Settling In..

I cannot believe we have been home for a whole week already.  Where does the time go?  As we three travelers get in sync with Pacific time..life is slowly finding a steady rhythmn that we might eventually call 'normal'.  :)  Emma is doing so well!  At times I look at her and, in between the hard moments, wonder when the bottom is going to fall out.  Where there once was an all-the-time vacant look on her face...we now see the occasional smile that is spontaneous!  You can make the sweet girl smile by provoking her with tickles or a game, but that first spontaneous smile she gave me when I walked into her room was PRICELESS!  I like what my sister-in-law, Caylene, had to say, you can just tell Emma has a beautiful soul and yes, she does!  It is always hard to see things when we are close up to them...but easier from a distance.  So it is with adoption.  I see all the things from Emma that are evidence of a neglectful beginning...and sometimes lose sight of the beautiful progress she is making.  Blank face into sunshine.  Wobbly hips to almost pulling herself up.  Tears at every diaper change to giggles.  Refusing all table food to eating with the family.  Sitting alone and not caring to crawling to another room to be near me.  Holding her bottle in a vise grip to letting me hold it for her.  Screaming fits of anxiety and fear to allowing herself to be consoled.  So many things to be thankful for!

We are so thankful that the other kids have welcomed and incorporated Emma into our lives and family so well.  Poor Beth has maybe had the worst time, sharing my attention with Emma.  She is already doing better though and seems to be getting as much if not more attention at times than Em.  She is figuring out the 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' routine.  But as we all settle in...we are home, Em is in our arms...the journey is only now beginning.  I have truly struggled with how to convey this journey (and how it might look) with others; family, friends, church family, etc... and just haven't really felt like I had the right words or venue to say them.  Adoption is such a journey, one I am so glad Justin and I said yes to and one that has changed our lives and the lives of our kids and those who love us, forever.  But I haven't had one-on-one conversations about this thing called adoption with too many people.  Emma is now the priority number one concern though and I know I need to help others understand what it is we are trying to accomplish.  I have read a lot (hundreds maybe) of blog posts over the last few months from moms on this similar journey..pouring over the ins and outs of once you get home and I have found one woman who says it out-right, very plain, with some humor.  I don't want to plaguerize but I really think the things she shares are close to the things on my heart.  So I will link her article...but also copy some of what she says here....she uses some sarcasm and humor, so don't be offended, it is well meant.  Maybe the things mentioned will spur you on to grow and understand what families are going through that have adopted.  I know before this journey began I really had no clue what my brother and his family went through, I made wrong conclusions and observations and didn't 'get it'...for which, believe me, I have apoligized for!  :)    So many things that seem 'normal'...really aren't for Emma...and things that don't seem normal...well, are normal.  It is hard to figure out but I am not ment to 'bear' it all alone...so read on if you want to join in the journey with us!  (another side note also...her article starts out sharing the do's and don't's for the entire adoption process..interesting read, too)

Supporting Families After the Airport  by Jen HatmakerYou went to the airport. The baby came down the escalator to cheers and balloons. The long adoption journey is over and your friends are home with their new baby / toddler / twins / siblings / teenager. Everyone is happy. Maybe Fox News even came out and filmed the big moment and “your friend” babbled like an idiot and didn’t say one constructive word about adoption and also she looked really sweaty during her interview. (Really? That happened to me too. Weird.)

How can you help? By not saying or doing these things:

1. I mean this nicely, but don’t come over for awhile. Most of us are going to hole up in our homes with our little tribe and attempt to create a stable routine without a lot of moving parts. This is not because we hate you; it’s because we are trying to establish the concept of “home” with our newbies, and lots of strangers coming and going makes them super nervous and unsure, especially strangers who are talking crazy language to them and trying to touch their hair.

2. Please do not touch, hug, kiss, or use physical affection with our kids for a few months. We absolutely know your intentions are good, but attachment is super tricky with abandoned kids, and they have had many caregivers, so when multiple adults (including extended family) continue to touch and hold them in their new environment, they become confused about who to bond with. This actually delays healthy attachment egregiously. It also teaches them that any adult or stranger can touch them without their permission, and believe me, many adoptive families are working HARD to undo the damage already done by this position. Thank you so much for respecting these physical boundaries.

3. For the next few months, do not assume the transition is easy. For 95% of us, it so is not. And this isn’t because our family is dysfunctional or our kids are lemons, but because this phase is so very hard on everyone. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to constantly hear: “You must be so happy!” and “Is life just so awesome now that they’re here??” and “Your family seems just perfect now!” I wanted that to be true so deeply, but I had no idea how to tell you that our home was actually a Trauma Center. (I did this in a passive aggressive way by writing this blog, which was more like “An Open Letter to Everyone Who Knows Us and Keeps Asking Us How Happy We Are.”) Starting with the right posture with your friends – this is hard right now – will totally help you become a safe friend to confide in / break down in front of / draw strength from.

4. Do not act shocked if we tell you how hard the early stages are. Do not assume adoption was a mistake. Do not worry we have ruined our lives. Do not talk behind our backs about how terribly we’re doing and how you’re worried that we are suicidal. Do not ask thinly veiled questions implying that we are obviously doing something very, very wrong. Do not say things like, “I was so afraid it was going to be like this” or “Our other friends didn’t seem to have these issues at all.” Just let us struggle. Be our friends in the mess of it. We’ll get better.

