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Moving Forward: An Adoptive Mom Reflects On Her Empty Nest

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My phone says 2:24 a.m. I woke up hungry two hours ago. Quietly devoured half the cantaloupe I bought at the farmer’s market yesterday. Read a bunch of my old blog posts. Cried the ugly cry. Now I have a hangover. A cantaloupe and vulnerability hangover. Why did I write all of that stuff for the world to see?

I’ve been meaning to come back here for years. Yes, I did show up a couple of times in the past 24 months— four, to be exact.

“What happened?” A well-meaning reader recently asked. “Why did you stop writing? It must have been something significant.”

I couldn’t answer at the time. I didn’t have the courage to say the words. But I’ve been thinking about it lately. Why can’t I write for my own blog? Why do I avoid it like nine-year-old boys avoid toothbrushes? Why is this so hard?

It’s hard because I feel embarrassed. Because I feel raw. Because I wore my heart on the outside of me for years and one day it broke and I didn’t want anyone to see that part. So I hid. That’s the truth of it.

But it’s not like I hid on purpose. I didn’t say to myself, “I’m just going to leave my readers hanging. I’m not going to write anymore.” No. It wasn’t like that. It was more like, “Today I am going to breathe. I am going to try to get out of bed. Try to brush my hair and put on clothes and look like the girl My Honey married a decade ago.” Those things took effort. So much effort some days I couldn’t do much else.

I experienced something similar once before. Months of going through motions I have no recollection of. Years of grieving the death of a dream. Grieving so hard I nearly lost myself in the ocean of silent sorrow. I came around, but the grief haunted relentlessly if I was still or quiet for any length of time. Because of that, what happened more recently felt familiar. But familiarity was no comfort. My breaking point came out of nowhere. I don’t remember exactly when. There was no one event that could be called “the catalyst.” I just noticed blood one day. Dried blood and fresh blood oozing from the heart that used to beat so beautifully on my sleeve. I felt protective of it. I couldn’t take any more risks with an organ so raw. It needed time to heal, restore, renew. I didn’t dare write one word. Not one.

After all I’d shared about myself, My Honey, and our precious “Boys of Summer,” I didn’t want anyone to know how hard it really was to become a family. I didn’t want readers who fell in love with my boys when they were sweet and kind and fun and loved me, to see them in any other light.

Oh, there were hints in blogs along the way. The few I posted between 2017 and 2019 were a glimpse into a world where none of us felt comfortable, a world where My Honey and I often sat in our car in the driveway after our Monday Date Night, dreading to go inside the house. Sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we turned around and drove to the park. We sat on a hard green bench talking about what went so terribly wrong and fighting one another with our words because we couldn’t agree on how to fix it. We felt held hostage by the strangers in our home who looked like the boys we loved and rescued, but who acted like people who hated our guts and only wanted to escape the life we created just for them.

I know it’s crazy, but I felt ashamed that we weren’t doing a good job as parents. (If we were, our kids would love and respect us and follow the rules we live by, right?) If you parent teens, I know you are laughing right now. Even if you birthed them, they don’t always like you or choose to live the way you feel is best. I KNOW this in my head. But after everything everyone did for us, to help us adopt our boys and have a spacious home in which to “live, laugh, love” as the words above our mantle said, I felt ashamed and afraid to let the world see how badly we were failing at “living, laughing, and loving.” I couldn’t see past the pain of the present to give anyone hope in our future as a family. I didn’t want to disappoint, but I couldn’t control the outcome. I couldn’t control anything. My dream world crumbled and I was left with an empty nest, a broken spirit and a marriage in need of repair. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

Deep grieving that finally led to breakthrough began last August. I remember the season well. My Honey was called to preach in a new district. Circumstances forced us to move from the house God gave us when we adopted our boys. Each room had been packed and emptied. Everyone gone. I stayed behind to paint.

Agreeable Gray. I will forever remember the color of Sherwin Williams’ most popular neutral. Day after day I trimmed and rolled my way through our hollow home. Each room holding stories and memories, joy and pain and secrets only families know. Each room a museum in my mind. I knew where every piece of furniture should be, every picture, every book and knick-knack and treasure. But it was all gone. There was only my ladder, my brush and roller and the tray of gray paint I dragged along the floor on an old sheet.

I love painting. Love the system, the challenges, the transformation—as fresh, clean color covers all the smudges and stains of daily life. I started in one of the boys’ rooms. Just a smallish cube with a closet. It should not have been hard. But it was. Excruciating to be exact. I was alone with all the memories made within those walls. Thankful to be alone as sorrow surfaced and escaped in noisy wails.

 I painted over each memory. Neutralized them all with Agreeable Gray. How many times had I quietly entered this room late at night to pray mama prayers over the sleeping teen on the bed in the corner? How many times had I carefully cleaned up the aftermath of his rage? I’ll never forget the night this room looked like a war zone with broken glass, bloody footprints and an explosion of belongings that took days to repair and reorganize.

As my paint roller glides over the walls, my brain replays the reels of footage stored somewhere inside. Where did things go wrong, Lord? How did we go from back scratches and prayers, laughter and “I love you’s” to satanic symbols and silence and a closed door that couldn’t prevent hatred from seeping underneath and permeating our entire household?

My brain hurts with the memories of those days and nights that blur together in a cocktail of absolute emotional chaos. I shift gears. Try to refocus. Try to find the “happy memories” file. It feels so thin compared to the others. But they are there. The bike rides, camping trips and our Friday “Family Christian Movie Nights.” The happy chatter of Ukrainian voices playing board games or unwrapping Christmas presents. The sparkling eyes when speaking of a certain girl who is now my precious daughter-in-law and the mother of our two beautiful grandbabies.

