Category Archives: grief

turning it up: support for adoptive families comes to audio

Posted on by April 11, 2023

Here’s a confession that those of you who are regular readers here already know: I go in phases of sharing about adoption and special needs. Sometimes I forge ahead in it and share several posts here or on social media, and other times I pull back to recuperate.

It’s hard to share. It’s super personal. The issues are painful. But those issues need to be seen.

Not everyone will stop to notice. Most will probably keep scrolling — no shame, we all need a little mindless scrolling sometimes — and some will click “like” on the posts without even reading them because they’re too long.

I get that. I skim or skip posts sometimes for the same reason.

But we miss things when we’re always too busy to stop and notice them.

And adoptive, foster, and special needs families are collapsing from people being too busy to notice them.

These families are in our churches and neighborhoods — until they’re not. Until they give up on church or they give up on marriage. Until it all becomes too much because people are so busy scrolling past, giving a thumbs up to the concept of adoption but having no clue about what’s really going on in these families.

How do we move upstream to prevent divorce, depression, abuse, and suicide? How do we draw people into the church and community instead of driving them away from it?

By seeing people. But we have to look past the surface and stop scrolling for a few minutes to do it.

So I’ve collected my adoption posts in one place here. They are full of the stuff under the surface, behind the curtain, while we try to walk the line of privacy and transparency. They are by no means the full story, but they are enough to give the respectful, caring observer plenty to think about…and to send a message to other adoptive, foster, and special needs families. Here’s that message:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And you’re not going crazy. You are seen and loved and understood. 🖤

I know some of you are done with church. Some of you are done with marriage. Some of you, for the sake of younger children and your entire family, have been done with adoption and had to disrupt.

(If you’re not one of those families, that means they had to give up their adopted child to be adopted by another family — and face all the judgment, condemnation, and assumptions from a society that doesn’t know what goes on behind the scenes and is also unwittingly ignorant of the role they may be playing in the disaster and heartache these families endure.)

None of this should ever happen. Adoptive families should never feel alone and be left by the communities around them to quietly implode behind closed doors.

We can intentionally be part of the solution. 

And we need to be, because there are plenty of people who seem intent on being part of the problem, too busy reveling in their know-it-allness that they cannot fathom there might still be something to learn about this — like the Goodreads reviewer who gave Upside Down a mere 2 stars because I am “only an adoptive mom” and not a trained, lettered professional who actually (smirk) knows anything about attachment issues, mental health, or adoption.

That’s right; instead of studying for years behind a desk, I have only lived this out in my own home, 24 hours a day, for more than twice the amount of years it takes to get a bachelors degree. Clearly I have no expertise on the subjects of adoptive family support or adoptive parenting worth sharing.* #blessherheart

When I originally wrote Upside Down as a series of posts, I got emails, messages, and phone calls every day from adoptive, foster, and even biological parents who were going through the same stuff — but they thought they were alone. These were their most common responses:

“I thought we were the only ones who went through this.”
“I don’t know who to talk to.”
“I didn’t know how to explain this.”
“I thought we were alone.”
”I wish everyone we knew would read this.”

But you know what the most common response is from non-adoptive/foster families? It’s this:

“Whoa. I had no idea.”

No wonder these families feel alone.

It’s past time to change that.

And now there’s no excuse not to, because Upside Down is now available in audio (as you read that, you should hear it in a victorious sing-song voice, like TA-DAHHH!) and the first three segments are totally free and full of the inside scoop people needed yesterday, before they did that thing that triggered the adoptive kiddo to regress. So grab them here and share them with your friends, teachers, pastors, nosy neighbors, favorite aunt who stillll doesn’t get it, and anyone else who needs to know how they can truly support adoptive and foster families without unintentionally causing further harm.

Because we’re gonna change this thing. The world will see that what adoptive and foster families are doing is vital, but the work cannot be done without understanding and support. And we shouldn’t have to anymore.

