From My Journal Dated 10/2013

Dear Friend,

You said in a Facebook post that you loved my son. That post have have taken a moment to send off, but touched my heart in a lasting way. A mama, weary of rejection, cried tears at the kitchen sink after checking her phone and seeing that she wasn't really alone. And although rejection has been the theme of a young soul's journey on earth up to this point, that change is afoot thanks to love.

Dear Sweet Friend who I Lean on for Prayer Support,

You are a soul mother to me with your wisdom and your healing communication with God. Knowing you are praying over us gives me faith to face what may come. Faith to believe God is working it out.

Dear Song Leader,

Thank you for the songs you chose today. The reminder of why we choose to love was so timely. Because somedays that is exactly what this redeeming kind of love comes down to. A choice. "I will love because You loved me."

Dear Church Half a World Away,

Knowing our Sunday communion is communing not only with our Savior, but with our spiritual family as well. Blessings to you for your support and encouragement.

Love,
Crystal

Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End

Here we are. All of us. On the cusp of a new year. The New Year. (capital N, capital Y)

Some are so ready to kiss 2014 adios and plunge into a fresh start.

Others sit in this last day of the year and dread the new one.

My dad's best friend is going off of life support tomorrow. Celebrating tonight and welcoming tomorrow makes my heart literally ache.

I ache for my daddy. I ache for the family. I ache for myself, even though I am on the bottom of the list. Just another indicator of time marching on.

I have been very introspective today. There is a kind of beauty in life that can only be seen in the pain. It is in the pain that we get a glimpse of what life was meant to be. Joy without pain. That is how God made us to live, so when we experience the awfulness that sin has brought into the world, our hearts naturally yearn even more for the perfection we were created for.

I used to work at the hospital. I would run all over the place, from the ER to the ICU to the maternity ward and everywhere in between. Such a spectrum. Rejoicing and heartbreak, just a floor apart.

Once when I was pushing my cart around, I had a thought about how scary birth is for a baby. Everything that he has ever known…gone and changing. Warm and comfortable in his dark little world, until one day he starts not quite fitting how he used to. Somehow it isn't so comfortable anymore.

But it is all he knows.

And then pain! Squeezing, rhythmic. He doesn't know what is going on. Surely his life is ending. Everything he ever knew…gone.

Wrenched out and away from his entire world.

And then eyes open.

Light.

Love like he never even knew existed.

People who have been eagerly anticipating him. Holding him. Loving him. Rejoicing in his coming.

The end of one thing, but the beginning of an unimaginably better thing.

This will happen twice.

I will end this year sharing my favorite poem, like I did last year. A poem to live by:

To live content with small means;

To seek elegance rather than luxury,

and refinement rather than fashion;

To be worthy, not respectable;

and wealthy, not rich;

To study hard,

think quietly, 

talk gently, 

act frankly;

To listen to stars and birds,

To babes and sages, with open heart,

to bear all cheerfully,

do all bravely,

await occasions, 

hurry never.

...To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,

grow up through the common.

This is to be my symphony.

-Wm. Henry Channing

I wish you all a blessed New Year, full of love, adventure and becoming. May each of us live every moment to the fullest, seek God's guidance and when that isn't clear, seek wise friends. May we revel in the cold air and soak in the summer days. May we, each of us, hold one another dear and tight, so that when we are apart we can remember the feel of love. May we dance in the kitchen at least once a month to a song that is ridiculous and happy. May we have open hands and open hearts ready to receive the people and blessings that God sends our way. Amen.

The Other Mother

As time plods on in our home, thoughts of the whole "adoption" thing kind of dim because it stops being anything out of the ordinary and simply becomes…well, life.

Logically I know that Daniel came from another mother. He has been asking these questions lately. Questions that I am at a loss to answer. Partly because I, quite simply, don't know, and partly because what I do know isn't heartwarming. 

I don't know much. A name. A situation.

This used to bother me. I wanted answers. I wanted to know the "why's."

What God gave me was a dream. 

I was sitting in a small room, like an exam room at a doctor's office. I had Daniel in my lap. Across from me sat a beautiful woman. 

Golden hair. Blue eyes. Freckles. Healthy.

She seemed to almost radiate light.

In my dream, I wondered who she was and was filled with the knowledge that this was Daniel's biological mother.