It all went too fast, Lord. I couldn’t find my feet as a mom before they were gone. Now I’m “Ouma” to a toddler with a contagious smile and a strawberry-haired girl with blue, blue eyes. Help me to get it right. To love them all well. To live in what is “now” and learn from what was “then.”

I dragged my ladder from room to room. Conversations seeped from the walls. My mind heard them all as I rolled gallon after gallon of Agreeable Gray.

  • In our home school room—the standoff between me and two newly landed foreigners about the importance of enunciating correctly so their English could be understood by the locals. “But I’m Ukrainian. I will always speak like a Ukrainian. You can’t make me speak like an American!”
  • In the kitchen—Boy: “If I drop this glass on the floor and break it, will you ever be able to fix it?”

Me: “Not really.”

Boy: “Exactly. And that is why saying ‘sorry’ doesn’t work. It doesn’t fix anything. Those are just words.”

  • In My Honey’s office—My Honey to two bright-eyed boys: “I’m giving you these i-phones, but you need to know how dangerous they are. They can be used for good, and they can be used for bad. It’s my job to protect you from the bad as much as I can. So, these phones come with rules. With a contract that you will need to sign if you agree to the rules…”
  • In the living room—Me with a pounding heart to a boy and a girl lying on the sofa with a blanket over them: “Please sit up. Put your hands above the blanket. I’m not trying to be awkward, but this is not appropriate.”

Boy in response, “This is why we go to our friends’ houses instead of inviting them here. You make everything awkward with your stupid “rules.” ‘No girls in the bedroom. No blankets. No this. No that.”

  • In the master bedroom—My Honey in an angry whisper from his side of our queen sized bed: “I don’t know how much more stress I can take. Something has to change or I am going to end up in the hospital. (He did. Cardiac ablation.)
  • In our bathroom—Me to God, “Do something! My family is falling apart and I can’t fix it!”

By the time I reached the final bedroom with my last gallon of paint, I’d exhausted my tears. I could only smile to myself as I erased a misspelled song title “Young, Dum and Broke” from the wall behind the spot where my tall boy’s bed used to be. He moved out the year before we did, when I was away on a speaking engagement. Went to spend the night with a friend and never came home. He took nothing with him. I left his room as he left it, always hoping he’d move back again. He never did. It was the last room I packed. The closet jammed full of clothes, shoes of several sizes, RC cars, tools and art supplies in a jumbled floor-to-ceiling mess. I saved a tote with his yearbook, sketchpads, photo albums and a few things I thought he might want someday. Everything else went to the curb.

As Agreeable Gray covered his attempt to chalk a wall portrait of the girl who broke his heart in high school, I prayed for him. Too grown for his own good. Flown too soon. Doing his thing in this hostile world. God, show my boy how much You love him. Pierce that independent façade and heal his heart. Let him know he always has a home and two parents who love him very, very much.

I’m done now. Done with living in those memories. Done beating myself up for whatever I did that seemed so wrong to them at the time. Done hiding from the world because my family wasn’t perfect. And done blogging about it all. I’m sure there will be a book one day. In the meantime, I’m choosing to live in the present. Enjoy my grandbabies. Love on my scattered family as best I can and in whatever ways I’m permitted. And allow Jesus to continue healing me as I refocus on ministry.

You will still be able to find me here. And on my @samedressdifferentday Facebook page. And hopefully soon on YouTube, if I can ever get that vlog thing figured out. Thank you, dear readers, friends and supporters of our family for these past 6 years. Thank you for your financial contributions toward our adoption. Thank you for your prayers. We could NOT have done this without you. And believe it or not, My Honey and I have both said we’d do it all again. Perhaps differently. Perhaps with fewer expectations (for them and us), and much more grace and flexibility. But we would do it. Because it’s what Jesus called us all to do. Love the unlovable. Do good to those who use us. Care for the orphans and widows. Somehow in the doing of that, we become more like Him and less like this self-centered world. And that’s what I want more than anything—to be like Jesus. Don’t you?

The Imperfect Mother A Mother’s Day Reflection

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You scream, “Oh sorry, I forgot …You are PERFECT!!

You NEVER do anything wrong!!!”

The foot stomps. The door slams. Then…

“Why don’t you give me a 20 minute speech about it?!!”

 

Perfect?

I am not perfect.

I know I am far from perfect.

Loathing my mistakes, my failures.

Fearing the worst—that somehow I am not good enough,

that I am never enough, that I have scarred you…

left you with a mother wound.

 

Perfection

Is an enemy to the soul,

UNATTAINABLE.

I just don’t want you to be broken…

So I strive to fix everything,

EVERYONE.

I strive to find all the things,

organize all the schedules,

balance all the meals.

And know where the wallet is,

the keys, the insurance card,

the soccer cleats, the hairbrush

the school form, the shirt you wanted

to wear but is buried under all the

other clothes on your closet floor.

 

I am not perfect.

I just don’t want you to be broken…

So I try to fix your broken brain (we lost count of the TBI’s),

your broken hand, your broken immune system (you became allergic to the world),

your broken heart (you learned not everyone has your same heart—

friends aren’t always true and life is not fair).

I try to be a mom, a friend, a sounding board, a cheerleader, a coach,

a doctor, a nurse, a counselor, a teacher, a guide, a chef, a Merry Maid,

chauffeur, a punching bag, a good listener… I strive to be whole, to be all,

even on my worst days…even on my broken days.

 

I set schedules, make lists, prepare the meals and dose out the vitamins,

the hugs, the structure, the goodnight prayers…

I tell you that your vitamins will help you feel better,

that brushing your teeth will prevent cavities, that getting more sleep will help your anxiety….