*In case you’re wondering, I have similar inept, unprofessional, raw, untrained experience in pursuing God while being a mom of many, dealing with special needs and fighting depression and encountering other messy life circumstances in motherhood — so you should *definitely* stay away from Oh My Soul and ABIDE and Work That God Sees too, since I don’t have the right letters after my name and therefore have nothing worthwhile to share in those, either. Seriously, those books are only for the rest of us. xo

not dead, just sleeping: when you need a resurrection

Posted on by April 21, 2022

In the last few weeks of brooding almost 40 birds in our bathroom, I’ve learned a few things about chicks and quail:

They will poop on new bedding before you even finish laying it down.

They will poop in their new dish of food before you leave the room.

They will poop in their water before you turn your back.

Aaaaand quail look dead when they’re sleeping.

not dead, just sleeping: when you need a resurrection

That last point, at least, I knew ahead of time, and it’s a good thing I did. During the first week there was often a moment of panic as we looked in the brooder to see them passed out, collapsed on their sides, legs out. But that’s just how they sleep.

They’re great, though: snuggly, nosy, clumsy, and messy. The water dish was their favorite hangout when they were small enough to walk in it – sometimes for drinking, but mostly for wading and splashing, and then tracking little wet toe prints everywhere. They thought they were ducks, though I told them otherwise.

We lost one within hours of bringing them home (truly dead quail differ from sleeping quail in that they’re cold, stiff, and not breathing) but the other 19 are happy and healthy in spite of our complete lack of experience. A week after we got the quail, our chicks arrived, and even the sick one we thought we’d lose managed to pull through. We call her Toughie.

And, can I interrupt this bird trivia to just point out how amazing that is? Isn’t it incredible that we can just take something on that we’ve never done before, and still muddle through with success?

I mean, it hasn’t been super easy. We’ve spent months researching, learning, gathering supplies, and building shelters for them. But as with most things, deciding to do the work is almost harder than actually doing the work.

During the first week, I often woke up at 3 am, anxious about how they were doing. I ran downstairs, opened the door, and heard their soft, happy twittering; they were fine, all nineteen, scattered and sleeping and eating and climbing all over each other. They thought they were puppies, even though I reminded them they are quail.

But there was that one time they weren’t all fine…when we went from twenty to nineteen because one of them was cold and stiff under the heat lamp. So for a split second when I opened the door and saw them asleep, looking dead, I would get a little nervous. We remember those times when things weren’t fine, and try to guard ourselves against the uglier parts of normal.

Because it’s not just quail that look dead when they’re sleeping: See also deciduous trees, rose bushes, and hobbies that get shoved to the back of the closet. But bigger things, too – like creativity, achievement, solutions, dreams, and goals. Certain relationships. Breakthrough.

Each time one of those falls asleep, we wonder if it’s actually dead. Should we give up on it? Because we’ve seen death, and it leaves a little scar of trust issues and anxiety to work through every time we encounter anything that resembles it. Is this worth resuscitating? Do we nurse it back to health? Do we keep feeding and watering it in faith, or do we pull the plug and move on to the other 19 needs vying for our attention?

Some things just need time and surrender, but others need persistent attention.

For example, my houseplant that we affectionately call Anne Shirley. As soon as she (or it, I don’t care – don’t come to me with pronoun nonsense) feels the slightest bit parched or neglected, she wilts in the depths of despair.

The first time it happened, I thought I killed her for sure. Woomp – all leaves down, this one’s a goner.

But I felt the stems, and they seemed okay. So I gave her some water, and lo and behold – the next day, Anne Shirley was as perky as ever. Such a drama queen.

(My glorious fern, on the other hand, is a different story. We’ve started calling her Eleanor – as in, Dashwood – because if she’s neglected she will just slowly turn paler and paler, suffering in silence.)

So some things must be watered, and others must be waited for.

And many require both. We water in the waiting, not knowing how long it will take to see life again. These are the situations the Lord must move in, because you cannot force growth – overwatering results in death as much as neglect does – and He must perform the rescue because we’ve tried everything and still it is stiff and cold, not breathing: A loved one’s salvation, a child’s return, a favorable ruling. After we’ve done everything we know to do, we’re desperate for what only He can do.

But this is what He does. When life is in the red, He intervenes out of the blue in ways we never could have imagined.

