I'm about to have a real honest moment here. I know you guys are used to it, but I really do try hard to curb it. This blog (I've linked below) was written about my heart by a woman who knows. And I am weeping as I sit here. If you are our friend, if you have and want to continue to support us, you will read this. For us. For Liza. For our four other kids. For everyone you've ever known who has or is or will adopt. As a favor. An act of love. *Because I can count on one hand the people who have truly helped us through the first two months home.* I wish I could say i was exaggerating. I know in good part it is a lack of knowledge and understanding. Adoption is not going away. You need to know how to navigate other's adoptions. My family is not the only one you will help by reading this. Right this moment Tom is with Liza at church dealing with the fall out of us making her go to hold babies in a nursery as a means of socialization. And it's not pretty. Contrary to popular opinion, my life long home-schooled kids are not in need of socialization. This orphan of 16 years who lived in a dorm with 300 other children and counts only ONE as a friend, IS. She is terrified of everyone. Tom & I can't do this job alone. We need friends and family who are willing to walk this hard, lonely road, hand in hand with us, when it is not pretty, and really, painfully uncomfortable. ~Reagan excerpt: "#6.Please do not disappear. If I thought the waiting stage was hard, it does not even hold the barest candle to what comes after the airport. Not. The. Barest. Candle. Never have I felt so isolated and petrified. Never have I been so overwhelmed and exhausted. We need you after the airport way more than we ever needed you before. I know you’re scared of us, what with our dirty hair and wild eyes and mystery children we’re keeping behind closed doors so they don’t freak out more than they already have, but please find ways to stick around. Call. Email. Check in. Post on our Facebook walls. Send us funny cards. Keep this behavior up for longer than six days."
“Little hands on a June evening, as the stars are coming
out. He wants to capture fireflies, but
he doesn’t know how. Tears run faster
than those little feet ‘til Daddy says…”
Last Saturday night I remember having the conscious thought that I
felt great; that I’d been supernaturally energetic and productive over these first six weeks home. Literally within the hour I barely wanted to lift my arms.
Sunday morning I woke still overcome with fatigue. I sat with my coffee at the
computer and turned on this new video of my older sister, Christa. It’s a song she has been in the studio
recording for her new album.
“Trust me, we can catch the light if we keep our eyes open
when it comes.”
The tears started and I knew I needed to see my family. I still couldn’t tell you why, but I cried
the rest of the day. Maybe courage has
side effects. Maybe it’s the trying to
be strong all the time that makes us weak.
Tom moved some small mountains that very morning to make it possible for
the kids and I to leave on Wednesday. By
Monday, over dinner with a sweet friend, night my ears started to hurt. Wednesday morning it was in my chest. But I drove the children nine hours through
wind and rain anyway; over the Tennessee River and through the Appalachian
woods to Grandma’s house outside of Nashville.
“Maybe you sailed in with a bright vision and you lost it on
the way."
l literally drove to Nashville
because I wanted my Mom to make dinner for me.
I love to cook, I have an amazing kitchen and am perfectly capable of
cooking anything I want at any time.
With extensive food restrictions, though, it has become one of my love
languages to have someone else think through the complexities of my diet. Adopting an older child is different in so many ways from giving birth or adopting a baby. One way is that there are no baby showers or volunteers for a few weeks of meals.
It’s not like we’re dealing with the sleeplessness of infancy or the more obvious aspects of recovery. We are burning it at both ends having younger, energetic children that are awake early in the morning and two
needy teenagers that are awake well into the night. Your child's name isn't added to the list when the church makes birth announcements. She was born sixteen years
ago. And we weren't there. It can feel like the joy stopped at the welcome home and the rest is all "adjustment". "How's the adjustment going?" With a teenager, a strict schedule and boundaries and heart-to-hearts and awareness are absolutely necessary. Still, when the dust has settled from a long
and arduous labor, it is just the beginning of our new life, as new parents, to
a new child.I have wanted someone else
to care for us as much as I ever did after giving birth.
“Maybe you felt a little blindness would lessen the
pain. Trust me, you can catch the light
if you keep your eyes open ‘til it comes.”
About halfway there, Liza came to the conclusion that she’s
not a fan of long drives. She took the "Are we there yet?” syndrome to a whole new level. In Russian.
“Yet? Yet? Yet? Yet? Is it that one?
The next one? The other one?” I have no idea what orphan daydreamed
scenarios she has played in her mind about visiting grandparents. It is just evident that she had come up with
a few. When we took the first curve on
Beasley’s Bend aka "the curly road", she said, in perfect English,
“You’re not serious.” Two minutes
later she was past the long hours, the leg cramps and the nausea. Two little nephews
were sitting on big rocks at the end of the long gravel drive waiting for us. We honked all the way to the front door. She yelled out the window, to whomever lay behind the walls, “Hey everybody,
we’re here!”
“You have heard of a strange figure visiting the poor. He gave His own body, to ransom their souls.”
This was just where we needed to be. As sick as I was the entire trip, it was tonic for my soul. Though we missed our home during our time in Ukraine, it is a constant reminder of the man who built it and his loss. We miss him terribly every day. And even though things are going really, really well at home by all standards of adjustment, we needed some TLC. My older sister was in town recording her album; four of her children with her. My younger
sister came out from the city to stay with her
three littles. My parent's house has never been a
place to get a good nap. It’s a place to
get a good hug and a healthy dose of chaos.
My Dad calls it the zoo.
“It seems too good to be true, but you haven’t found it false."
