Waiting. Yep, it stinks!

Friends in Eastern Europe have compiled their dossier to adopt two older boys from an orphanage there.  These are kids no one from their own country wanted.  Their hopeful parents are Americans, living in country, serving orphans and people seen by the majority there as societal outcasts.  My friends are good people.  They were “there” for me when I was stuck in the muck for weeks in that place, waiting for a corrupt government to move so I could bring my children home.  My friends have jumped through hoops.  They’ve done all the important things, as well as all the ridiculous things they’ve been told to do, in order to compile the necessary paperwork needed to make these boys legally their own.  Now, officials at that country’s national adoption authority are telling them that they will not be seen through the rest of the year.  They were told to come back in February.  It’s ridiculous.  It’s about the convenience of the workers.  It’s about politics, and constant changes in adoption procedures.  It’s about changes in authority – something that seems to be in constant flux in that country.  And yes, I’ll say it:  it’s about corruption and extortion, even if it’s veiled extortion.  I can bet you that a nice sum of cash would get them an appointment pronto.  My friends don’t work like that even if corrupt officials do. 

My friends are hoping for an appointment anyway.  They are moving forward in faith believing God called them to become the parents of these two boys.  They are moving forward, knowing childhood does not wait.  (For every year spent in an orphanage, a child will lose 4-6 months or more in physical, emotional and psycho-social development.)  My friends are waiting on people who do not really care about these boys, and who certainly do not care about them.  Yep, it stinks.

I have other beloved friends whose dossier is sitting on the desk of some national adoption official in South America.  The government is different there than in former Soviet states, but there is still red tape, just as there is red tape anywhere.  They can’t get any definitive answers.  There must be some big meeting that takes place.  That meeting hasn’t happened.  The child they’re waiting to adopt is also an older boy with special needs.  He, too, is waiting in an orphanage.  While he is in an orphanage run by people who do care, he is still in an orphanage.  The statistics for kids waiting in an orphanage do not improve from country to country.  My friends would be good parents for this child.  He would have a sibling, already home, from his own orphanage, as well as other brothers and sisters.  But they have not yet been officially matched.  Other people from other countries have looked at his file, but he’s still waiting in bureaucratic limbo, while my friends still hold onto the hope that God called them to become his parents.  However, nothing is certain in any country until you walk out of court with a final adoption decree in your hands.  Waiting.  Yep, it stinks.

The process of adoption is filled with paperwork, red tape, and what seems like endless waiting.  It is hard.  Really hard.  A lot of people give up.  Thankfully, many do not.  Childhood doesn’t wait, even if we must.  Once our kids are home, we wait some more.  It’s a different kind of waiting, but it’s still hard.  If our children were adopted internationally, we wait for them to be able to understand us, as we wait to understand them.  We wait for attachment – sometimes for our entire relationship.  We wait for our children to learn to become part of our families.  We wait for them to learn to trust us and to believe we will not leave.  We wait for them to stop lying and stealing.  We wait to see if they will get into trouble, even as we wait for them to grasp they are valuable.  Sometimes, it’s really hard to wait on these things.  Waiting stinks.

Frankly, I don’t know how anyone gets through the process of adoption, nor the process of knitting a child to one’s heart, without faith.  Your faith in God may look a little different than mine, but I don’t know another adoptive parent that’s doing this well, who is doing it alone.  I NEED God, even when I don’t know exactly who He is, or exactly what He looks like.  Even though I don’t fully understand His character, and I won’t fully KNOW HIM this side of Heaven, I need the hope of His unconditional love for me.  Otherwise, I cannot begin to show that unconditional love to my children.  Without God, I cannot begin to wait for the hope I have for their lives, because I know He has waited on me many, many times.  I know that trusting in Him helps me renew my strength (Isaiah 40:31).

I also need others who are walking this road.  I need the wisdom of those who have gone before me, who have “been there/done that," and I need the friendship of those who are where I was three and four years ago, too.  As one of my good friends puts it, “sometimes only another trauma mama can talk you down off the ceiling.”  My heart breaks for those who isolate themselves, or think that prayer alone will solve everything. 

