Little Foxes

I made a run up to KC yesterday to be there while my dad had three heart stints placed. I wish I had taken before and after pictures because the difference was profound. He went in gray and listless and came out pink and perky! Amazing the change restoring circulation to one's heart makes.

Being there, got me to reflecting on another change in a heart. As I entered the waiting room I was surprised and delighted to see an aunt (Dad's sister) and uncle of mine along with my uncle's brother and his wife. It was neat to see them. I hadn't seen them in years. But, seeing them also set me to thinking anew how fragile relationships really are. You know, we tend to think of the relationships with those we love the most deeply as being indestructible...yet, the older I become the more I believe that every relationship is fragile and must be handled with consistent nurturing and trust is not once for all, but day in and day out...something that no matter how deeply it is entrenched in our hearts, is still always vulnerable. There never comes a point in any human relationship of complete unconditional-ness.

This particular aunt and uncle were the relatives outside my own parents and siblings that I was the closest to all of my childhood. I knew that if my parents were to die, it was this aunt and uncle who would take over and raise me. We spent every Thanksgiving at their house and nearly every Christmas at their house. My family vacationed with them and their son (my only like-aged cousin) every summer. And, often, I would stay a week or so on my own with them, too, each summer.

They lived in Oklahoma. Not the flat, barren part of Oklahoma, but the mountainous part, where the dirt of the roads is bright red...Cherokee nation... Growing up, I could imagine no place more beautiful than that part of Oklahoma. It wasn't just the vivid colors of the landscape...even the PEOPLE there were vibrant and colorful. I spent many an hour pretending to be otherwise engaged as I would eavesdrop in on my Granny as she and my aunts would talk hours on end about this person and that person. The events they related of people that were an every day part of their lives, were far more dramatic than anything on the daytime soaps. Rural Oklahoma was my favorite place on earth. It was where I was going to move when I grew up. And this particular aunt and uncle were the ones that I felt closest to on either side of the family...not just a little bit closer to, profoundly closer to. They were more than an aunt and uncle.

When I fell in love, I brought my boyfriend down to Oklahoma to meet this aunt and uncle. Half a year later, when we got engaged, we made the six hour trip down again to invite my aunt and uncle in person to our wedding. Five months later, a couple of weeks before my wedding, we needed a replacement for the person we had been planning on video taping our wedding. I remember telling Grant, "My aunt and uncle can do that!" I was dead certain that they would be more than willing. A few days later, we went to my dad's birthday party. As the party wrapped up and we were saying our good-byes to my aunt and uncle, I mentioned that we needed a last minute replacement for someone to man the video camera, would they mind doing that. A look passed between them and then my aunt explained that actually they weren't coming to my wedding. They had already made the trip to KC for dad's birthday and then my wedding was just two weeks after that and then their other KC niece's wedding was going to be just a few weeks after that. They had decided that three trips to KC that close together was too much traveling. So, they had decided not to attend either of the weddings. I still remember standing there, stunned. It was as though everything I had ever been CERTAIN about that aunt and uncle crumbled beneath my feet. Had they come to me and told me they would not be coming to my wedding, I would have understood. I mean, honestly, I've never been a person to lay a great deal of stock in ceremony. When Grant and I got engaged, I would have as happily eloped and been married alone in front of a judge as to go through the formality of a church wedding. When I die, I would be totally okay with no funeral and no headstone....just cremate me and dump the ashes. Ceremony has never been my cup of tea. The ceremony of my wedding HAD, by then, become immensely important to me, but because ceremonies had not always been important to me, I would have understood them not choosing to come. What I could not understand was their not TELLING me they were not coming. I had driven down in person to invite them (so they should have know THIS was important) and I had spent the last five months believing it was their intention to come with never any indication on their part that there was any chance they wouldn't be coming. My stunned hurt was even more hurt in that it hadn't even occurred to them that they needed to mention to me that they had changed their mind about coming, than the fact that they were not coming. Both hurt, but the one hurt more deeply. Had I not asked them to do something for me in the wedding, they apparently would not have even told me they weren't coming...they would have just not been there that day.... Their casualness about not coming...their apparent oblivion to the need to TELL ME they would not be coming devastated me. I had work friends that I had sent invitations to out of politeness, who I never expected them to TELL me if they weren't going to come...I mean, they were just invited out of politeness and I wouldn't notice whether they were there or not. In my heart, it felt like my aunt and uncle had viewed my invitation for them to come to my wedding the way it would have been natural for a co-worker to view it...with casualness...hmmm, I'll come if I don't have anything better to do that day....with no sense, at all, for a need to tell me if they were not coming. What hurt, was, in that moment, I comprehended with sickening clarity that they did not feel the same way about me as I felt about them. They did not love me with the depth that I had always believed they had loved me.