I tell you to eat yourbroccoli, your carrots, your peas… because I want you to be healthy.

“Not too much sugar!!”

“Milk is bad for your skin!”

“You don’t do well with gluten!”

“I AM JUST TRYING TO HELP YOU!!!!”

“Why won’t you let me help you? Love you?”

 

I strive to fix it.

I never want you to be broken.

I remind you, nag you, give you speeches about wet towels on the floor,

toothpaste splattered sinks, not walking the dog, getting off your phone… your phone…

“Oh my word—JUST GET OFF YOUR PHONE!!”

 

Perfect?

I am not perfect.

I get tired.

I get weak.

I get sick.

I get frustrated.

I get impatient.

I get resentful.

I yell.

I DON’T GET OFF MY PHONE!

I am broken.

I am imperfect.

 

I don’t want you to be like me—BROKEN.

So I strive to make you hear me!

I try to tell you how to be different,

to take care of yourself,

to love yourself,

to always BE yourself,

to please—get some sleep!

 

But you don’t hear me!

You watch me. You observe me.

What do you see?

Am I teaching you how to be broken?

Broken just like me?

Perfect?

I am not perfect.

                             —Ami Novak

Dear Precious Readers,

I will soon write again. I feel the words seeping back into my soul. It’s been a hard season. In the meantime, may I introduce you to the author of this transparent piece of poetry?

Ami is my sister. She is also a:
Wellness Warrior -at Make A Healthy Change      Trauma Healing Advocate
Healthy Foodie
Non-Toxic Living Champion
Wife of almost 18 years
Mother of 2 teenagers
Chihuahua Dog mom
Website: https://pws.shaklee.com/ami-novak
Facebook: @shakleewithAmiNovak

Instagram: @Make_A_Healthy_Change

     

(Ami is also an amazing iphoneographer                    & gets photo credits for the images in this post.)

The Ache of Being Replaced

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I’m breaking my resolution not to look as I scroll through nearly a year of posts on his Facebook page, searching for some snippet of evidence that I exist in his world. I don’t. Except as the unseen photographer in many early photos, or the unacknowledged planner of celebrations and events. He wears the clothes I carefully chose and the Timberlines I gave him for Christmas. But he smiles and hugs another mother and thanks her for his gifts.

I pause on a post with the words, “Happy Birthday Mom. I love you.” I see my son in the photos, hugging and making silly selfies with a mother who isn’t me.

I’ve been replaced.

My throat tightens. I hand my friend’s ipad back. She reaches out to brush wayward bangs away from my brimming eyes. “You are still his mom,” she almost whispers. “No matter what you see there.”

I tell her what happened last week in Target.

“No! No! Don’t stand up!” English with a Ukrainian accent—a voice achingly familiar, yet hauntingly foreign. I am squatting, thumbing through six-dollar greeting cards as a red Target shopping cart slowly passes. The little girl attempting to stand in the cart doesn’t recognize me. I last saw her eight months ago when her mother and I took our kids to the beach together. The teenager pushing the cart doesn’t notice me as he speaks to the child in a serious tone.

Holding my breath, I wait for them to pass before standing. I taste the bile of bitterness as my throat tightens. Breathing and blinking hard I step into the aisle to watch my son trail after his friend’s mom as she shops with her family.

“But, He’s NOT her family!” my soul screams. Tears and snot run down my face as they disappear in the checkout line.

I’ve seen him four times in the months since he moved out. With each encounter I long to wrap my arms around his thin frame, long to say, “Come home. We miss you. We love you. This is where you belong.” Of course, I would never do that. My adopted son’s invisible wall is thicker and higher than Trump’s could ever be.

Putting the card back on the shelf, I wipe my face on the sleeve of my grey hoodie. For several long minutes I stand there, Jerry-Springer-worthy thoughts flickering through my head. I know it’s not right, but I want to blame the other mother.

It’s dark in my car and I’m invisible to the world as I wail on my way home.

God help me. Why does this ache so bad?

“I know it hurts,” my friend says as she takes my hands. “Let’s take that pain to the Father.” As she prays, I am comforted by the unseen One who knows my whole story—He who knows this is not the first time I’ve been replaced. Not the first time I’ve lost a child I love to another family. Not the first time I’ve cyber stalked someone’s Facebook for a glimpse of a kid I thought was mine. No, this is not the first time I’ve rewritten my entire life to accommodate someone in need of a mother or opened my soul to a stranger’s offspring. I’ve been down this old road before.

And that, my child, is the reason for all this pain.

The Father whispers love to my heart as I grapple with the same cyclone of emotions that whirled through my life more than seventeen years ago when the baby girl I was adopting was permanently placed with a friend instead of me.

I repeat the words of my grief coach, a professional I’ve been working with since November.  “This situation with your son has triggered the trauma of your previous loss. You are experiencing compounded grief.”

“My head knows the truth,” I explain to my friend who still holds my hands, “but my heart sometimes forgets. These stories are similar, but not the same. My baby didn’t reject me. She was a victim of circumstances beyond her control. My son is not a baby. He is a young man. He has the power to choose the path of his life. He is not mine. He belongs to God.

My Honey and I are here to love him and to pray for him and to model the unconditional love of his heavenly Father. We are his legal parents. We are the reason he is a citizen of the United States of America. Whether or not he chooses to have a relationship with us, or to acknowledge that we are the people who stood before a foreign judge and promised to be his forever family is irrelevant. Even if we are completely edited out of his life on social media or otherwise, the facts are the facts. It’s just this ache of being rejected and replaced that devours my joy.”

My friend is kind. She listens to my heart. She shares her own experience of being a foster mother to many children – some who were able to reciprocate her love, some who could not. I leave her home with a renewed sense of hope. I have forgotten what hope feels like.

