially of me.

You walked with a lurch and flapped your arms when you were excited. You still flap a little, but so much less. You would eat orange peels, apple cores, and watermelon rinds. Crumbs on the floor and food on someone else’s plate was fair game if you got to it before we did. You ate a few crayons. You only tried eating an eraser once. 

You can wait for food now. You know that there’s a process to making it that you had never seen before. You know it will come to you as soon as it’s ready.

You play now. You love to play with buttons and cars, and you look at books quietly on the couch every day. You like…cookbooks.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

Now you can run. You dress yourself, you make your bed, you fold clothes, and you even refuse food to push us away sometimes…but at least that means that you obviously aren’t afraid of us starving you anymore.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You used to be hot and cold, swinging from one extreme to the other in your affection and rejection of us. You would cling aggressively one day, and shove us away the next. Now you are…well, definitely not lukewarm. You’ve leveled out to warm and cool. It’s progress, and we’ll take it.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You are learning to speak. You are learning to give and maintain eye contact to those who love you. You are learning letters, colors, shapes, and you can count to eight. You know how much four is. You know that you were seven yesterday, and that you are now eight. Whatever that means.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

But you don’t know that we prayed for you when you were a toddler. I’m so sorry it took us so long to find you. You don’t know that we saw you, found you, and chose you when you were five. That we waited and prayed and cried for you until we got to meet you when you were six, and that we brought you home months later when you were pushing seven. 

You don’t know very much about the years before that. We don’t, either.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

We have a few pictures of you as a toddler, but they are undated. We can only guess how old you were in them. We have paperwork that mentions inaccurate diagnoses that are both more and less severe than the truth of what you are healing through.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You almost never flinch anymore when I reach toward you. In the middle of the night, when you’re asleep and I tuck you in one more time before I go to bed, your arm doesn’t fly up in fear anymore to cover your face and head. I’m so sorry you ever had to do that, and that you ever felt like you had to do that here.

You are healing. You are growing and learning and we are seeing more and more of the real you, and you shine.

You are brave. You are strong. You are gentle and curious and tender and joyful.

You are growing in wisdom and stature, just as the One who redeemed you did when He was young.

a love that grows: a letter from an adoptive mama to her daughter (Copperlight Wood)

You have a mighty future. We are so honored to be in it.

With a love that grows and prays for your mountains to move,

Mama