Category Archives: reading

a path which few can tell

Posted on by August 25, 2023

She says, “I ya you, mama,” and I’m not sure if she means it, or if she even knows what it means yet, but she hears it from us and feels safe to repeat it back, finally. It has taken two years.

And him…he waves. He smiles. I give him thumbs-up, and he gives thumbs-up back, instead of any equivalent to the middle finger, which is what we’re used to. He also has recently started saying “I love you” – and it was heart-meltingly sweet at first, but then we realized that aggressive or defiant behavior follows it every time. Now, it just puts us on alert.

a path which few can tell: praying for families on the front lines

So there is progress, but we are hard to please because we want it to be faster than two steps forward, 1.9 steps back. We are past the stage of not recognizing our home anymore, but not yet to the point of getting to go out of the house for dates yet. I have vague memories about our life before adoption, including certain things that made it possible for us to leave the house without children. Maybe you’ve heard of them – I think they’re called “babysitters?” – but I don’t think they exist anymore.

Yes, it’s still hard around here. But most days, we see light at the end of the tunnel and we’re pretty confident that it’s not an oncoming freight train. We’re starting to make headway, and the emotional trauma involved in fighting our childrens’ past no longer slays me like it used to. This was not always the case.

So Perseus started on his journey…and away through the moors and fens, day and night toward the bleak north-west, turning neither to the right hand nor the left, till he came to the Unshapen Land, and the place which has no name.

And seven days he walked through it, on a path which few can tell; for those who go there again in dreams are glad enough when they awake; till he came to the edge of the everlasting night, where the air was full of feathers, and the soil was hard with ice; and there at last he found the three Gray Sisters, by the shore of the freezing sea, nodding upon a white log of drift-wood, beneath the cold white winter moon; and they chanted a low song together, “Why the old times were better than the new.”

There was no living thing around them, not a fly, not a moss upon the rocks.

– Charles Kingsley, The Heroes

The journey often feels like the place which has no name.

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A dear friend of mine said this:

I told my husband just yesterday, “Adoption is the loneliest thing you will ever do,” and I wondered out loud why would God call people to adopt if it only leaves them feeling alone and isolated….an island in a world that pays little attention…and he said, “It is not God’s will that we are alone…it is a heart condition of our society.”

And I agree with both of them. I don’t think it’s an intentional heart condition, but an undiagnosed heart condition, made possible by the combination of decades of misinformation via the media, and a shallow culture that is discomfited by those who get their hands dirty because it threatens to mess up the manicures of the elite.

Deep breath. All this, with a broken coffee pot. I guess we should be grateful that this wasn’t a caffeinated post.

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 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

– 2 Corinthians 1:3-

But friends, post-adoption depression…it’s real, and serious. It’s a different beast than post-partum or any other depression, and it comes with a myriad of its own mutilated griefs, but they’re all spawn of the same ugly monster. Life doesn’t go on hold for families who bring hurting children into their homes, and in many cases, they deal with drama and attack from several directions outside the home as well. If you know an adoptive/foster family, or a special needs family, or a family who falls into both categories (and many do) – for the love of all that is holy, pray for them.

If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

– 2 Corinthians 1:6-7

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Jesus, we pray for your peace and patience and wisdom in homes that need you utterly right now. Adoptive families, special needs families, foster families, blended families, grieving families – come over each of them with Your Spirit, and flood their homes with peace and joy, unity and healing, that makes the enemy flee.

You have great days ahead for us. Your plans are good. You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make all things new.

The Unshapen Land…it’s not a place we linger or stay, but it has lessons to teach for those who trod the bleak path there. They come out wiser and well-armed to slay the monster, and finish the task before them.

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This story is now told in Risk the Ocean: An Adoptive Mom’s Memoir of Sinking and Sanctification.

teamwork

Posted on by July 21, 2014

We got kittens last week – they’re littermates, though he’s a creamsicle tabby and she’s solid black. We named them Bingley and Knightley, and I don’t know how to be productive around such distracting cuteness. Logistical details interfere, though, too…just little things, like in the morning when I’m bent over the sink with my eyes closed to wash my face, suddenly 20 tiny needles impale my left leg.

Then they start climbing.