Lord, I’m sorry. I pray aloud in the quiet of my car. My entire ministry is based on hope. Sowing hope in hearts wounded by addiction. That’s my tagline. “God redeems the dreams we thought were lost” is the theme of my book, but I forgot to allow it to be the theme of my life. Forgive me for wallowing in the pain of being replaced. Forgive me for making unholy alliances with the spirits of rejection and depression and anger and fear and envy. I’m sorry for allowing the ache in my heart for the son who is gone to overshadow the joy of the beautiful relationship My Honey and I are building with the son who stays.

As I drive and pray I am reminded of the truth that my Jesus understands. He left his place as heaven’s Beloved to take my place on the cross. He promised that I am His forever. His path of pain as God in human flesh included rejection, abandonment, abuse, betrayal and the sacrifice of so many comforts in order for Him to be the Sacrifice who comforts many. He is the Lamb that was slain and the Good Shepherd who leaves the 99 and goes after the one. His heart understands my heart when I yearn for the one who is not in my fold. Jesus loves the 99, but He risked everything for the one who lost his way home.

Do you trust ME? He whispers softly in my mind.

I trust You, Lord.

I’ve got this. I’ve got him. I’ve got you. I’ve got the two waiting for you at home. Go home. Love the ones who stayed. “…be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5 NKJV).

Have you been replaced?
Need grief coaching?
https://comfortfortheday.com/

Emmanuel? You Still Here?

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Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Matthew 1:23 KJV

Are You still here? Are you STILL with us? With me? The questions seep from my soul as I sit silently on Christmas Eve in my striped fuzzy socks staring at the paper maché crèche on my Nannie’s sideboard. Lauren Daigle sings one of my favorite hymns of the season, her voice too big for the speaker in my iphone. Written more than 1200 years ago in Latin, sung for the first time in a monastery and performed by everyone from Andrea Bocceli to Trisha Yearwood, this song’s history is as deep and rich as Lauren’s voice.

The hymn begins as a prayer, a heart cry from a people in distress, a people enslaved, a people desperate for a Savior. I place myself in the center of the story:

As the children of Israel bear the burden of slavery in a land not their own, they cry out to God from the depths of their hearts. They know they do not belong in Egypt or even in Goshen. They know they are set apart, special…chosen – with a purposed history and an eternal future. But year after year, when things do not appear to go as planned, when life with their captors becomes more and more difficult, yet more and more familiar, some of them begin to wonder if anyone hears the stifled soul cries that only God can hear.

As Israelite mothers, like their mothers and grandmothers before them rock tiny brown babies with tired arms and worn-out expectations, they sing lullabies that do what lullabies do: bring comfort, peace and rest into little hearts until little bodies and perhaps even all those within the sound of the singer’s voice relax and rest in the arms of hope. Listen for a moment as Israel’s mothers sing:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

And listen as somewhere in the back of the house a father’s strong voice echoes expectancy as he sings of the promise his forefathers died believing in:

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

This song of hope is carried on sound waves across galaxies and into the very throne room of the one and only I AM – Emmanuel. He is moved to move and the time has come to redeem these children of Israel. God begins to sing His own redemption song. It carries on the wind across miles and miles of desert wilderness until His voice is heard by a runaway murderer who responds by laying down his shoes and his pride and his self-conscious fears and picking up his staff and his faith in the ONE who is faithful to forgive his past sins and use his transformed life to stand bold in the face of Pharaoh and march a multitude of Israel’s grown kids across a dried-up river bed and into the Promised Land.

Remember the story from Exodus, Chapter 3?

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey… (Exodus 3:3-8 ESV)

As they settled down in makeshift tents those first few nights away from the familiar flesh pots of Egypt, and the Pillar of Cloud that had descended to surround and protect them from their enemies turned into a Pillar of Fire, I wonder if the Israelites truly recognized how close they were to their Creator-God and just how much He longed to dwell with them. I wonder if they looked out at the glow of that unquenchable FIRE which housed a BEING who had no beginning and will have no end and felt a fire burn within them ~ an irresistible desire to know the One who longs to be known? I wonder if they felt the rumblings of God on the move as He set the stage for Emmanuel to one day dwell among men in a garment of flesh and not fire?

In the New Testament book of Matthew, chapter 1, we can read how many Generations it was from Father Abraham to Joseph, the father of Jesus Christ. Some of the names I recognize: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob…Boaz and Ruth, Obed, Jesse, David and Solomon – and some are not quite so familiar: Jeconiah, Zadok, and Abiud. Whether we know much about them or not, each person in that lineage was instrumental in bringing the Son of God one generation closer to becoming the Son of Man. In verse 16, we come to Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Joseph, like Moses, was a man— a workingman with a carpentry business and a good reputation. A man who perhaps had experienced the pain of heartache and loss that left him a single dad with sons whose damaged characters were less than kind. A man whose love was pledged and whose heart belonged to a sweet young girl named Mary. A man of integrity whom the King James Version of the book of Matthew calls “righteous” in verse 19: Here is how the story goes:

Matthew 1:18-19 Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place under these circumstances: When His mother Mary had been promised in marriage to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be pregnant [through the power] of the Holy Spirit.

19 And her [promised] husband Joseph, being a just and upright man and not willing to expose her publicly and to shame and disgrace her, decided to repudiate and dismiss (divorce) her quietly and secretly.

If Joseph’s thought patterns were anything like mine, when he first heard the news of Mary’s pregnancy, he may have gone from excited anticipation of a fresh start with a new wife to “Oh no! How can this be happening to me? After all I’ve suffered, after all I’ve already lost… at this stage in my life? Didn’t I do my due diligence? Wasn’t I careful and cautious and wise in my choosing of this girl to give my promise and my heart and my future life to? Am I a mockery in this town, being gossiped about behind my back?”