That day was a turning point in our relationship...the closing of a door that had always been open between us. From then on I held them at an arm's distance and guarded my heart from them. Our lives never again intersected in the way that they had before that moment that had blindsided my heart. In the eighteen years since then, the heartaches and trials that have entered their life have been things I only hear bits and pieces of, often after the fact, mostly second-hand...just as the heartaches and trials of our life haven't been shared by myself or Grant with them. What they know of our life, they know mostly through my parents. What I know of their life, I know mostly through my parents.

After my little brother grew up, he settled in the same town they live in, so Grant and I have gone to Oklahoma once about every three or four years and several times we have even spent the night at this aunt and uncle's home. We know we are always welcome. They are always welcome in our home. There was hurt and bitterness in my heart the first year or two of our marriage towards them...but that has long since been let go of. Forgiveness came in my heart a long time ago, but by the time it did, so much water had already washed under the bridge and our lives had already grown their separate ways.

Now, almost eighteen years later, as I ponder anew the loss of the closeness of our relationship, things look differently through my eyes now at 46 then they did at 28. Now I realize that their neglecting to make a point of telling me they weren't coming to my wedding was probably borne more out of uncomfortableness and a sense of guilt than out of lack of caring. It was a wedding that they did not want to have to make another trip to KC for....not ME that they did not want to have to make a trip to KC for. I understand that in my own heart, now, as a 46 year old. Yet, it was only yesterday that my heart finally realized that probably they DID love me as deeply as I loved them. Probably the love I had always before that moment believed they felt for me WAS what they felt for me. Nothing profound was spoken between us yesterday for this realization to dawn upon me. It is simply a matter that at 46 you view things (interpret events) with more experience behind you than you are able to view them (interpret them) at 28. I finally realize that they DID love me....but eighteen years have been lost between us...and the relationship we would have had, we do not have.

Relationships are fragile. Such tiny things can de-rail the strongest of relationships. The little foxes get in and ruin the vineyard. I think of my own children and I think of my husband and I realize that the relationships we have must be guarded diligently and handled gently. The closer/stronger a relationship is, the more gently and carefully it needs to be handled.

Passages

Doug has been begging to join Children's Choir for several months now. Grant and I have had serious reservations about this on several levels...1) Doug's speech is garbled and so limited. Even when he has worked hard to master a song, he still hasn't been able to sing more than a word here and there in it. 2) He is so easily over-stimulated and spins out of control so quickly and so completely that we are wary of letting him out of our sight for any activity. So far, he has handled Sunday School okay at this church (thanks, in great measure, I am sure to the fact that one of the teachers in his class has a special needs family member herself and is not flustered by Doug's challenges). 3) The older Doug gets, the more disconcerting his lack of understanding of "personal space" becomes to other children.

Part of me hesitates letting Doug try new things because I worry that he will spin out of control, causing frustration to his teachers and being a disruption to the class...another part of me hesitates because I don't want him hurt by other children. It has gotten better, now that we have been in Bolivar for a year. Kids know Doug now. Some of them will never have kindness in their heart for him because of his differences...but, overall, it seems that he is meeting with far less rejection now that he has been here a while. Most kids, can't help but like Doug once they get to know him. We've been here long enough now for people to get to know us.

