AN ADOPTIVE MOTHER'S THOUGHTS ON HER CHILD'S STORY

FROM BETH:

I realize now that when we first brought our children home I had an undefined but deeply felt and well-meant desire. However, I have also realized that my desire was not exactly what God had in mind. Let me explain. I wanted our adopted children be so loved, so secure, so encompassed in the life and culture of our family and our story, that they would come to a point where they never felt different or separate from us. I didn't want them to feel like they didn't fit in or that they were somehow "other." I wanted the sadness and torment of their story to be absorbed in the love of our story. I wanted the pain of their pasts to be erased by the power of healing love. 

But trying to lose the one story in the beauty of the other creates an invisible barrier that works to separate, which is the complete opposite of what I desired! It wars against the spirit of adoption which does not erase any of our pasts, but rather uses the past as part of the redemptive story of love. And that redemption my friends is the freedom that propels us all into our destinies! 

As our children have grown up (they are now 21, 21, 23, 24, 25, 25, 27. 3 by birth, 4 by adoption) I have realized that God has not asked me to be an author/writer of my children’s stories. He doesn’t require me to heal or cover up or redeem their stories—that was His to do! 

His plan for me, and for them, is so much better! 

So, what is my role then? I have asked this question countless times over the past 16 years of adoptive parenting. 

And I have discovered that He has given me the a different role, one that invites me to fully embrace my child as I co-labor with Him in the transformation of an orphan into a true son or daughter. That is the story of adoption, both theirs and mine. 

So, I have been learning to be:

• A Caretaker

I have the privilege of caring for and nurturing their story. As a caretaker I cannot ignore or neglect my chid’s past. Rather, I get to discover, along with them, the nature of this unique garden that is their life, filled with plants both exotic and unfamiliar. I have the honor of helping them discover the beauty of it, and make sense of the unfamiliar and even the unknown. I have sensed the Lord telling me to embrace each child fully, including their pasts.

As my children have gone through the process of trying discover who they are, I realize that they are longing for me to see them. Really see them. See that they are, in fact, different from me. They are looking to me to see if I will approve, accept, and celebrate them as Russian, as members of a different culture and a different family. This has been tricky for me because there are parts of their stories by no fault of their own that are not honorable, not worthy of celebration—things like rejection, abuse, addiction, prostitution, murder, abandonment. But you know what I have discovered? There is always much to celebrate in each story. So I honor what is honorable. And I care for the details, the good, the bad and the ugly.

• A Curator  

I select the content to be presented at the appropriate time, and to the appropriate audience. We have been intentional to search out all the details that we could find, collecting anything about their story and their birth families, so that when the time came we would be able to help. Part of the role of a curator is fact-finding. To me it is an expression of love to be a keeper of this information. Interestingly, some of our children have wanted, even needed to know details, and some have not—at lest not yet. Depending on their age and their maturity, we release parts of the story we feel they are ready to see. This “time-release” issue is huge and I have found that prayer has been such a gift in discerning the right time to share. I have also discovered that simply asking my child if he/she wants to know more has been helpful. I may not be able to find out more, or I may discern that more information would best be kept for a later time, but even so by asking I am able to help my child recognize that there is a story that belongs to him/her and that I am here to help.

In the early years the telling is easier, as we withhold the uglier and more painful details of the story. But as our children grow older, their questions also mature. They will wonder about motives, about fault. They will go over their story with the inquisitive eyes, seeking to make sense of the facts they know, and to fill in the details they don’t know. And my role in this process is, in part, to gather information and then release it. 

• A Truth-Teller

For we wonder, wouldn’t it be nicer, kinder, more loving to keep the uglier parts of their story hidden? Our desire to protect is so strong. Isn’t that what good mamas do?  

Truth telling is scary I have found. What if the information is too much for him? What if she is not ready to receive it? What if they lash out in their pain?

I have learned that as much as I would like to cover over, sugar coat or lie about these things, there very well may be a time when my child needs to know the facts. And so often the facts, even the darkest and most appalling facts, are less frightening than the fear of the unknown and what-ifs that often manifest in what looks like anger, hatred, rebellion or opposition, but is in actual fact simply deep-rooted fear. 

In reality, I can't actually cover up what they already know in the depth of their souls. But I can speak words of life and sonship, hope and forgiveness, understanding and compassion, into those dark places. 

So I have learned not to try to fix it —or them, but rather just be a presence of love, life, and hope in the complexities of their story, always ready to lead them up and out into the beautiful open spaces of sonship, redemption and destiny in Jesus. 

I’ve learned not to let fear of the negatives that I know, or fear of all the frightening possibilities that I don’t know, intimidate me from this important role in my child’s life.

• A Story-Teller

Recently I heard someone give this excellent advice: Don’t get stuck in the subplots. 

As our adopted children take in, process, and make sense of the facts of their story, I get to be one who helps them shape the narrative. I have realized that although I am not the author of their story, God has given me the amazing opportunity to offer language and perspective that places my child’s story in the context of His story, the grand telling of a love so powerful that it redeems us all!  My words to and over my child help them interpret the facts of their narrative, which is such a key in the teen and young adult years. Weave hope and destiny into the words you speak. Over time they will begin to see themselves defined by that, rather than by their past. By SONSHIP rather than ORPHAN. By BELOVED rather than REJECTED.