Did Joseph search his soul and cry out to God in the night, saying, “How could You let this happen to me? Haven’t I been faithful? After all I’ve done to serve You and to serve this community, is this how You reward me? Now what will I do?

The Bible doesn’t tell us any of that about Joseph. It tells us that he wasn’t thinking of himself at all – He was thinking of Mary. He didn’t want to disgrace her or expose her sins on social media. He didn’t stay up all night, lighting up Facebook to see how many “likes” he could get for his justified position. He didn’t go down to the local bar to numb or gain some third-party sympathy. He didn’t adopt the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” mentality and thumb through his little black book, looking for a call girl to party with. No! None of those things. Instead, he quietly made a decision to protect Mary’s reputation and to guard her heart. Then he went to sleep, trusting his heavenly Father to sort out the situation. Perhaps his bedtime prayer was something similar to the second verse of this song as he sought wisdom from on high:

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
And order all things, far and nigh;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And cause us in her ways to go.

 Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

Little did Joseph know of how close he was to heaven in his suffering that night and that nothing was as it appeared until an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

Have you been caught off guard by circumstances beyond your control? Surprised by the words or actions of someone you loved and trusted? Wounded by the world and unable to piece together the full story or make any sense of your situation?

I have. And I’ve gone to sleep so many nights, begging God to unravel the tangled threads of my story or to fix the other person or to shed some light on the seemingly dark path ahead. André and I have prayed that prayer through many long nights over the past couple of years:

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high…

Like Joseph – none of us may realize just how close we are to heaven, or just how close heaven is to us when we humble ourselves and lay down our fears to walk in faith. Let’s look at the rest of his story:

20 But as he was thinking this over, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, descendant of David, do not be afraid to take Mary [as] your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of (from, out of) the Holy Spirit.

21 She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus [the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua, which means Savior], for He will save His people from their sins [that is, prevent them from [a]failing and missing the true end and scope of life, which is God].

22 All this took place that it might be fulfilled which the Lord had spoken through the prophet,

23 Behold, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel—which, when translated, means, God with us.

24 Then Joseph, being aroused from his sleep did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him: he took [her to his side as] his wife.

Was Joseph and Mary’s future a cakewalk? Hardly. But, they chose to believe the voice of the Lord, spoken through the angel, and to move forward in faith, not fear. They did get married. And they did become the parents of the Son of God, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among men. Imagine being co-parents with God the Father!

Sometimes the sin in this world causes families to fall apart. Children end up being parented by multiple people – birth parents, stepparents, foster parents, adoptive parents. Sometimes we feel less-than-adequate as we love on kids who suffer the effects of broken families, broken homes, broken souls. Sometimes the people with whom we co-parent have very different views or values or styles of relating – and we can easily get caught in the trap of feeling either inferior or superior to the other adult voices in our kids’ lives.

Imagine with me for a moment how Joseph and Mary must have felt as they birthed and held and fed and burped the baby whose Father is God? Imagine the emotion of a mother who knows her child is gifted in ways far beyond a special program in school. Imagine teaching a teen to sharpen a saw and remembering Almighty God saw you in your small Nazareth world and chose you to be the adoptive father to His precious son.

And we think our job as parents is difficult? What kind of pressure were Joseph and Mary tempted to place on themselves as they parented the Savior of the world? Oh, how great the joy, yet how deep the sorrow of Mary’s heart as she watched her son live out the fulfillment of His destiny all the way to the cross of Calvary.

Out of suffering comes the miraculous. Out of the wilderness comes the ability to listen. Out of the fire on a mountainside comes a voice that says, “Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground.”

That holy fire on the mountain became a seed in the womb of a teenage girl. Can you imagine that process? Can you imagine the suffering that went into the re-creation of the I AM as this eternal being whose voice spoke the earth into existence shrunk into the size of something that fits inside a fallopian tube? The Creator became the created. Emmanuel is a miracle! The miracle of Jesus started in heaven, not in Bethlehem.

“His name is Emmanuel –  the God who is with us – who is made out of the same stuff we are and who is made out of the same stuff God is and who will not let either of us go.” Judi Harbin

Emmanuel came to Israel, not once, but twice – The first time, they were slaves in Egypt: unable to walk in freedom to live and to worship and to govern themselves according to the principles of heaven. They were surrounded by ungodly influences and they were losing their children to the ways of the Egyptians generation by generation.

The second time Emmanuel came to Israel, they were slaves to formalism and legalism and a religion that kept them in perpetual bondage. They had forgotten that God Is LOVE and that love longs for relationship. They had completely missed the essence of the One for whom they performed all of those rituals. In the end, they actually missed Jesus.

Friends – Emmanuel wants to come again to Israel. Not the Israel who was enslaved in Egypt. And not the Israel who became like an ingrown toenail, only living to follow laws and missing the heart of the Law Giver. But to today’s Israel – the Israelite hearts of you and me, hearts in bondage to sin in one way or another.

Emmanuel longs to come to those Israelite mamas among us who live in fear and cling to control. To those whose kids are scattered and whose hearts are shattered and who are hanging on to faith by a thread. He wants to bring his peace to those who love too much from broken hearts until nothing is left to give; to those whose gifts are stolen by grief and frozen by fear and who have lost their will to live. And to those who stopped praying because they feel like a playlist with only one song and worry about wearing out the Father. These are the ones….we are the ones for whom Emmanuel wants to come today.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

To all who suffer, let us be reminded of what Emmanuel, the Christ has done for us. We are not alone in our suffering. If we will allow Him, He will bring us to the heart of His Father. He will bind our wounds by binding us to His heart. Only He can heal us, turn the hearts of our loved ones and fill us with heaven’s peace today. In the stillness I can almost hear him whisper, “Yes, I’m still here.”