My mind said "No" it isn't logical that she would have looked like this, given the information I have.

Then I was filled with warmth and love and I heard God say, "This is how I see her."

All the anger that I had toward her dissolved after the dream, back in January of this year.

The thing is, all parents want to protect their kids' stories. Especially adoptive parents who have an ounce of caring, because really, even in the most ideal adoptive situation, there is heartache and loss. Profound loss.

My son's story is nothing that I sit and flippantly talk about. Ever. It is sacred.

And yet, as time passes and the wrinkles start to smooth out, I can go days without thinking about him being adopted. Weeks without thinking about the yuck he came out of. 

The irony of reaching that point is now Daniel starts with the questions. And the speculations. And the fantastic stories.

Do I ignore it? Validate it? Lay the facts out, sparing no hurt?

The fact is there was a woman, someone who I have never, nor will ever meet, yet who's decisions have changed my life and to whom I am connected with until the day I die. And she is one big question mark. I can't help loving her and feeling compassion toward her. And thinking about what a cool kid she had and how it is sad that she lost out, for whatever reasons, on seeing him grow and develop.

And if the above is true for me, it is even more true for Daniel.

Consider It Pure Joy

Last Sunday I was speaking with a friend of mine who brought home an 8 month old from the Congo two years ago this week.

She went on to say that the little one was struggling hard this week. That trauma is real and manifesting itself in this precious child, especially during the anniversary. 

Oh, how I understand that.

Then she said something that was really a fundamental shift in the way I view those hard times. 

Well,  really the way that most of us view those hard times. 

She said (with her eyes full of the pain she had been watching her son go through) "Even though it is hard, I am just so thankful and honored that we get to go through this with him."

Wait. What?!

I will be honest. I was not thankful and honored when, this morning, I had to listen to Daniel try and push my buttons over and over by saying, while in time out, "Mommy, listen to me! I want a different mommy!" And, I kid you not, he said it stinking twenty times if he said it once.

It doesn't hurt my feelings, but it is mighty inconvenient when I am trying to get the kids out of the house, but Daniel is in trauma-meltdown-mode because he has had a schedule change at school and one of the aids made him feel overwhelmed and so he is lashing out at me. As much as I would have loved to bundle him up and kick him out of the door so he could catch the bus, I knew that what I needed to do was address the feelings and the behavior and offer redemption. All before school started. 

Ugh.

I am SO not enough.

And I didn't get breakfast.

And I got a migraine.

Let's be honest, I was not considering serving Daniel in that moment pure joy. More like pure inconvenience.

And yet, in James 1: 2-8, we are told:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^a whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Tonight when I went to write this post, I was reading the latter part of the scripture. "But when you ask you must believe and not doubt…"

Oh, Lord. I doubt. I am all about praying powerfully and totally believing that Daniel will grow up to love the Lord and serve Him. 

And then I have a day like today and the teacher calls to tell me that (when cornered, in all fairness) Daniel got in a fight on the playground and Daniel lashes out at me because some woman at school sniped about his reading skills. 

And then I am tossed like the sea. Doubting God's plan.

Oh, to consider it pure joy.

Even in the tough moments when I am inconvenienced.

That would be a radical shift.

This Thanksgiving I am deciding to be thankful for the few conflicts and struggles in our journey that I have experienced through this past year, as well as the mounds of wonderful, because they are shaping me into who God wants me to be. And so I will CHOOSE to be in the moment, to be filled with determination and grit for these tough times, to take the challenges and use them like a kite uses the wind.

And I am CHOOSING to speak this. To give these feelings words so that others can also experience that shift in thinking.

To, maybe, not expect so much out of myself and others.

To lay down those things that I have prayed for with the faith that God can pick them up.

To consider it pure joy.

Sometimes I Want to Whine.

I am not going to give into that, though.

Tonight was parent/teacher conferences.

<voice of Olaf> "All good things. All good things."

But sometimes I am just SO TIRED OF IT ALL.

(Here comes the whine….)

Sometimes I just want to know how it is going to turn out. (And that it will turn out ok.)

So, maybe what I really want is for some expert to say, "It is going to be ok, Crystal." And let's face it…not just "ok" I want to know that it will be great.

I. Want. To. Know.

And it is times like this that I can almost physically HEAR God telling me to look at Him. He isn't placating me with empty promises and trite phrases. His Spirit is simply telling me to look to Him.

