Foster Care / Adoption

Nov022016

Ever so gently

We went to therapy yesterday.  We went to give boy 2 a place to process.  He gets stuck often and we simply do not know how to help him get unstuck, and so naturally we turn to our amazing therapist.

When he is stuck he suffers, and when he suffers the whole family suffers.  We all hate to see him in pain and we hurt when we cannot reach him even though we all try.

Our boy is a mystery.  His depth is unknown to all.  I see him battle, by himself.  I see him go of into that world of loneliness. Even his brother cannot help him, after all they have different stories and with that come different pains.  I can imagine our boy feels utterly alone and unsafe.  And I… understand.

The reality is so different though.  We chose him, we wanted him, and boy 1… he wanted nothing more than have his brother back in his life.  But the past has taught him, that in fact, he IS all alone.  How scary for a child, a child!

And I look at myself and my struggles.  In my core I feel utterly alone.  The rejection in my life that is still current keeps stabbing at the deep wound.  The healing is painfully slow, and also a mystery.

We have a similar wound, that boy and I.  I do understand.  I thought I had no tools, but in fact, I like no other, I know the tool. I cannot fix this boy, I cannot heal him, but I can SEE him, truly see him.  He will know when he is seen, and THAT is healing.

We went to therapy to help him get unstuck, now I see we went to understand him better, to learn how to better care for his heart.  I need to be a lot gentler with him. Oh the gentleness his heart needs.  My voice needs to be softer because the loudness of my voice brings him into a dark place.  And we need to be less direct.  And when he goes of to the furthest corner of the living room, I can sit with him and read my book, I can give him my presence.  And the eye contact, I need to remember to always make the eye contact, a look accompanied with a sweet smile.  When he asks, I need to gently applaud that like nothing else.  It is all about answering his every need, about affirming him in every state, and cheering him on in the simple day to day.  The fast that he is, is amazing and he needs to know that.

I have a new mission: To find his depth, his soul and hold it ever so gently.

So as we came in with the hope he could and would process, I walked away with so much more.  I can’t believe parents send their kids off to therapy as most work IS for the parents.  If parents do right, the child can feel safe to break and heal.  It’s not about changing our boy or working on behavior, we are here to guide the healing!

 

I love that you are here and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

Coffee for the Heart is a place where we just see ourselves sitting down for coffee and sharing, accept it is on the internet, never the less it is very real.  Go HERE for more stories.

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Sep282016

A sandwich blessing

We had a little sandwich disaster this morning.  Boy 2 is very particular which bread he wants with what topping.  And I switched it up by accident.  Hey, it’s only 6.30am when I make them 😉

Actually, I first made the crunchy bread with the cold cut topping and the soft bread with peanut butter, fluff and Nutella combo ;-).  Then I realized it was wrong and re-made the whole thing (yes, waisting bread in the process).  So enthusiastically I told Isaac about my mess up, and my fix!  And he got upset.  Apparently I had it right the first time around. He could not handle it and walked away, mumbling and he really could not take it for he kept saying: “This is so stupid.  So so stupid.”  He went on upstairs and unloaded to his brother: “This is so stupid.  I told her how to do it, why didn’t she do what I told her to do.”

I could have done 2 things.  Address his rude attitude.  I don’t need to explain to you how I was actually blessing him by making him lunch, but I could explain it to him.  I could also choose to love this boy at a time he was very distraught.  He was probably nervous about his first soccer practice ever.  He was probably also nervous about his band practice today (he is still struggling with his cool factor decreasing because of it).  Things are still new and he is on edge, rightly so.

This morning I chose the latter.  I laughed at the stupidity of it, and I laughed at the reaction of our boy which was just hilarious in a way.  I went back into the kitchen and I re-made his sandwiches for a second time (again waisting bread in the process).  This time he doesn’t know about it, and so in a little while, at school, he will open up his lunch bag and he will see his momma loves him deeply and desires to serve him.  I can imagine his response: “Oh my, she did make it right!  She fixed it.”  And he will go back to the morning and realize he was rude and awful.  And still I loved him…

 

I love that you are here, and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

Coffee for the Heart is a place where we just see ourselves sitting down for coffee and sharing, accept it is on the internet, never the less it is very real.  Go HERE for more stories!

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Sep202016

At least he’s moving…

This is one of those mornings where I realize how far boy 1 has come!

We were having breakfast and boy 2 was a bit slow.  Usually he is quite on time so I just wanted to let him know the time. Right away he answered: “I never go up till 6.50 so I don’t know why you are telling me this.  You got it all wrong.”  The ‘funny’ part is that he is not telling the truth but he just has to come against me, he just has to put up his hand in defense.  We all know he is usually on time and goes upstairs at 6.45.  He needs to keep me at a distance.  It’s been like that again for a few weeks now.  It’s the automatic response of: ‘Don’t come near me’, “I will keep you at arms length’, ‘I don’t trust you”, ‘This IS all too scary’.

And then I remembered boy 1.  He used to do this all the time, all the time!  Every answer was met with a No or Why?  And every bit of help was rejected.  But boy 1 is no longer like that.  Life is calmer now.  He can take a no.  He can also take help. It’s quite amazing.

When Tim and I discussed it as the boys were off to school, Tim’s remark was: “Well, at least boy 2 is moving.”  So I’ll take the positive note.  We have not had this phase yet with boy 2.  Let’s see how long it lasts.

 

I love that you are here, and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

 

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Sep072016

He watched us well

The boys were going at it yesterday.  I looked out the window and saw it all unfold.  It was ugly.  It was physical, words back and forth, and at some point the middle finger went up.  Of course I was excluded from the content of it since I was witnessing it all from a distance.