Tonight, we let him go to Children's Choir. It went pretty well. Doug can't sing, but he has better rhythm than anyone else in this family! I discreetly lingered just out of sight in the hallway a long time after dropping him off. There were choreographed rhythmic moves with the songs...and Doug had those dead on! He can dance extremely well! He kept himself in check and did not get rambunctious or unruly. When I came at the end of the hour to pick him up, he wanted to stay for Royal Ambassadors...so, I passed him on to the next set of teachers...and then hovered again, just out of sight...listening for the dreaded maniacal laughter that signals he is about to spin completely out of control. It never came. I heard his teacher ask his name and another child spoke up, telling Doug's first and last name and it's spelling to the teacher. It was nice to know that the children there in his class already knew him.

Children's Choir and Royal Ambassadors is still on a trial basis only. We will see how he handles it week by week. I think he is mature enough now to comprehend that HIS choices, in great measure, affect what opportunities are available to him. I know he has a brain injury that makes impulse control very challenging for him...but, still it remains that he must be accountable for his actions. If an activity presents an environment that is just too over-stimulating for him to manage on his own, than his access to that environment will, by necessity, be limited. At school , he does not have free reign of the entire playground. He cannot handle that. He gets too wound up and loses all sense of sound judgment and winds up making very poor choices that endanger himself or others...like throwing rocks at another child (not maliciously, just giddily...but the rock making contact with the other child doesn't hurt any less simply because the thrower had no ill intent in mind). When confined to a smaller section of the playground, he does okay. I am hopeful that as the "threat" that this getting to go to Choir and RA's is only on a trial basis begins to wear off, Doug will have an established enough pattern of self-control in this situation that he will be able to continue going successfully.

My heart has been so heavy tonight. When Doug was six, he was so far behind most children his age...but, he was still so little...somehow it didn't hit me as hard as it does now that he is ten. He is ten. He is ten on the outside, but five on the inside...and now it seems so much more devastating. Last week, Grant and I spoke with each other for the first time about what we will need to do before he turns eighteen...getting legal guardianship. When he was six and seven, I just assumed that he would eventually be able to be out on his own. This year I am realizing that he may never have sound enough judgment to manage life independently. That is a hard realization. I always believed that if we just worked with him enough, he would overcome his disabilities...or at least learn to compensate. I do think he will be capable of holding a job and being a contributing member of society...but, I think he will always need to live with us.

When I was on the medical mission trip in El Salvador, one of the members of our team shared something that has continued to resonate through my heart. She has a 12 year old child with severe disabilities. Only in the last couple of years has that child mastered potty training. She shared with us how a few years ago she had been at church and her heart had just been so moved that night in the course of worship. The experience left her feeling so in tune with God, so in touch with Him. She came home, still on this mountaintop, to discover her then 10 year old daughter had soiled herself, and, not only that, but had managed to spread the feces all over the couch and the carpet and herself. She said that she was not at all gentle as she angrily began cleaning up the mess and cleaning up her daughter...but, that in the very midst of cleaning all the poop, it struck her "THIS, TOO, IS AN ACT OF WORSHIP." And, in that moment of clarity, her entire perspective changed. I don't think that story will ever fade from my mind. "This, too, is an act of worship." So many times, I feel like I have failed to be what Doug has needed in a mother...maybe I haven't sought out resources aggressively enough to address his speech needs and academic needs... Even worse, I know that I have felt such anger and frustration at times over his disabilities...and he is so intuitive that he surely senses that, no matter how much I hide it. As his parent, what I think about him probably matters more than what any other person in the world thinks about him...to him. Your parent is the one person who should see more good and more potential in you than anyone else. I wonder what lessons about himself my anger at him has taught him? And thinking along those lines could fill me with absolute hopelessness...but then, I realize there is still time to learn to love him with the unconditional love he needs...still time left to accept what cannot be changed, instead of trying to make him in to something he cannot be....there is still time... And , most of all, when I am pulling my hair out in frustration over the lessons he never seems to learn and the mistakes that he keeps making over and over again, I can take a deep breath and realize that it is okay...he does not have to be something he is not...he does not have to be something he cannot be. Doug is Doug. And I am his mom. And I am beginning to find the worship that can only be found in learning to love when things have not turned out as I expected...finding peace and acceptance in the midst of what I cannot fix or change...demonstrating love when my heart would normally only have room for anger...giving my son respect, instead of feeling embarrassment. Embarrassment...that is a hard thing to face in yourself. A kind of twisted pride. Social embarrassment...that is the feces I find my hands covered in...and that is the very place where God desires to be the closest. To show respect for my son, to be filled with love and tenderness towards my son so completely that though nothing on the outside has changed, my hands are no longer covered in shame...THAT is the worship God is leading my heart through.