And I sing along with Ms. Daigle, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” 

O come, Desire of the nations, bind
All peoples in one heart and mind;
Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;
Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.

 Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

(Words translated in 1861 by John Mason Neale per Wikipedia)

My Only Weapons

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     Eight months is a long time. Ask any expectant mother. At 32 weeks, she’s nearly ready to give up. According to #lifehack author Paisley Hansen, your heart burns, your brain fogs— even breathing becomes difficult. Having never been pregnant, I wouldn’t know. Except that I know.

I know how it feels to want something with all your mamma heart. I know how it feels to anticipate that “something” and to wait expectantly as God grows desire into reality. I know how it feels to fall fervently in love with a small person (or two), and become willing to sacrifice the normalcy of the life you once had with your Honey for the crazy some call “life” when your family of two suddenly becomes a family of four.

   

 I also know how it feels to have your heart burn and your brain fog and your breathing become labored when all you have labored for feels lost and dead and ruined, and your dream gives birth to a truth you never anticipated and weren’t prepared for. (How does anyone prepare for parenthood?)

     

THAT, my friend, is the reality sandwiched between my last blog post and today. The eight months between then and now, like most pregnancies, have been full of dramatic change, painful revelation, and probing questions, sprinkled with an unhealthy dose of fear, doubt, and negative self-talk (What were we thinking? If only I had listened longer, loved harder, prayed more, complained less…)

   

 Some may say I’m over-the-top, overdramatic, oversensitive, or undereducated about teenagers and the difference between their normal drama and the real and lasting effects of childhood trauma. I’m learning. The struggle is real. It’s tough to untangle. As my teens might say, “It’s whatever.” It’s whatever you never read about, whatever the experts never told you, whatever you never knew you (or they) were capable of. It’s whatever.

     

For eight months I’ve struggled to reconcile my head and my heart. What the counselors and the books and the folks who’ve walked the rocky road of international adoption said made perfect sense – to my head. The breakdown came when my heart became enlarged and began to show up on my sleeve. The breakdown came when expectations came into play. No expectations = no disappointment, right? Didn’t I learn this long ago? I’ve been actively part of the recovery community for ten years. (So many recovery principles adapt themselves to living with and loving victims of trauma and/or abuse.)

   

 Substance abuse counselor Carole Bennett says this, “You need to be bold enough and strong enough to let the alcoholic/addict’s recovery unfold as it is meant to, not as you want it to. This is an important start in reining in your expectations, and in doing so you will be ahead of the curve. Your expectations should not be part of the alcoholic/addicts life as they have nothing to do with you and whether you are doing the “right thing” or not.”

     

What if the above quote read, “Parents of fostered or adopted children, you need to be bold enough and strong enough to let your child’s recovery/restoration/healing unfold as it is meant to, not as you want it to. This is an important start in reining in your expectations… Your expectations should not be part of your child’s life, as they have nothing to do with you and whether you, as a parent, are doing the “right thing” or not.”

   

 I want so badly to do the “right thing.” Maybe you do, too. Life with substance abusers or adopted teenagers, or victims of trauma or any combination thereof can leave one wondering what the right thing truly is. I can promise you this—the right thing isn’t always what you read in books or “connected parenting” blog posts. The right thing isn’t necessarily what other parents or teachers, coaches or counselors, or even well meaning pastors tell you. Please hear me out. I believe in research and connectedness and godly counsel. And I don’t know what my Honey and I would have done without all the human shoulders we’ve cried on this past year and a half. But the truth of the matter is we received enough confusing and conflicting advice to fill the Great Blue Hole . We tried so many things. We miserably failed at so many things.

 

“We are fighting!” I wept into my phone one evening in August. “Fighting for our marriage. Fighting for our family. Fighting for peace in our home. Fighting for the souls of our kids.”

“Love and prayer are your only weapons,” my friend quietly declared. “That’s it. That’s what you’ve got.” He punctuated his statement with scripture. 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV). A verse I know by heart, but perhaps not by experience.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. 

But the greatest of these is love.”

Love? Prayer? Haven’t I been doing these things all along?  I asked the Lord later. Haven’t I loved and prayed and prayed and loved until I am absolutely exhausted with it all? 

 “You have done your human best,” my heart heard Him say. “Now allow Me to do My best. Stop trying to control everything. You can’t love enough or pray enough to fix what’s broken inside any person, not even yourself. But I can love that person through you. And the Holy Spirit within you can intercede on behalf of someone who is unable to even utter their own prayer. You can humbly choose to love on purpose and allow Me to do what only I can do.”

Three months later, I wrote in my journal: Thank you, God, for the counselor’s straight talk to me. I will do what he said. I will release my boys to You. I will trust You with them 100% and stop trying to control ANYTHING with them. Then I will be free to be the mom I want to be. The mom I’ve always dreamed of being. I know I cannot make them love or care about me. I know I cannot protect them from their own choices. I’ve been so disappointed. So hurt. So sad. It’s hard to move forward. Hard to find joy. Hard to love well. Please restore joy and peace and love and intimacy back into our home. Only You can do this. Only You, Jesus.

I‘ve never been a patient person. I want it ALL. I want it RIGHT NOW! This is not the way of Jesus. He patiently unravels our knotted souls, softens our hurt-hardened hearts and restores our damaged frontal lobes. The real question is, “Do we trust Him?” Do we trust Him with our deepest selves?  Do we trust Him with our most precious loved ones? Will we trample FEAR and REJECTION and swallow our PRIDE and allow Him to finish the good work He began in each of us?