It was clear feelings got hurt because when we were all inside their faces said it all.  They refused to be in one area, and they were not speaking to one another.  It was serious.  And in the midst, I see boy 1 do something amazing.  He served his brother.  In the midst of anger, of: “I am not going to talk to him for a longggg time” he still did good.  He carried his brother’s laundry up from the basement to his brother’s room.

It was an amazing sight because have we not done just that with both boys?  We kept serving them even though we were so hurt, in the midst of anger, and definitely when they did not deserve to be served.  It made me quite proud of that boy.  He watched us well!  This is such an important attribute to life, we serve.  And when we serve those who deserve it the least, we love deeply those who need it most.

 

I love that you are here, and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

Coffee for the Heart is a place where we just see ourselves sitting down for coffee and sharing, accept it is on the internet, never the less it is very real.  Go HERE for more stories!

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Aug172016

Anchor us Lord

We wonder about it, do we feel different than other moms and dads?  We wonder how that blood bond feels, the one we will never have.  In our case, in my case, I don’t know what ‘blood’ really feels like but I really do think that that deep connection that comes with a blood bond is missing when it comes to us and our boys.  And I feel it on mother’s day.  I don’t feel connected to our boys like other moms do to their children, especially the moms who birthed their child. Now don’t get me wrong, I love these boys, but we are doing something that is not natural.

Natural would have been to conceive a child.  Natural would have been to birth a son.  And without that, it just feels we are doing something different.  And there is lack in it.  There is gift in birthing your child, a connection that we have to work hard for to get.

I know not many want to address this publicly, like I am not supposed to feel this way.  But I do.  And there is nothing wrong with it.  It is what it is.  And if anything… it helps me understand the task these 2 boys have.  They are supposed to bond to us new parents.  They are supposed to embrace us as their own.  They are supposed to love us.  They are supposed to let us love them.  Something so unnatural, something that, in a way, was not supposed to happen, is happening.  They were conceived by different people, and in a perfect world, they’d still be with the ones who wanted and planned for them.  And so without my ‘lack’, I don’t think I would ever have been able to understand them and what is been asked of them.  In a way it makes us equal.

And in it is gift… a gift that will take us many years to unwrap and discover.  And in the mean time, we will love these boys with all we have, because they ARE our own.  Given to us by the Almighty Who knew what He was doing.  Nothing happened by accident: He chose them, He chose us, He chose to make us into this particular family unit.  And bonding might take mighty work, and I might sense something is different about us.  We know all things come from God and we can only pray he will perfect His plan for our little unit.  And in that my prayer goes like this: “God, anchor us.  Anchor us in one another.”

I love that you are here, and I would certainly love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

Coffee for the Heart is a place where we just see ourselves sitting down for coffee and sharing, accept it is on the internet, never the less it is very real.  Go HERE for more stories!

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Aug112016

Lord, I love doing this with you

It was over onions in the food.  I normally cook 2 portions of dinner: one without onions, one with.  But tonight… I just forgot. Blame the exhaustion.  No big deal as the boy is allowed to pick out the onions, which he does when he happens to eat other people’s meals.  Just tonight… it did not go over well.  Anger came at me, a foul mouth, the looks and then finally the laughter indicating this was some sort of mean game and as if going ‘Nahnah nahnahnahhhhh’.  It was bad enough that, after the warnings of course, I took away the one thing most important to him… basketball.  And the light went out. Screaming, yelling, kicking furniture and doors, throwing things around.  And I let him.  I knew whatever was in there had to come out.  He had to sink deep.  And he sunk deep to his broken truth.  Yelling the ugliest words ever.  Accept, I knew they were not for me.  The screams were no longer screams, they now came from the top of his lungs.  Running out the door, coming back in, going around in circles showing whatever he was feeling, it was too much to bear.  The cries were no longer just cries, they now came from the pit of his stomach.

Our other boy was now affected.  How can one handle seeing his brother suffer and not be affected by it?  Well, not our boys. They are ‘too’ connected, they care ‘too’ much.  Though separated at some point, the bond between them never faded.  It probably got stronger because of it.  So now this boy cries the same tears as he begging-ly looks at me: ‘Do something! Please do something!’  But I can’t, not in the way he is hoping for.  So I hold, I just hold.  And I speak the words that come to me.

I go back to our other boy.  It’s time to calm him down and help him out of this war.  I walk towards him, I try to have the gentlest eyes ever, and he runs into my arms, holds me so tightly crying “Mom, mom, mom.”  And he chants: ‘I am so sorry, so sorry, so so sorry.”  I repeat over and over again that he will be ok, that we will be ok.  After a bit I bring the boys together in a room and honestly, I am empty.  What else can I do?  How can I make sure healing takes place?  I hold one boy, or two. We even hold one another.  I pray silently.  And as I pray I hear a song in my head: “Lord, I love doing this with you.  How I love doing this with you!”  And as I praise God with that sentence, I realize healing IS taking place.

This journey is so draining, so painful.  So very difficult.  I even tell the people around us that our life is no fun right now.  It really isn’t.  We wrestle through each week and keep telling ourselves that a year from now, we will be in a better place.  But how amazing, in the midst of ugly truth and lives broken, I see God.  And my prayer is that we will be in a better place around this time next year.  That life will be back to having joy in it.  But more so, I pray for our boy’s futures.  How I long for them to pass on the healing they have received.  How I hope they will not just go after good paying jobs, but instead truly understand the miracle in their lives and live to pass it on praising God saying: ‘Lord, I love doing this with you, I love doing this with you!’

 

I love that you are here and I certainly would love to hear from you.  To leave a comment go HERE !

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