I am not saying that Doug has come as far as he can come. He hasn't. He needs his father and I there, lifting the bar and pushing him onward. Part of his brain injury is a complete lack of self-motivation. We do need to be there pushing him to try harder and reach higher...but the balance has to be a complete unconditional ACCEPTANCE of him and a realistic understanding that he does have a disability. If he were an amputee, we would not expect him to grown new legs. There has to be balance. And my heart is finally beginning to comprehend that where there is unconditional love and complete acceptance, shame evaporates like mist in the morning sun.

My heart is so heavy tonight. My cousin, Cliff's baby (Harbor) is still fighting for his life...still on the ventilator. Cliff and Elisabeth have just been stretched to the point of breaking. They have two other children to care for (one still a toddler in diapers)...and Elisabeth has some serious health issues that need to be corrected surgically, but she just isn't at a place that she can take time out to take care of her own needs. And my niece, Annika, continues to have complication after complication. Her entire young life has been a struggle for survival. I cannot imagine what my sister and brother-in-law are going through...have BEEN going through for nearly eight years now. The challenges in my life are so trivial when set next to the heartbreak that Moreena, Joerg, Cliff, and Elisabeth are going through. (Annika is once more on the transplant list. She needs a third liver transplant.)

I Want to Fill My Life With Things I Will Never Regret

I went to see one of my patients today. She had cancelled her last three home visits. I had caught up with her, in the meantime, by dropping by her oncologist's office during the time I knew her appointment was. It was the first time I had seen her out of her home. She looked so different...all bundled up and hidden...only a little of her face showed beneath the hat she was wearing. She looked so sad. I didn't know it then, but she had just had to have her dog of eighteen years put down the week before.

Today, I went to see her. I was so glad she hadn't cancelled this visit. I called ahead to let her know what time I would be arriving, but only got her answering machine. That was a first. I chalked it up to her depression...not guessing she might not be home, simply assuming she had wearied of answering calls.

The day had begun so warm I hadn't needed a jacket when I had left home for work. Within the span of less than an hour, though, the temperature had dropped over twenty degrees and continued to plummet. By the time I arrived at her house, the wind was in a frenzy, mercilessly whipping hard little sleet flakes horizontally along, not allowing them to reach the ground. I rang her doorbell. Silence. No barking. I knew something was wrong then. Her three dogs always raised such a fuss each time I came to the door...the Australian Shepherd that she always put into the garage before I came (worried she might bite), the hyperactive little gray poodle that we would have to shut out of her bedroom before I changed her dressings because there was no way to keep her off the bed and out of the middle of things, short of locking her out of the room...and the older, emaciated, gray poodle that wore carefully tailored newborn pampers because she had long since lost control of her bladder. The older poodle moved so slowly and stiffly. She always came into the bedroom and laid quietly on a pillow on the floor next to the bed. Her loud, rhythmic snores would begin almost before I had the old dressings gently teased away from her master's sore skin.

The dogs were gone. I went back to my car and began dialing the number of her oncologist to see if the nurses there knew where she was. I thought, "Maybe she went to Kansas City to stay a little while with her friend." I was interupted by a knock on my window. A man I had never seen before stood there...his thin jacket being whipped about by the wind. He was her neighbor from across the street. He told me she had died a few days ago, just a few hours after being admitted to the hospital. There had been no funeral. She didn't want one. Her dear friend from Kansas City had been with her as she died...and later, she had placed the ash remains of the older poodle alongside her in the casket. Her friend had taken the other two dogs back to KC to live with her.