I find that it helps in this process to ask, what is the story Father is telling about my child? And how can I help connect their subplot and mine to His glorious story? 

And I have found that I am empowered with courage to embrace what is hard in my child’s story when I tell it in the context of love and honor, and in the safety of God's overarching grand story.

I look for ways in the telling of the story to speak to my child’s true identity, acknowledging the past, but speaking to the possibilities of the future. Asking questions with my child, and offering possibilities in the face of the missing pieces of their story has really helped me in this story-telling role. “I wonder what that must have felt like for you?” or “Maybe your mother was so so sad when that happened.” I like questions because they allow me to come alongside my child and connect with them where they need it most. 

Maybe you also have been discovering your role in your child’s story. I would love to hear what you are learning. For how wonderful is this dear friends: the story is not over yet—theirs and mine and yours!! 

I feel like I can not end this post without saying that all 4 of our adopted children have had seasons where they have pushed me away from their stories, or tried to deny any connection at all with their pasts and the residue of relinquishment in their thinking, emotions and relationships. I have heard quite a few times, “The way I deal with that is that I just don’t think about it.” 

And so I wait. I pray. I speak life. I stay emotionally connected, so that when the time comes that they are ready to “go there,” I am ready to go with them. 

What a beautiful gift the Father has given us to participate in His story of redemptive love!

OUR WEIGHTED BLANKET

From Beth:

Stephen and I were not as prepared as we thought we were for parenting our new children. Truthfully, we thought we had this parenting gig down. We didn't know that our adopted treasures would need something different from us. But, as with many of us who adopted before all the trauma and adoption education was so wide-spread, we figured it out pretty quickly! Yikes!

Our first clue came in those early days after coming home from Russia with our new son and daughter. Huge HUGE transitions for us all! We were constantly asking the question, "Is this behavior adoption related? (We didn't even know to ask if was trauma related!) Or is this normal for this child? Or maybe it's just the stress of travel and jet lag, or frustration at not being understood, or.....?" 

It reminded me of caring for our three newborns, actually. "Is she crying because she's hungry? Tired? Needs a diaper change? Sick?....." But, our children who came home to us through adoption were older, years beyond diapers and midnight bottle feedings. 

Once the honeymoon stage was over, the rages began. It became clear that our son's fits were actually not fits at all. There was an intensity, a deep place of anger and fear, that I soon realized was more like rage than any childhood fit I had ever seen. 

I remember times when I would literally lay the weight of my body over my son's raging little form-- praying that he would know that he was safe, desiring that my embrace would keep him from hurting me or himself, hoping that maybe the strong physical presence of his loving mother would somehow communicate to him that no anger need ever overcome him, that peace would replace fear. The weight of my love was the beginning of the miraculous process of displacement that is adoption. 

Whirling fear is displaced with love 
Raging anger with an anchored peace
Dark hopelessness with a bright future

Over the years I have found that the trauma my son experienced before he came home requires this action of displacement quite often. Like a weighted blanket, I still cover him. Of course, I don't cover him with my body any more for he has grown into a strong young man, but with my love, through prayer and words of hope. 

It is so clear to me that as surely as my husband and I are creating a legacy of love and security and hope for our children, that there exists also an orphan legacy--things handed down to a child from a past marred by relinquishment, fear and lack. But in those long moments of struggle with my son, and all through the years when the legacy of fear would burst to the surface despite the weight of our love, I have known that when God's peace rules, the orphan legacy is nullified. It must make way for life-giving peace.

For though the mountains should depart and the hills be shaken or removed, yet My love and kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace and completeness be removed, says the Lord, Who has compassion on you. (Isaiah 54:10)

And it has not stayed hidden from me for long that I am not so unlike my son. His trauma has traumatized me. His pain has become my pain. 
And I am desperately in need of the weighted blanket of my Father's love. 
And I must choose, once again, to allow His legacy of love, peace and hope, displace my fears and heal my wounds. 

LOOKING PAST THE CHALLENGES, I SAW HER

One of our favorite things about our Hope at Home ministry is that we get to meet some of the most wonderful people! So happy to share one of these special people with you today, our friend Katie Gonzalez. She and her husband Tony are adoptive and foster parents, and they somehow find time to help other parents through Promise 686. Be encouraged by this testimony of Father God breaking in to Gonzalez bed-time routine. Let's trust God to do the same in our homes as well! 

Come on over to our Facebook Page for more encouragement, testimonies, resources and wonderful connection. 
Did you know we are on Twitter and Pinterest too? Well, we are!!

“I’m sitting here in awe of the testimony you so vulnerably share through your blog and your Christmas/New Years power point. There are so many emotions that surface while reading about what has taken place over the last few months in your family. The overarching theme is certainly God’s grace and His faithfulness! His Grace that is always present through the good days and bad and His faithfulness to restore what the enemy has tried to steal from your precious children.”  