I tried it. Not easy. No, not for a person whose default is fear-based control. But I tried it. And slowly, slowly some walls began to come down from around certain hearts in our home. Three nights ago someone called me into the kitchen after the lights were low. I held my breath as my son looked me in the eye and said, “Remember that rule about ‘don’t touch me?'”

“Yes. I’m very sorry I touched you on the shoulder when I said, ‘goodnight.'”

“You can forget about that rule.”

Yep. That’s what love and prayer does. That’s what God does. It only took eight months.

 

 

 

”

 

 

 

Happy Codependent Mother’s Day

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“Oh Julie, you have rug burns on your heart.” Eight months after boarding a homebound plane in Ukraine with my Honey and our newly adopted teenagers, I’m crying on the phone to my friend, searching for ways to describe the festering ache in my soul. I wince as her words trigger the memory of oozing rug burns sticking to my pantyhose. I was an athlete thirty years ago, but my knees still carry the scars.

Our high school gymnasium doubled as a multi-purpose building for many student activities, including church services, so the “Lady Tartans” played basketball and volleyball on carpet. Yes, CARPET! Visiting teams eyed our court in disbelief during pre-game warm-ups. I’m certain the Tartans wielded slightly more than a home game advantage. We were used to our unusual turf’s effect on bouncing balls and the teenage knees of scrappy girls who played to win.

Rug burns rake off a person’s protective skin, creating wounds that seep blood or pinkish semi-clear liquid. Time eventually creates a thin crust over each burn’s surface. When my team played two home games in a row, there was no time for our rug burns to heal before we again sacrificed knobby teen knees for rebounds or game points. I learned the hard way what happens when rug burns get layered—yellow white pus forms under the scab and oozes out when pressure is applied to the wound. Double rug burns are painfully slow to heal.

“Yes. Yes, I do have rug burns on my heart,” I reply. My friend understands rug burns. She was a Lady Tartan, too. She’s also lived a life story similar to mine.

After we stop talking, I turn off the bedside lamp and lay awake long into the night. I’m alone. My family is home. I’m traveling—sharing my testimony of redemption and restoration, sowing hope in hearts wounded by addiction.

Do you even believe your own message? I’m stunned by the thought, as it strikes deep in my core.

Of course I do. But, I’m hurting and I don’t know how to fix this, God. How did we get here? What could I have done differently? What do we do now? Why don’t they let me love them anymore?

I toss questions toward heaven with the fervency of a baseball-pitching machine, not expecting Anyone to really answer.

I’m still sore from the sting of the H-word my son spewed just days before I left for this trip. “He doesn’t mean it,” the well-meaning people say. “Don’t take it personally.” Not helpful.

He felt hatred towards me. That’s why he said it. Of course he meant it. He also means it when he says he doesn’t want me to hug him or touch him. When he forbids me to say, “I love you” or to demonstrate any connection or affection at all. He means it. And it’s mean. And it burns my heart raw.

Maybe I could blow it off, recognize that it’s coming from a place of deep pain and trauma-triggered fear. Maybe it wouldn’t fester so bad if that were the only wound. But it’s not. There’s more. There’s my other boy-turned-man-overnight. Trying his wings, testing his limits, telling Honey and me all kinds of things we never wanted to hear. Building a wall a mile high and six feet thick to keep us distanced from his heart.

Here you are, talking on TV about recovery from codependency like you’ve got all the answers, when just yesterday you relapsed into fear-based control and tried to be somebody’s Holy Spirit. Again.

The enemy taunts me with half-truths. Tries to silence me with guilt and shame. I cringe. It’s true. I project my pain from the past onto my kids when their rejection triggers old wounds that still ooze pus and blood. Wounds that stick to my emotional Spanx and rip the skin right off my soul, leaving me tender and vulnerable.

I am not healed yet!

There. I’ve said it. I’m not a perfect pastor’s wife, mother, daughter, friend or person. I’m painfully aware of my shortcomings, especially when pointed out by those who know me best. When I am afraid, I try to control circumstances or people. When angry, I punish with silence. When I am rejected, I tend to withhold affection for fear of further rejection. Sometimes I isolate. Or use guilt to manipulate. When I don’t know what else to do, I work, work, work. I am a mess. I need Jesus. Every moment. Of every day. I cannot do this on my own.

In preparation for taping this televised program, I reviewed the first Step of the Twelve Steps of Codependents Anonymous: “I am powerless over other people.” Once more, I am humbly reminded that I cannot make “minding other people’s business” my way of life, (even if those other people are my own family). I cannot put off my own good by determining to control, advise or guide others. I must surrender my compulsive drive to “fix the unfixable.” I am not anyone’s Jesus. By God’s grace, I will choose (once again) to ask myself two questions before jumping into control or rescue mode:

  1. Did this person ask me for this help?
  2. What does this have to do with God’s will for me?

Father in heaven, I choose to release my sons and the time frame for their emotional healing and spiritual growth to Your care. I choose to focus on my own spiritual progress and maintain healthy boundaries in all my relationships. I will not sacrifice my personal needs to meet the needs of another person, nor will I resort to unhealthy giving or serving from a place of fear or manipulation. I will allow You, God to be God in my life and in the lives of my sons. Thank You for your grace and your mercy, which is beautifully new every morning. Thank you for Your ability to heal the layered rug burns on all of our hearts. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

What about you, dear Friend? Are you expending valuable emotional, financial and physical energy rescuing, enabling or persecuting someone whose life is out of control because of a chemical or other addictive dependency? Are you allowing fear to drive your actions as you try to save a drowning loved one? Have you lost your sense of self by allowing your boundaries to be pushed back or knocked down completely? Do you need to take CODA’s Step 1 and admit that you are powerless over another person and that your life has become unmanageable? If so, it’s not too late to come out of denial. Take that Step. Admit it to yourself. Tell Jesus. Confide in a friend. Begin your journey to wholeness today. You are worth it! You are so totally worth it.

