Consider what it means to lose that connection with the people who should love you most and always be there for you. I doubt it is ever an easy thing.
As Daniel's awareness has grown he has began to observe the way things should have been. He watches my sweet baby niece and sees how adored she is.
He is moving past the pseudo-acceptance of "This is all I deserve" to the hard truth of "Why was I not cared for?"
And it makes him angry.
Heck, I am not too thrilled either!
I have always been pretty up front about our lives and the struggles, but there are certain heartbreaks a mama has to hold close. Because those little eyes are watching.
His little eyes are watching me and he looks to see how I respond to the bumps that come in our road. And sometimes those bumps are painful to me. Unforeseen issues cropping up; I stand in front of the mirror and say it over and over until it doesn't hurt. Until I can frame the experience in a way that will empower him, when all I want to do is wallow with him. Until I can be matter of fact. Until I can handle it with grace and aplomb. And then I talk with him about it.
Same way for this new grief. This realized abandonment.
Letting him see that my heart breaks too, but that it is ok. That God makes ways where there haven't been ways. Running down the list of people who love him and will take care of him if Mommy can't. A wide, encompassing safety net of ordinary people, except that they are his. Really his. And he won't have to go back to the children's home. Ever.
Learning action and reaction. Finding such peace in the predictable reactions instead of the mercurial lashing out.
And even in this grief, he is seeing he is happy. That things are better. He told me the other day that he likes America, because in America his "brain works better."
He has no problem loving himself. He is a confident kid. Not just false bravado, but rather, to-the-bone confidence that people will be interested in what he has to say and in seeing what he can do. And he has no problem loving this family of his. Even if it blows his mind how big it is.
So, pray for my Daniel, with his Amerikrainian swagger, that as he goes through life and deals over and over again with the pain of losing, that he will also be imbued with confidence of all he has won and knowledge that the price for all our loss has been paid once and for all.
And one last smile for the day:
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