This is what my friend Elizabeth said to me the other day.  And it got me thinking. Grace and faithfulness? I can see it in my life and I can see it in my children’s lives. But how can I help them to see it in their lives?  

How do you help a child to understand the Grace of God when they remember being hungry? 

Not hungry for lunch.

HUNGRY. 

There’s no food and no adults and the gnawing in my belly feels like it’s eating me up. 

That hungry.

How do you prove to a child that they can trust their father in this new family, much less a Father in Heaven that they can’t see or touch, when they remember--remember Daddy is hitting mommy and she’s yelling and it’s a blur of fear so great it blots out all else.  

How do you teach a child that God is faithful when they remember being alone? 

Alone in a deserted alley.

Alone in a dirty, empty apartment. 

ALONE.  

I am not a child expert, psychologist, or advanced-degree- holder. I am a flawed mama to 7 children from hard places. I am an imperfect wife to a blessing of a husband. I am a teacher who makes mistakes. But I am also a child of God who lives for His Grace and is so utterly lost without His Faithfulness. And I am doing my level best to help my deeply wounded, flawed but oh so beautiful children to understand that this God will not desert or leave them.  

How do we help them to heal, see the beauty within, and find their way to God? Those wounds are real, but will they define our children?  

My prayer is that my children will be defined by the knowledge that God brought them out of the desert so to speak. 

That they are the children of a KING! 

That He has a purpose for them that only they can fulfill.

That He finds them absolutely amazing, beautiful, valuable, and worthy of loving!

One night last week, as I bent over to kiss a precious child good night, I saw her.  

I mean, really saw her. 

I looked past her challenges for once that day and really saw HER. It was one of those moments when I believe God gives us a glimpse of His heart and love. I don’t know about you, but those moments are so overwhelming for me that I can’t truly articulate much. The words “I love her” seem so inadequate.  

This child has only been ours a short time.

155 bath and bedtimes.

155 days of dressing for school. 

And most of those days have been measured in the number of meltdowns, or lack thereof. The number of times she got in and out of bed before finally falling asleep at midnight, or not falling asleep at all. Therapy appointments, notes from school, and sibling fights. In 155 days, stories have been shared that make my heart sad, small milestones reached that made me cheer for joy, and realizations that this child may be forever a child, accepted.  

As I sat there, bent over her bed, I murmured a prayer of thanksgiving. Just

Thank you God for her

Thank you for her in my life
 

She is the baby of our seven kids, all of whom have come to us with wounds we did not inflict. Pain from a fallen, broken world has impacted their lives at far too young an age. In our bumbling efforts to parent, we have rare moments when we “get it right” but more often than not, we just exacerbate the wound. We snap, we yank, we yell, we grumble, we punish. Yet I’m trying to show her God’s Grace?

But last night? God’s love for this child washed over me in such an intense wave that all I could do was stroke her hair and thank him for this blessing. 

I wondered at the power of it. 

At how it spilled over onto all of the children as I watched them make last minute ditch efforts to avoid bedtime.  Instead of being irritated, for once I saw each child. I forgot about unbrushed teeth and instead saw scared eyes behind anxious laughter. I missed the spaghetti sauce splattered down a pajama shirt as I watched a blossoming ballerina who desperately wants to believe she is beautiful despite what she’s been told.  

I looked and saw seven precious works of art, beauty beyond compare, gifts in abundance. For a brief night I felt as if God removed my fogged up vision and gave my His sight for my children.  

I have prayed for this. I have begged and pleaded that He would give me feelings of love and joy for all of my children. All you mamas and daddies out there, you know what I’m lamenting--my desire to actually like all of my children in the face of my inability to do so.  

The ability to see the child, the child of God, not the child of their past.  

Not the survivor, but the creation.  

The beauty behind often sullen eyes and angry words.  

The preciousness behind slammed doors, temper tantrums, and closed hearts.  

How often am I that sullen child, and still God whispers, “Precious child, come to me. I love you.” 

Oh I so want that for my children. I want to show them a glimpse of this huge love their Heavenly Father has for them. How can I show them His love, His Grace, when I don’t want to forgive them for the small, insignificant annoyances they’ve committed?  

So I have begged. And I have failed as often as I’ve succeeded. Probably more.  

But this night, such a gift. Even in my memory it makes my heart feel glad in a way that leaves me bereft of words. And I beg for many more just like it as I remember my own lack of self control this very day.  

And then the reality hits me.

God’s Grace shining on ME despite how badly lacking in perfection I am! 

His faithfulness in holding me up through a journey I NEVER expected. 

His faithfulness at filling in the gaps I can never bridge. 

His faithfulness at caring for my soul when it is hungry and sore.  

Once again He is reminding me, “I didn’t call you to this because you have the answers. I called you to this because I have the answers. I will show them, not you.” 

I’ve often heard people say that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. I would beg to differ. He gives us what only He can handle and then holds us up as we stumble through the journey with a promise that He will always be there.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. (Psalm 23:1-4)

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:-10)