"I believe that there is a light coming, to find you with your eyes open.”
We had a Valentine’s Day hunt on their 72 acres. Each granddaughter woke to a rose on the breakfast table. Three of the children wrote clues and mapped out the course. We walked out the back door, me, my dad, 10 kids and 2 dogs. We drove the four-wheeler too fast down the hills. We crossed bridges. We descended into ravines. We visited the cliffs. We walked barefoot in the creek. We skipped rocks. We laughed. We fell down. We helped each other back up. We discovered treasure (and I don’t mean the bags of candy waiting at the end).
"Just have your
eyes open til it comes.”
Liza had an unforgettable first visit. She and our 14 year old, October, got to visit to one of the colleges where my
little sister teaches art. They participated in a painting class before she delivered them to our older
sister at the music studio. Coolest aunts on the planet. We picked Tom up at the airport and went to dinner with old friends, one of whom was possibly our biggest prayer
warrior, Tara, and the other was Tiffany (of Plumb) whose fans helped spread the word of our difficulties in Philly in November.
On our last day, the amazing Jen Wood, http://www.jenwoodphotography.com, drove more than an hour out to the boondocks for an all day photo shoot with us. As a gift. We've known each other since college days and though we rarely see each other, she'd followed our story and prayed for us all along the way. She had written to us in January to say that God was speaking to her about telling our story in pictures. These are kind of images, like a great song, that one is helplessly riveted by. She worked with each of our kids tell the camera who they are...even when that meant jumping on a trampoline all the while.
Just before our time ran out, Liza had her first driving lesson with Daddy...on Papa's four wheeler wagon! Not quite rested, but more than replenished, we headed home.
Every day brings new challenges and every day brings new gifts whether you have a new child or not. During this time, we all sometimes feel like we can't find a solitary comfort that feels "normal". Even my favorite burger joint closed down last week. I am nothing if not a creature of habit. It's really a silly thing to have an emotion about. It's another change to get used to. Then God writes us precious moments that feed the hunger, like tonight, when Liza said she needed something..."for her soul." We talked a little over a late dinner and as she headed to bed I asked if she'd had an idea what she was needing. I wanted to help but I didn't know how.
She turned and said, "уже (already)...You."
"Trust me, you can catch the light if you keep your eyes open til it comes. Have your eyes open. Have your eyes open when it comes."
That could be the start to any number of conversations we
have with Liza, or God has with me on any given day. We have many fears.
"Is it okay?"
"Is what okay?"
"Driving at night?...I'm scared."
This time it was on our one day ski trip to BeechMountain. She had never skied before. The night before she was saying that she
wasn't going to. So we let her say it,
knowing now, that she often rethinks those decisions based in fear. On the way up the mountain in the morning, we
told her we just wanted her to try; that she could stop any time she
wanted. "But I'm scared." The tone of her voice and the quizzical look
on her face asked, "Why would I ever do something that scares
me???" We said, "We know you
are. Everyone is scared the first
time. But we'll be right beside
you." She didn't argue. She stood in line and waited to be equipped.
Does that sound familiar at all? You've probably heard the expression, "God
doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called." Think about it this way: Why would you gather
the equipment for something you never planned to do? How many people go out and buy boots and skis
and poles and goggles when they've never even conceived of a ski trip? Liza certainly would not have come up with
this idea on her own. Her parents
did. I certainly would never have
conceived of adopting from Ukraine on my own. My Father did. It wasn't until she got in that line that we
began to fit the equipment to her. As it
wasn't until I trusted Him that He began to equip me to go. Sure I owned some wool socks. But that doesn't make a person ready to jump
on a chair lift to the top of the Alps. In the beginning I looked a little like Liza
on the J lift. Confused and
terrified. The lift operator walking
beside her is saying, "Don't pull it; let it pull you."
The four kids, that we've raised since birth, put on their
boots, picked up their skis and got on the slopes without looking back. Our nine year old son we had to repeatedly
chase down and tell him to not be QUITE so brave. Even the two girls who were walking outside
to a snowboard lesson with a group of strangers, did so without any
hand holding. They know, because they
have experienced, the promise of "I'll be right here beside you."
In the end, she quit after an hour. More to the point, she quit after one good
fall. Nobody has ever said to her,
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." But that's for next time. For now, we are working on, "Just
try." Which she did. The rest of the day and night, we praised her
for her courage, because she's also never heard her parents say, I'm proud of
you." And we are. So very, very proud.
Things around here have been improving by leaps and
bounds. She is very much the sponge we
often refer to small children as being.
She watches our reactions, praises and disappointments very
closely. Now when she wakes in the
morning, she smiles as me because we told her that her countenance affects
others. When she hurts someone's
feelings, she says, "I'm sorry" because we told her that everyone
makes mistakes; and everyone needs forgiveness.
She has had dark days and we worried that she had been too fragile a flower
to transplant.
But now the signs of life are greener every day. She's going to be okay. She has realized that not everything that
looks scary, really is.
The are many moments when we really believe we have stumbled
upon a hidden passage to the child at heart.
That maybe, though we missed those years, we haven't missed the girl. The scars will always be there to remind her
where and what she came from, but they will be just that; memories of wounds
that have been healed by the Grace of God.
"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and does not do it, sins." James 4:17. This tells us that there are, indeed, sins of omission. So the next time you are faced with the choice of personal comfort or personal conviction, CHOOSE CONVICTION. Not
everyone is called to the same challenges, like adoption, but everyone will be called upon to face their
fears and trust the Father. Get in
line. Get equipped.