5. If we’ve adopted older kids, please do not ask them if they “love America so much” or are “so happy to live in Texas.” It’s this simple: adoption is born from horrible loss. In an ideal world, there would be no adoption, because our children would be with their birth families, the way God intended. I’ll not win any points here, but I bristle when people say, “Our adopted child was chosen for us by God before the beginning of time.” No he wasn’t. He was destined for his birth family. God did not create these kids to belong to us. He didn’t decide that they should be born into poverty or disease or abandonment or abuse and despair aaaaaaaall so they could finally make it into our homes, where God intended them to be. No. We are a very distant Plan B. Children are meant for their birth families, same as my biological kids were meant for mine. Adoption is one possible answer to a very real tragedy… after it has already happened, not before as the impetus for abandonment. There is genuine grief and sorrow when your biological family is disrupted by death and poverty, and our kids have endured all this and more. So when you ask my 8-year-old if he is thrilled to be in Texas, please understand that he is not. He misses his country, his language, his food, his family. Our kids came to us in the throes of grief, as well they should. Please don’t make them smile and lie to you about how happy they are to be here.

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.

Here’s what we would love to hear or experience After the Airport:

1. Cook for your friends. Put together a meal calendar and recruit every person who even remotely cares about them. We didn’t cook dinners for one solid month, and folks, that may have single handedly saved my sanity. There simply are not words to describe how exhausting and overwhelming those first few weeks are, not to mention the lovely jetlag everyone came home with. And if your friends adopted domestically right up the street, this is all still true, minus the jetlag.

2. If we have them, offer to take our biological kids for an adventure or sleepover. Please believe me: their lives just got WHACKED OUT, and they need a break, but their parents can’t give them one because they are 1.) cleaning up pee and poop all day, 2.) holding screaming children, 3.) spending all their time at doctors’ offices, and 4.) falling asleep in their clothes at 8:15pm. Plus, they are in lockdown mode with the recently adopted, trying to shield them from the trauma that is Walmart.

3. Thank you for getting excited with us over our little victories. I realize it sounds like a very small deal when we tell you our kindergartener is now staying in the same room as the dog, but if you could’ve seen the epic level of freakoutedness this dog caused her for three weeks, you would understand that this is really something. When you encourage us over our incremental progress, it helps. You remind us that we ARE moving forward and these little moments are worth celebrating. If we come to you spazzing out, please remind us where we were a month ago. Force us to acknowledge their gains. Be a cheerleader for the healing process.

4. Come over one night after our kids are asleep and sit with us on our porch. Let me tell you: we are all lonely in those early weeks. We are home, home, home, home, home. Good-bye, date nights. Good-bye, GNO’s. Good-bye, spontaneous anything. Good-bye, church. Good-bye, big public outings. Good-bye, community group. Good-bye, nightlife. So please bring some community to our doorstep. Bring friendship back into our lives. Bring adult conversation and laughter. And bring an expensive bottle of wine.

5. If the shoe fits, tell adopting families how their story is affecting yours. If God has moved in you over the course of our adoption, whether before the airport or after, if you’ve made a change or a decision, if somewhere deep inside a fire was lit, tell us, because it is spiritual water on dry souls. There is nothing more encouraging than finding out God is using our families for greater kingdom work, beautiful things we would never know or see. We gather the holy moments in our hands every day, praying for eyes to see God’s presence, his purposes realized in our story. When you put more holy moments in our hands to meditate on, we are drawn deeper into the Jesus who led us here.

Here’s one last thing: As you watch us struggle and celebrate and cry and flail, we also want you to know that adoption is beautiful, and a thousand times we’ve looked at each other and said, “What if we would’ve said no?” God invited us into something monumental and lovely, and we would’ve missed endless moments of glory had we walked away. We need you during these difficult months of waiting and transitioning, but we also hope you see that we serve a faithful God who heals and actually sets the lonely in families, just like He said He would. And even through the tears and tantrums (ours), we look at our children and marvel that God counted us worthy to raise them. We are humbled. We’ve been gifted with a very holy task, and when you help us rise to the occasion, you have an inheritance in their story; your name will be counted in their legacy.

Because that day you brought us pulled pork tacos was the exact day I needed to skip dinner prep and hold my son on the couch for an hour, talking about Africa and beginning to bind up his emotional wounds. When you kidnapped me for two hours and took me to breakfast, I was at the very, very, absolute end that morning, but I came home renewed, able to greet my children after school with fresh love and patience. When you loved on my big kids and offered them sanctuary for a night, you kept the family rhythm in sync at the end of a hard week.

Thank you for being the village. You are so important

Bri here again..so I hesitate to hit publish..but I pray and hope you will recieve some of this information with an open mind and especially that if nothing else...it will spark your interest enough to ask questions!  We haven't set out to be dogmatic about life...so don't feel bad if you've already visited or held Emma, especially because we probably invited you over or handed her to you!  :)  Even as I wrote this post, Emma woke up from her nap in a terror.  She had a great morning, smiles & giggles, playtime and meal...then woke up not crying but screaming, not in a  fuss or to cry it out but in terror.  She screamed for 1 1/2 hours before she finally allowed herself to be comforted.  When she has these episodes it is almost like she isn't awake, she twists away, pushes away, avoids all eye contact, kicks, inflicts pain on herself or me if I allow her to, and has the most terrified look in her eyes.  It is hard.  It is scary.  Life is beautiful but there are thorns along the way!  Now, after that, more than ever I realize my own comfort in the tough subject isn't the priority..knowing what is best for her and doing it is.  Thanks for your understanding and support as we travel this healing path for Em. 

Here is the link for the entire article..it is so worth the time it takes to read...and you never know, you might find yourself in the position to use the advice or to realize you are not alone on the road of adoption!! :)  http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/11/02/how-to-be-the-village