Love & Self-Protection & Goodbye

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Today a boy turned down a hug (and a kiss, “Ughhhh!”) from this wanna-be momma whose nest has been empty forever. He wants to be cool in front of his friends. Keep his facade. Feel no emotion. Tries hard to avoid the inevitable final goodbye.

Yesterday, Honey hugged our boys goodbye in the van as we left for Atlanta. He couldn’t come. He had to work. I captured the moment with my phone.

A small herd of Ukranian orphans marches toward the security gate after two hours of agonizing waiting with host families whose hearts are heavy with the unexpected feeling that one of our own is walking away and there is nothing we can do about it. The boy brushes past me, heading for the front of the pack. “Goodbye,” he whispers casually in passing, as if we’d just met. As if our hearts are in no way entangled.

“I’m not letting you off that easy.” I toss the words to the back of his head as he blends into a group of teenage boys wearing pristine Christmas-Nikes and warm winter coats; coats that will wrap down-filled arms around them on freezing Ukraine mornings when no moms or dads are there to hug them off to school. He does not respond.

I wait at the back of the group, my other boy at my elbow where he’s hovered for most of the day. He’s quiet. More so than usual. This morning at our hotel he sneaked up behind me, wrapping his arms tightly around my waist as I scraped stuff off the nightstand into my overnight bag. He wanted my phone, to message his girlfriend on VK. Perhaps he also wanted to hug me when no one else was looking.

We had our moment, my boys and I. I know it was God’s gift to me this morning as I sat propped against pillows in a king-size bed with my Bible and journal open. The boy who now wants nothing to do with me came in first. Flopping face down in front of my crisscrossed legs, he unashamedly demanded, “Scratch my back.” I could not refuse. Soon the other one entered the room wearing a “What are you doing?” expression. He flopped down, also. Not too close. No bare skin. Face turned away. I reached for his arm. Tugged him closer. Scratched his bony back through a thin, grey shirt.

“Keep them in Your palm, Lord God,” I prayed as morning sunlight filtered through the drapes, warming the backs of their heads. I placed my hands there, in the sun’s warmth, ruffling the coarse waves of the dark-haired one and smoothing the fine, straight strands of the other. “You promise, right here in your Word. Isaiah 43 verses 1 and 2, that they are YOURS. That You have redeemed them. That You call them by name. That you will be with them through the ‘waters’ and through the ‘fire.’ God, I do not know exactly what ‘water’ and ‘fire’ is ahead for these guys. I am afraid of the unknown. I know nothing of the life they live when they are not living life with Honey and me. They grew up too much between our summer hosting and December. Experienced too much. Hurt too much. I don’t want them to go back to that unknown. I want them to stay right here. It’s hard to let them go.”

I know about letting go. I’ve done it before. I’ve loved and lost a child I thought was mine. Watched her grow up from afar. Wished I could hold her and love her and be in her world. I know this path of choosing to release them to Jesus. I believe He honors His promises to praying mothers, and surrogate mothers, godmothers, foster mothers, adoptive mothers and grandmothers. When we pray God’s Word back to Him, claiming those promises for our kiddos, those words are not empty or useless. Our prayers for our loved ones are never unheard or unattended to. The Amplified Bible says it this way: “So will My word be which goes out of My mouth; It will not return to Me void (useless, without result), Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

I held that promise in my heart as I held my boys for the last time in I-don’t-know-how-long.

“Thank you, God, for this moment,” I prayed as love flowed from my fingertips. “Help them to be able to receive and believe Your love for them. Help Honey and me to be able to show what that looks like when they come home for good. I’m holding You to Your promise in Isaiah 43:5 and 6. That You WILL bring them home for good.”

“Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your descendants from the east,
And gather you from the west;
 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’
Bring My sons from afar,
And My daughters from the ends of the earth—“ (NKJV)

“Let’s pray,” I said, bringing an end to our moment as time became our enemy. They offered their hands. To me. To one another. We formed our usual circle of prayer. They prayed in Ukrainian. I prayed in English. God understood every word.

~~~~~~~~~

 At the airport, the chaperone is speaking. “You have two minutes to say your final goodbyes before we go,” she announces in both languages. Families embrace their hosted kiddos; some for the final time, some “until next time.” Tears are shed. Promises made.

I rush to the front of the group to touch the arm of the boy who walked away without a hug. I turn him toward me as love wells up, spilling onto my cheeks. That same sweet boy who demanded affection only hours earlier becomes rigid with resistance as I reach for him. It is awkward. Embarrassing. Painful.

Returning to the back of the line, I find the other one with his game face on. “Goodbye,” he says, eyes pleading for me not to make a scene. We halfway hug. “I love you,” I state, (even though he already knows). He nods, then melts into a sea of boys with backpacks.I stand with the other families who wave and smile through their tears. Two young girls jump up and down from the other side of the barrier. They are waving, smiling ­­- encouraging their “mom” not to cry. I do not wave. My boys do not turn around. I stay here until the backs of their familiar heads disappear through the checkpoint. Another host mom stands next to me. She places her arms around me and gives me the hug I long for. Our tears flow. We are not ashamed. We understand the Father’s lavish love. Through Him we will show our orphaned kids how to give and receive unconditional love. There’s no shame in that.

 “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1 NIV)

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