Sometimes God answers prayer by putting people in our paths who know what they’re talking about!  There is a story my former pastor tells to illustrate this point:  There was a flood.  A guy was stuck on top of his roof, and he prayed for God to save him, as the water rose.  Another guy came by in a row boat and offered him a ride.  The man on the roof refused saying, “I’ve prayed for God to save me.”  Another person came by on a raft and offered him a place on the rickety, but still floating vessel.  Yet, he refused saying, “I’ve prayed for God to save me.”  A third person came by, clinging only to a floating log.  The water was up to the waiting man’s neck by then.  He was told to grab hold of the log, but this quickly sinking man replied, “I’ve prayed for God to save me.”  Eventually, the man on the roof drowned.  When he got to Heaven, he asked why God hadn’t saved him.  God replied, “I tried to save you three times!” 

As I wait for my children to trust me, to stop lying, to stop shutting down or yelling at me, to relax and know they are loved, I pray.  But I also watch for those God would send along my way.  I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my adoptive parenting journey, especially during that first year or so.  I’ve asked my kids “why” they did something, instead of “what” they were feeling.  I’ve tried to “make” my kids tell me the truth, instead of helping them discover what fear was driving them.  I’ve argued that my kids needed to know how to handle “real life” with “regular people,” not knowing they would never get there without first healing from their trauma.  I’ve used all the good parenting techniques that worked to help me raise four healthy, happy, whole, and functional young adult sons, only to learn these things DO NOT WORK with hurt children, and I had to learn to parent my adopted children in ways that seemed counter intuitive to me.  I’ve allowed some row boats to go by, but I’ll be darned if I’ll let a raft or a log go by now, too.  Waiting stinks, but I’m not going to drown. 

Let’s pray for our waiting friends, but let’s also be there for them.  Let’s also accept God’s answer to our own prayers when He sends by a row boat, a raft, or even a log.  Waiting stinks, but we don’t have to drown.  It’s a lot easier to endure waiting when we are in a boat, with company. 

Better Than a Hallelujah Sometimes

This one is for those struggling . . .

Amy Grant sings a song about dealing with pain, and how the honesty of crying out in pain or failure to God is “better than a hallelujah, sometimes.”  (Click on “song” if you want to hear it.)  As a parent raising hurt kids, there are many times I’ve cried out in fear or in failure.  There are times when God felt far away, and my prayers were hitting the ceiling.  There have even been times, even recent times, where I’ve wondered what good my faith does in raising children whose behaviors have truly caused me to question everything I thought I was, including "good mother."  What could I have been thinking to adopt two much older kids from such a horrific background?  (This is where you hear the record scratching as the needle is pulled and the turn table comes to an abrupt halt.) 

Wait a minute, Mama T!  You said, not two posts ago, that your faith is important to you.  You said you love your kids.  We thought you loved your kids!  You said the things you write here about therapeutic parenting will show that faith to be evident, and now you’re telling us that you’ve doubted your faith as you are in the midst of raising your kids?

Yes.  Yes to all of that.  I love my kids.  I wanted my kids.  I want my kids.  I want my kids to go away sometimes.

I want you to know that I’ve doubted my faith and I’ve felt God was far away even as I passed through the hardest of the hard, because I also want to tell you I believe He was there through all my doubt!  He didn’t want my false, heartless praise or hallelujah songs at that point.  He wanted the relationship of trust proven by my honest cries to His Spirit – he wanted ME to be honest with ME, and get to the point where I could say to myself, “This is damned hard!”  (Yes, God allows me to say that to myself and to tell you about it.)  He allowed me to walk through that valley of the shadow of death (and really it was – and still is some days) because it got me to the point where I allowed myself to believe some important truths.  No matter how much therapeutic parenting I do with my kids, no matter how much I love them, no matter how hard we all work, there are just some things I cannot control.  There are just some decisions they will make and some things they do – often in the heat of whatever moment they’ve been triggered – that I will not be able to fix for them.  There are indeed some things I need to let go and let God.  And that – THAT – is okay!”