I grab the towel and wipe my face with one hand while blindly grasping for the ascending kitten with the other hand. Four paws, five claws each, and it takes a while to get them all free…and before I’m done, Kapow! Twenty more needles on the other leg.

You can hear the conspiracy: I’ll get this leg, you get that leg; we’ll take her down together! Go! There’s a song for this kind of teamwork.

[insert “Everything is Awesome!” from The Lego Movie]

teamwork: from sibling rivalry to men and women of greatness (Copperlight Wood)

By the time I get one kitten detached and on the ground, the other one has jumped back on me and is scaling. We go several rounds of this before I escape, gasping for air, and shut the little sinners in the bathroom behind me. And I still haven’t brushed my teeth.

It’s highly virtuous to say we’ll be good, but we can’t do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether, before some of us even get our feet set in the right way.

– Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

But then they sleep and snuggle…

teamwork: from sibling rivalry to men and women of greatness (Copperlight Wood)

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and it’s just bliss. For most of us, at least.

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Gus-Gus and the kittens, and then there were three…H-I-S-S-I-N-G.

Like many older siblings, he’s not sure what to make of them, or how he can defend himself against them without getting in trouble. Like many younger siblings, they are fearless, immune to intimidation, and have no sense of personal space. Gus can growl, spit, bully, and use all sorts of feline profanity and they will still approach him with wide-eyed adoration.

Hey, wanna be friends? Do you wanna play? Do you wanna build a snowman? No? Okay, maybe later! I’m going to go poop in your litterbox now, yay!!

[Everything is awesome!!]

teamwork: from sibling rivalry to men and women of greatness (Copperlight Wood)

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Among kids, among kittens – this week, we’ve had enough rivalry, tattling, criticism, arguing, assumptions, scratching, snatching, hissing and spitting to make any human start using profanity, feline or otherwise.

The big ones pick on the little ones. The little ones provoke and pester the big ones. The parents wonder where we missed the mark.

A new school year is looming and we’re more aware than ever of leveraging great books and curriculum to model great behavior, and eliminating twaddle that carries any hint of “boys will be boys” or “they’re just kids” type of brain-numbing, sin-condoning messages. I need it for myself, too.

We need joy, kindness, beauty. Gritty reality needs to be balanced with truth in love.

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Mind your own business. Get the plank out of your own eye. Stop picking on those who are littler than you just because you think you can. They’ve been like kittens climbing to the top of the scratching post, pulling someone down just so they can claw their way to the top.

For us, this means Ramona and Beezus and their manipulative bickering are out, and books that show kind relationships between siblings and realistic consequences are increasing – those by Edith Nesbit, Louisa May Alcott, and, well, most classics. They were written in an era that expected children to be both respectful and responsible by society at large, instead of pooh-poohed by a culture that winks at minor infractions and then gasps at teen activity that make headlines.

What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded men, so that they gather about him and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, they make a new period in history.…

– Jane Addams, 1903 address in honor of George Washington

We’re looking for characters – in fiction and reality – that discern truth from half-truth, and make the right choice without compromise. And when they don’t – because we all miss the mark sometimes – they refuse to justify or distort their sense of justice.

Some it is genuinely innocent. Kids and kittens are shamelessly clumsy, still learning about physics and gravity, how to maneuver, negotiate, climb. They tumble off furniture, trip over each other, and forget to retract their claws sometimes. They wrestle for fun, just like the kittens – Bingley is bigger, but Knightley is faster – and usually no one gets hurt.

But they do need to learn about courtesy, safety, and obedience. It is our fervent hope that our little multi-colored littermates – not the tabby and coal-black kittens, but the Mexican-Irish-Bulgarian Americans – will gather together with mutual purpose, and grow to be men and women of greatness.

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The kittens, though? They eat paper. They destroy lampshades. They climb curtains, and pant legs. And bare legs.

They hit the caps lock button on your keyboard while you’re typing on autopilot.

[EVERYTHING IS CAPS LOCK!!]

It’s Bingley’s favorite button, and he hits the mark every time.

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cover me

Posted on by July 25, 2023

This is an excerpt from Work That God Sees: Prayerful Motherhood in the Midst of the Overwhelm.