And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”

– Luke 24:38-41, ESV

This life of watering and waiting is where faith and obedience intersect. It is the lesson of walking steadily on without constantly checking progress, checking email, checking notifications, checking the mailbox. Faith and obedience knows the answer is coming, and does not have to constantly ask “Are we there yet?” like a kid on a road trip.

You’ve done and are doing what you need to do. So give them time, they’ll perk up soon. Those situations might think they’re dead —- you need to remind them they are alive.

The trees outside know; the pussywillows are growing again. The time for things to wake up is here.

_______

Related: What if you see the rescue coming, and it scares you? The newsletter comes out next week and this is what we’re talking about. Sign up here if you need it.

made to grow: why we surrender to win

Posted on by November 22, 2021

There are seasons of motherhood when I spend all day saying stupid things like “No, you may not swing the cat in the pillowcase,” and “No, you may not take the cat outside on a leash,” and “No, you may not put the baby overalls on the cat,” and also (lest you think every wild idea around here involves a cat) “Why are you on that part of our roof?” By the time we make it to bedtime, our sons think putting pajamas on is a contact sport and I am so sick of refereeing the game that I want to eject everyone from it.

made to grow: why we surrender to win

That’s just normal parenting. Throw in special needs or health issues or a major home repair, and everything feels overwhelming and out of proportion. Life is hard, full of real problems that platitudes have no answers for. In those seasons, we dread the morning and the new day. We do not know what the future holds, but if past performance is any indicator of future results, it seems safer to just stay in bed.

Some of my kids have special needs, and usually those needs are far more behavioral than physical. Sometimes they just refuse to grow and move forward, and there is nothing I can do to move them past the place they’ve dug their heels in.

And the thing I have learned — and am still learning — is that parenting, adoption, and special needs are not necessarily pass/fail endeavors. Because the child makes his or her own choices, and eventually the child has to learn to clean up their own mess. We all do, right?

We’re all meant to grow. And the more a child refuses to grow, the more God grows me. Either way, God brings healing and wholeness. It’s just more fun when we don’t resist it.

If God is giving you the opportunity to grow and heal in these days, to rip something out and start over again, then for the love of all that is holy, do not squander it. Do not shy from the Lord’s probing questions, gentle correction, or nudges toward alignment and surrender. Our joy is at stake in these opportunities to clean up the mess.

We have to do the heart-work of wholeness and forgiveness, of understanding our triggers, of maturing past that old, unattractive hang up, whatever it is. The healing can come in just a few minutes or it can take years, but the timeline rests on our own willingness to surrender.

Here’s a good word for us: The sun doesn’t insist on shining on everything all the time; it surrenders every day. It yields to clouds and isn’t diminished by the presence of something that blocks its light. It’s not in competition with any other light or any other thing that gets in its way and creates a shadow. It just keeps shining, doing what it was made to do.

Every night, it is beautiful in surrender. And regardless of how cold or cloudy it was the day before, it never fails to rise the next day. That might be a word for us, too.

Sooner or later things start to take shape and we can see what the Maker is up to. And it’s always good…eventually.

But surrender is hard. Haaaaarrrd, say it with me in four syllables. If it wasn’t, would it be surrender at all? But it is also powerful, because surrender is also birthing, bringing new life. And when we see the fruit on the other side of it, we see the beauty and joy and breakthrough that come from laying down our agenda for His.

It doesn’t matter if it’s homeschooling, writing a book, parenting, learning anything new, or finally mastering the act of getting dressed in the morning without tangling up your pantleg and tripping yourself (hey, I only write about what I know), we are always learning and growing.

Or, we ought to be. There are those who choose to stagnate, but that’s probably not you.

So, a word of encouragement: If you are feeling the burn of an uphill climb, it’s because you’re going somewhere. Stretching. Moving. Making strides. Gaining ground. Advancing. Moving forward. Going places.

Once you surrender, the unexpected won’t stop you. Mistakes, once realized, confessed and yielded to God, will only advance you further.

So, press in – there is no setback God won’t use to move you forward when you walk in surrender to Him.

____________

This is an excerpt from ABIDE volume 6: Surrender to Win. The ABIDE series is now complete, and it’s available here and everywhere books are sold.