I think if you’re a struggling parent going through some of the hard stuff with a child that’s been abused, neglected, and traumatized it’s essential – it’s even sanity and life-saving – to get to that point.  It is important for you to know this – listen – while yes, it is a blessing and blah, blah, blah, parenting hurt kids is HARD – really hard!  There are some things you just may need to let go and let God – and that – THAT, my friends, is okay.  YOU are okay – even wise -- in doing so.  It doesn’t mean you’ve given up.  It means, you’re facing some real, hard life.  It means that it is true there are some things we parents cannot control and there are some things we parents cannot fix.  That’s okay.  The good news is there is a peace that passes all understanding when you finally come to this point.

God loves a lullaby

In a mother’s tears

In the dead of night

Better than a hallelujah sometimes . . .

Give yourself permission to cry out, to let go and let God.  You’re not giving up.  You’re getting up.  Stick around.  We’ll get back to therapeutic parenting techniques and ideas soon.   I want to share some more about who we are.

Ever been dumped?

Ever feel abandoned?  Like nobody “gets” you?  Ever feel like you’ve placed your trust in someone you thought would always be there, but they weren’t?  Have you ever been excluded, or left out of things?  Have you been told by someone that they would pray for you when things were tough, but what they really should have said to be honest – to say what their body language was screaming – was, “You scare me, and I don’t really want to get involved?”  Ever feel as though you’ve been dumped by someone you care about, and that you thought cared about you, but didn’t?

I know a lot of trauma mamas who have experienced these feelings.  Parenting children who are dealing with the rough stuff of a traumatic past can sometimes be very isolating.  Their “stuff” is weird.  Their “stuff” causes problems for others.  Their “stuff” makes us look like we don’t know how to parent.  I’ve also read a lot of blogs, written by moms who were left out of girls’ nights or get-a-way weekends.  I’ve talked with women who’ve tried to make friends with other moms in their churches – even other adoptive moms --- but they cannot make a real connection because those moms either don’t understand therapeutic parenting or trauma, or they want to pretend trauma doesn’t exist.  I know a mom who trusted other moms – other adoptive moms, in fact – and was abandoned by those moms when things started to get rough for her and some of her other trauma mama friends.  They told her they needed to “simplify,” that they “didn’t want to think about” those hard things, and that her life and the lives of her fellow trauma mama friends frightened them.  Talk about a sucker punch!  It’s not fair to be abandoned by people you trust.  It’s not right to have people who are supposed to be the people you think would be the most trustworthy not stick around when the going gets tough.  It hurts.  It’s not fun.  And it can leave trauma mamas with PTSD scars of their own that make it hard to trust again.

I hate it.  I really, really hate those feelings.  I’ve felt that hurt and that sting.  I’ve experienced that feeling of abandonment when someone told me they thought life with hurt kids was too much for them to “handle.”  I’ve wondered, “What are YOU handling?!  -- A few minutes of empathy? – Of listening to someone else’s pain?  This is too much for you to handle?” I’ve also wondered, “What about bearing one another’s burdens?  Is it too much to ask, unless you’re the one asking?”  And I’ve been hurt.  And I can get pretty angry.  It’s hard to trust again when you’ve felt so abandoned.  I’ve wanted to hide.  I’ve wanted to run.  And the cycle of isolation is compounded even more, because I’m afraid I’ll be hurt again.  (Thankfully, in that hurt, I’ve also been reminded to try very, very hard NOT to do that to someone else!  I’ve asked God to make me more aware.  I certainly want to ask for forgiveness and make up for it when I’m thoughtless enough to let someone feel as though I’ve abandoned them.  After all, I usually have no clue.  That’s what “thoughtless” means.)  Still, we can’t stay in that place of hurt ourselves.  We have to let it go.  We have to open up again.  We have to try to remember we’ve been thoughtless, too.  We have to remember there are times we didn’t realize what our words or our actions did to someone else.  All we can do is pray we are more of a blessing than we are a burden and move on.  We can do that if we have a basis of love – of knowing how to bear one another’s burdens – to begin with. 