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A glittering day. The sun is up, but not awake yet – its light is still copper, like a red-haired child with curls sticking out every which way, rubbing his eyes. Morning came early and my hair is still damp from last night’s shower.

Three girls are up and bickering, requiring intervention at an average rate of two minutes per child, so in six minutes I’ve thrown the covers back three times. I give up and grab the coffee, and start throwing it back, instead.

cover me: resting in the waiting, when we want to hurry up and smell the roses (Copperlight Wood)

The day moves into breakfast, chores, lessons. You know how this goes – small details, a few more assignments every day, success gained in baby steps. Like the new blanket that will warm us in the fall, growing stitch by stitch – we work on it for a while, check our progress, and by golly – it doesn’t look any more finished than it did three weeks ago. It’s not nearly big enough to cover us. It’s nowhere near the size it’s supposed to be. And yet, there must be some progress, because I can see the colors changing.

The Word is full of vital force, capable of applying itself. A seed, light as thistledown, wafted into the child’s soul, will take root downwards and bear fruit upwards.

– Charlotte Mason, Home Education

cover me: resting in the waiting, when we want to hurry up and smell the roses (Copperlight Wood)

But we are impatient. Many days it feels like we’re caught somewhere between the need to enjoy the peculiarities of this season, and the need to rush some changes so we can enjoy this time more effectively. It’s a weird uneasiness, this hurry-up-and-smell-the-roses feeling.

That afternoon, on the couch with a sunburn so radioactive that NASA is probably tracking me, I’m trying to finish the last twenty pages of this Charlotte Mason book I started reading two years ago. I’m struggling mightily with that “power of attention and will” she speaks so highly of because there are five kids outside the open window telling stories to each other, eating lunch in a fort they made from a tarp and the patio table.

Over the clink of forks on plates and rustling of leaves in trees, I hear Iree, in an overdone British accent. “Loooong agooo, before the pushmi-pullyu was extinct—”

Andrey interrupts. “What is dat? It stinks? Ewww!!”

“No, extinct. Dead. No more of them are around anymore.” I can hear someone snickering – probably Afton, that red-haired child with curls everywhere.

The wonder that Almighty God can endure so far to leave the very making of an immortal being in the hands of human parents is only matched by the wonder that human parents can accept this divine trust with hardly a thought of its significance.

– Charlotte Mason, Home Education

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That night, like so many nights after the kids are in bed, we decompress and evaluate the day. Sometimes we look at the week and year ahead. We look at behavior and progress, in us and in our kids, and we wonder if the colors are changing.

We wonder if a child is ready for more freedom. We wonder if another child is ready for more responsibility. We wonder about our own faith – sometimes it feels like it’s not nearly big enough to cover us. It’s nowhere near the size it’s supposed to be.

We pray, and Vin puts it into words for me. “God, we’ve planted a lot of seed. We’re waiting…but we’re tired of looking at just dirt.”

And I remember something a friend said to me recently about attachment: The best progress is the slow progress. The best healing is the deep healing. Growth, and grief – they both process slowly.

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For the wife, sister, friend, daughter, mama – for the overrun one who finds herself crouched on the bathroom floor, elbows on knees, head in hands: When we feel like we’re making bricks without straw, we run to the unruffled One who calmly used a basket of loaves and fish to feed thousands.

Never fear, whatever may happen. You are both being led. Do not try to plan. I have planned. You are the builder, not the Architect.

Go very quietly, very gently. All is for the very best for you.

– God Calling, edited by A.J. Russell

cover me: resting in the waiting, when we want to hurry up and smell the roses (Copperlight Wood)

On Sunday I sat with a child who never knew how to be held by a mother – who didn’t know how to relax in affection but would only submit in stiff fear: body rigid, legs unbending. She’s been our very own push-me-pull-you as she learns about body space, gentleness, and appropriate touch. And now she leans, rests against my side during the church service – not in fierce pushing as before, but gently laying her head on my shoulder. She nestles there, hands folded, legs hanging off the chair, one sandal kicked off. Resting.

It’s only because He is big enough to cover us, all of us. We can see the colors changing. Slowly, stitch by stitch, we make the blanket that warms and shelters.