She is my third patient to die since I began my new job, here, five months ago. Like the first patient, she had no family...but, she had a friend who was her family. It makes me realize how important friendships are. There is a verse in the Bible that says there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother... The connections we have with those around us are so important. When all the dross is burned away, what will remain will be the love and time we have invested into the lives of others. It isn't the big things...but the tiny, seemingly insignificant pieces that remain. God whispers...and so often I am too busy. He whispered to me to go see Mike when he was hospitalized in Springfield with what seemed a routine complication. Springfield is a bit of a drive...and, being new to the area, I have no idea where the hospital is in Springfield. I meant to go see Mike. I had dropped in on him when he had had a brief hospital stay here in town...but I didn't get around to it. I called to speak with his nurses. I asked if he had visitors...knowing he had no family and that his friends (neighbors) lived about an hour and a half from Springfield. He didn't. My heart was pricked. I needed to go see him. But, that weekend was so full. The next week was too late. He died. Alone. I heard God's whisper, but I hadn't had time.

Just before Christmas, Barb had lost most of her ability to taste (a side effect of her chemo treatments)...but, she mentioned to me one visit that pizza still tasted good. Grant, the kids and I were planning on going to Texas for Christmas. I was running so short on time. I didn't have my aunt's present finished yet (a blanket I was sewing with patches the kids had used fabric paint to draw on)...I didn't have our clothes packed...the house was a mess...and I heard that whisper...take Barbara a pizza. We put off our planned departure by one day so I could get things done...and I took a break in my frenzied sewing to call Barbara up and ask her if I could bring a pizza over. I didn't know her friend from KC was there with her. I brought my youngest daughter and two pizzas. Rayna played with the younger poodle while Barbara, her dear friend, and I visited over the pizza.

Today, when I called her friend to tell her I was so sorry for her loss, she ended our conversation reminiscing about our "pizza party". I never got to tell Mike good-bye...and I didn't know Barbara had died until several days after it had happened...but the two losses feel so differently in my heart. There is a sad peace in my heart this time, instead of that hollow regret. I want to live my life listening to the whispers...carried along by His whispers...

Putting Down Roots

I was so moved as I caught up on Amy’s blog (“Catching Butterflies“) and read the posts she and her husband have written from China. My heart went out to them as I read how difficult the transition with their newly adopted four year old, Sarah, has been so far. Amy wrote that she could not go out in public with her new daughter without carrying a note explaining, in Chinese, that she was not kidnapping the child, but had legally adopted her, so that when her daughter would scream terrified things in perfect Chinese to passing people, they wouldn’t misunderstand and think the child was being kidnapped. For the first time, I realized how much WORSE our receiving Doug into our own family could have been…it could have been at an airport in Taiwan, instead of America. At least we were with a crowd of strangers who comprehended we were not doing anything terrible to our child when we had to literally pick him up and carry him as he flailed his little body and kicked his legs, trying to get away, screaming frantically in Chinese between hysterical sobs.
Adopting older children can be so much more challenging…the road is just so much rockier and the barriers greater to surmount…and trust and love come so much more slowly with an older child than with an infant. I also have been reading the blogs of another Amy (“To Bring My Daughter Home” and “Lakeshore Ladies“). She recently brought her six year old daughter, Eleanor, home from China. They, too, are in the (all too often frustrating and discouraging) adjustment period.

This July will mark three years since we brought our own son, home. Three years. That sounds so long…and, in so many ways, it FEELS like we have ALWAYS had Doug. Yet, in other ways, sometimes it feels like he may never fully root into our family. I don’t want any of my children to be transplants. The girls are not transplanted. In their own hearts and minds they belong as totally in our family as they would have if they had been carried in my womb…sprung from their father and my own chromosomes. They belong. They have long ago settled comfortably and securely into this family. Then there is our son. It is hard for me to sort out how much is due to his older age and prior life experiences versus how much stems from his own personal challenges, the lingering residual of the severe head injury he sustained as an infant. Whatever the contributing factors, I never would have believed that his transition into our family would take so long and still not be complete. He feels transplanted….to my own heart. I LOVE him as deeply and completely as I love my daughters. (THAT did not come, either, as quickly as I would have anticipated it would. I still remember the anguish of KNOWING that I did NOT love him as deeply as I loved his sisters. It took a year--maybe even a bit longer than that--for my heart to attach to him as deeply as it had to his sisters before him.) Doug’s rooting into our family has been such a slow, rocky process. His needs have been so consuming, that, at times (especially in that first year) we were left frustrated and so drained, day after day. Though we still struggle with his memory impairment, severe language/speech impairment, impulsivity, and inability to focus as we seek to guide him and shape him, we are accustomed, now, to his challenges…his presence in our family is no longer traumatizing to our family unit. We are used to his challenges now, and he is growing up…slowly, but surely. It sounds horrific to say your child is “traumatizing” to your family unit…but it is the cold, hard, truth. I think it is the truth more often than folks would like to admit, even to themselves, when an older child or a child with extra needs enters the family.