Have you ever felt ANY of that?  Have you ever experienced ANYTHING like this?  Can you relate at all?

The gift that the pain of abandonment for trauma mamas is this:  we get just a little taste of what life’s been like for our hurt kids.  Before their adoption, they experienced all these feelings and often, much more.  However, for them, it all happened before they were old enough to know they could be okay or that they could let the thoughtlessness of others go.  However it happened, they were abandoned, before they were able to take care of themselves, or knew how to move on – to move past the hurt.  For them, the cycle of isolation wasn’t one or two traumatic events that shook their world, it was their world!  So, how does anyone survive those raw, hard, painful feelings?  Real feelings.  Real, yucky feelings?  Yet our kids do survive.  Our kids are still here.  Where they live, who they live with, is different.  And they survive that, too.  What may have crushed any one of us is simply a part of matter-of-fact life for them.  It’s not fair.  It hurts.  It’s not fun.  And it leaves PTSD scars that run deep, and it makes it hard to trust again.

So trauma mamas, can you relate?  Can you get a glimpse of what it’s like for your hurt child to wake up and have to navigate the world with raw feelings ALL the time?  Strangely, I think most of us can.  I think if you’re reading this, and you KNOW you’re a “trauma mama,” then you can absolutely relate.  You’re aware of your child’s past and the needs that exist in their life because of their traumatic past.  You’re aware – painfully aware – of how it affects their now, as well as their future.  You’re aware of how it affects YOUR life now, and YOUR future.  And you are hoping, you’re PRAYING, and you’re hoping some more, for some peace in your life and for someone who “gets it,” so you won’t feel so isolated so often.

Some of you, dear readers, share my Christian faith.  Some may not.  I’m not a far right-wing, thump-the-Bible-over-your-head kind of person, but I am a Christian.  For me, that faith shows through in some of what I write and it will also show through on this blog.  I hope it doesn’t turn you away if you don’t share my faith, though.  I still think we can learn from one another.  But again, for me, faith is what gets me through the lonely times.  I’ve been called “weak” for depending so heavily on God and for calling out to Christ when I feel most afraid or alone.  To those folks I say, “Yes!  Weak?  That’s me!  But my God is strong.”  I depend on the knowledge that He is there for me and that He loves me – no more and no less than anyone else – but that His love is perfect and unfathomable.  I may not always know exactly what that means – and I may not understand fully who He is, but I know He is there.  I know He hears me.  I know He blesses me.  When I cry out, it is true I most often cry out for Him to come to me “with skin on.”  I ask for Him to send me someone I can see and hear, who will see me and hear me, and “get it.”  I ask for someone who won’t leave when things get tough.  I ask also to be that someone for a mom who needs the same.

My prayer for this blog is that it can serve as a way for me to be that person for a trauma mama “out there somewhere” who needs a friend that “gets it.”  I certainly don’t have all the answers.  I don’t think any one of us -- even those of us who have been at this therapeutic parenting thing for a while now -- would say we have all the answers.  We just know some things we’ve tried that don’t work, and we know some other things that have worked.  We keep trying new things, too, because new trauma drama pops up all the time.  It’s an on-going process.  It’s a 24/7 career.  If we can help one another along the way, even by just BEING THERE and being that one friend that doesn’t exclude, doesn’t run, doesn’t say “I’m praying” without also sticking around through the rough stuff, that doesn’t bail – well, then, I think we’ve found a very good thing.

Thanks again for reading this far.  We’re just getting started.  I have a lot on my brain I want to share with you.  Parenting stuff.  Therapy stuff.  Movie reviews for trauma parenting.  Ideas about “stuff” for our kids for Christmas and about how to handle the holidays.  How to be there for someone who’s struggling.  Yep, lots of things.  If you like what you’re reading so far, will you share it with another trauma mama?  Please link my blog to yours and let me know your blog address, too.  Click “share” for Facebook or Twitter below.  Click on +1 to recommend the blog to others.  And thanks for standing by me as I get this thing rolling.  It means more than you know.