That maybe, through looking at Him, instead of the homework pages and assessments, I can see who He is. And by seeing who He is, know that He has it all under His control and that everything that will happen will be ever for His glory.

But, if any of you want to chime in and tell me that it will be ok, I wouldn't mind that a bit.

Remember

Thirteen years ago.

I was driving to my first day of training for my new job in my orange 1979 Mercedes with the sunroof open. Listening to Oldies 101.7.

A glorious day.

Clear blue sky. The likes of which only comes after summer finally begins to relinquish its grasp and fall starts to cut in on the dance.

Delicious and crisp.

An announcement cuts in. A plane hit a building in New York.

Ooh. That's too bad. It must have been an accident.

Not even a blip on my radar of what was to come as I zipped down the road, a happy newlywed, on my way to a new job.

Then there was another announcement.

Another plane hit.

Oh Jesus.

I still can't fully grasp it.

I get to the training center and everyone is huddled in the break room. Glued to the 19" Panasonic.

Images like this assail my brain as I tried to reconcile the world of the day before to the world I was seeing play out in front of me.

I could go on and on. I could describe that day in perfect detail. How I thought the world was ending. How I watched the news coverage until I could watch no more. How the only thing, besides coverage, was on TV Land and it was the Brady Bunch (where the girls are grown up and sharing a house). How Garth was working late. How I sat on our garage-sale couch, practically catatonic.

And really, we all have those stories. That day brought us all to our knees. Drew us all closer to those we loved. 

We all said we wouldn't forget. And we haven't.

But life has a way of going on. It can seem callous that we can move past the tragedies that are as surely a part of life as is living it.

Yet, there is a beauty in the forgetting. A beauty in the meal after a funeral. A beauty in the new lives that are born into the world that don't even know of the tragedy, except for the stories.

Because all of those things offer the proof that life goes on.

Life goes on and you can't remember so much what it was like before, because all of those hurts remade us a bit, and we walk on. And we smile again. And we laugh. And we have new hurts that we don't think we can get through, but we do. And we remember. 

Down through the ages. Thousands of years. The groaning of the Israelites for their deliverance from Egypt. The crying out of those who trust in YAHWEH, calling out for deliverance, even now. The wailing of those who don't even know who they are summoning. "Come." Over and over. Thousands of times. Ten thousands of voices.  Millions of reasons. "Come. Save." The words encapsulating all the pain and questioning and hope in the midst of it. "Come. Save. Deliver." 

We were made for so much more than the most beautiful, perfect thing that this world has to offer, it is no wonder that our souls shy away from the pain.

Heavy Stuff

Last night Daniel told me another Secret.

Secrets are how I have come to refer to the awful stories of his past.

I know that I have made posts about this sort of subject before, but it floors me every time.

I mean, look at Daniel…

You would never know. 

The memories that camp out in his brain. The awful, despicable treatment he received at the hands of "caretakers." 

I am talking "A Child Called It" kind of stuff.

I have, personally, never felt too much anger or contempt for the people who were in his life prior to us showing up, but after last night's story… Ugh. Help me, Jesus.

But then I remember that Jesus was angry too. Righteous anger. And so maybe my anger isn't wrong. 

I sat on my bed last night. Trying. Trying to let go of the emotions that Daniel's tale had evoked.

Thoughts of "If only…" plagued my mind. But I believe and know that we got Daniel in God's time. 

Why God???? 

I don't really have a tidy way to wrap this post up, as I set here with tears running down my cheeks.

I think of all the people who KNEW what was going on. I think of all the family that didn't step forward to care for him. I don't know any of them, but a child isn't born in a vacuum. Even if a mom can't care for him.

How do you teach a child worth? We try day by day. And he fits in so well. But he will always know that he was systematically neglected, abused. And I don't have a beautiful thing to say to bring closure and explanation for that. Because it is sin. Sin in its darkest, tarriest, most demon-filled form.

And why does he tell me? What stops him from sharing with Garth? 

I am glad that he can share. And I never want to shut him down. And I suppose there is a dubious honor to being the Keeper.

People, I have heard two Secrets this summer (since June) and both have WRECKED me. And to know that my baby has those and more to share. If just one of these things had happened to me it would have been the worst event in my life. 

That is all.