I will always remember a phone conversation I had when we were in the process of adopting Doug. I had become acquainted with the woman through an adoption group. I don’t remember her name, any longer…and that conversation between us was our first and our last. Just one passing conversation so long ago with a stranger…but her words will haunt my heart as long as I live. She had domestically adopted a six year old child four years earlier. As she poured out her heart (so much easier to do with a total stranger than with your own friends and family, sometimes), she told me she wished desperately she had never adopted the child. The child had disrupted their entire family. Four years later, the child was still unhappy and her brothers, sisters, and parents had given up on her ever “being one of them”. They just wished they had never brought her into their family. They felt trapped. What they had entered with joyful hearts and idealistic anticipation had turned out so awful. She warned me against adopting an older child and said she wished someone had been there to tell her what it would really be like before she and her husband had entered their own adoption four years earlier. I hung up the phone with a shiver in my own heart. I didn’t want to ever talk to that woman, again. And my heart just felt so sad, not just for her (for the despair and guilt that now haunted her), but especially for the child she had adopted. Before that, I had heard of “disrupted adoptions”…a socially correct, gentle way of saying that somewhere along the line of the adoption process (even AFTER the adoption is already final), the parents have changed their mind and the child is put back up for adoption once more. I had thought, “How could you EVER reject the child you adopted?” I guess I still do not understand, but I no longer view parents who have had “disrupted adoptions” the same way. I used to think that was the most terrible outcome of an adoption process possible. That was before I began hearing stories from others, though. Stories of an adopted sibling who never really rooted into the family and did not maintain steady contact with their families after they were grown. Grown adoptees without family roots. Casual mention of such occurrences still evokes such a strong , convulsing response in my own stomach…and such sorrow. Would those children that could not root into their adoptive families maybe have been able to root into a subsequent family, a family with different dynamics? Or, were they just too incapable of ever trusting and DEPENDING/RELYING in their own hearts on any family, to have ever rooted in anywhere? If the former was true, the well-meaning family did the child a disservice by not “disrupting “ the adoption. But, if the latter was true, it is a blessing that the child had that family, even if they never were able to open their hearts up completely (to be vulnerable enough) to let their family fully in. There is so much we can never know. We can never see into fully into another’s heart…though we seldom realize this. When I realize how blindly I would stumble through this life if I had to rely on my own wisdom and knowledge, it makes me more grateful than I could ever put into words that I do not have to know all the answers…that GOD knows and He watches over my footsteps, whispering in my heart which way to turn whenever I pause long enough from my own wisdom to listen.

God led us to bring Doug home. It was God who burned into our hearts that JenGwo was OUR son, long before we brought him home. So many times over the last three years, THAT has been the comfort and serenity I have leaned into. It is a deep KNOWING. And if he is my SON, then a million other questions that might otherwise haunt me, shed effortlessly off. There is no doubting, “Did we do the right thing for him by adopting him?…Did we do the right thing for us?” I know we did, because I know he is my son. He is not my “adopted “ son. He is my son. I could have chosen NOT to adopt him, but that would not have made him not my son, in God’s eyes…I would have just been giving up one of my children, if I had not adopted him. I know that with utter certainty--now just as deeply as I did in the those anguishing months when we were completing his adoption, when our hearts were heavy with the unknowns of who this little boy named JenGwo really was and how his needs would impact the futures of the children we already knew and loved. Now we know who this son of ours is. His generous spirit and tender heart and intuitive nature are familiar to us. He is our son.

Yet, it has been three years now and he has still not rooted into our family the same way both his sisters did so long ago. His roots go DEEPER now, than they did two years ago and even one year ago…but, it weighs on my heart that his roots are not fully established, even now. It is harder to love a child who does not trust you unconditionally, who does not rest securely in the embrace of your love. Love is a reciprocal thing. We love our child first….and they soon love us in return….that being so much more evident in the adoptive process than in a biological birth, but none the truer. That process can come so much more slowly with an older child or a child with difficult past life experiences. A child who cannot REST effortlessly in your love, cannot fully love you in return. A child that has not yet learned how to REST effortlessly in your love is therefore more challenging to love. In the adoption of an older child, I comprehend more clearly than in any other example how God reaches out to us, but we fear trusting Him, relying on ourselves instead of resting in HIS goodness and trusting Him to guide us. And I get a glimpse of the DEPTH of His love for me…a love that is unconditional and unrelenting whether I can “feel” it or not, and whether or not I love Him in return. How I want our son to feel our love and comprehend our love for him. How my heart aches for the day when he will rest as comfortably and securely in his place in this family as his two sisters do. He still does not trust us the way they do. He still does not let us into his heart the way they do. He trusts us more and he lets us in more now, than he used to…but I just see how far his trust/love for us falls short. He is still waiting for “good-by”. He is still bracing for the moment when he will be ripped out of this family and placed with the next family, as happened to him so often before. We are still just a temporary stop in his heart. He loves us and he wants to stay with us, but he doesn’t trust us not to leave him, like everyone before has. So, he clings….to me, if it is just our family home, or if there is a visitor in our home, he rejects me to cling to them. He clings physically and emotionally. Ever clinging, but never satisfied…ever hungry. If I am typing on the computer, he is leaning against me, bumping my elbow every few seconds as he fidgets about. If I am making supper, he is constantly getting tangled under my feet…an eight year old reminding me so much of an insecure toddler. I work only one day each week…Saturday. This is our routine. It seldom varies. Yet it is a trauma that Doug begins obsessing over days in advance. Asking me over and over again, “Work, Mom? Work?” as we begin the countdown through the week once more. My going to work figures into his prayers every night. He stews and worries over it. His clinginess exacerbates on Friday evenings and typically ends in silent tears streaming down his face around bedtime…as he asks over and over again if I will be coming home after work. Saturday mornings, he awakens earlier than usual and occasionally has a quiet, emotional meltdown as I am trying to slip out of the house to go to work. I remember when he first joined our family…each time we would leave to run a quick errand away from home, he would hurriedly stuff all his most treasured belongings into his little green backpack to take with him…as though he might lose them if he didn’t keep them on his person, because, who knows how long his stay with us was to be. Maybe we were SAYING “we are just going to the grocery store, Doug,” but we were REALLY planning on dropping him off with the next family in line for him to live with. He feels safe leaving the house now, without all his possessions….but, he still does not rest comfortably in this family. There is still a profound anxiety in his heart that will not let him free to relax into his place in this family, to BELONG utterly, unquestioningly, like his sisters so easily do. And he still holds his father and I at an arm’s length emotionally. Grant only sees Doug’s rejection of him…but I can see his rejection of me, too…a funny kind of rejection that drives him to CLING to me even as he is shutting his heart up against me, not trusting me enough to let me in very far. I wonder how long it will take before his heart truly comprehends that he is our son…that he will always be our son, no matter what. I cannot bear to consider that his heart may never comprehend the truth.

After I wrote those last words, I realized something that I was missing looking at. (So often, it easier to see how far Doug has left to go, than to realize how far he has already come.) Doug's heart may not yet fully trust his father's love for him and my own love for him...but, when it comes to his sisters, his heart is totally rooted in them, and theirs in him. With the children, there is no feeling of a transplant in the midst. They accept each other completely and the belongingness that I long for his heart to have with us, his parents, is already there with his siblings. I would say that is a very good sign, indeed. Love and trust take time. He's still a little boy. We still have time.