Sometimes I feel like Kermit the frog and want to sit on a lily pad singing about how it's not easy being green, but in our case maybe sing about how it's not easy simply being different. I embrace "different" and believe God made us all unique, but I also realize that it's not always easy.
I’m not sure that I should even address this, but I want to
at least aim for humility and transparency in my posts. The Lord continues to open my eyes each and every day to areas where I need improvement. I know that the things that I feel may not always or even often be God honoring. I am a work in progress! My thoughts can be greatly influenced
by people in society and by the fallen world that we live in. It helps to
toss some of these thoughts down on paper (or on the computer in this case) as we continue to pray about what the Lord
calls us to do about many of these
challenges in life.
I have to admit that sometimes I look at pictures of a
couple of my kids (the ones that look somewhat like me) and I feel happiness
along with a deep sense of grief. Sometimes
I walk in the store with a couple of my kids that could “pass” as my biological
children and I feel a sense of relief before feeling a deep sense of sadness. I feel relief to not be bothered with
stares and the oftentimes well meaning questions and then the sometimes not so
well meaning statements. I will also admit that there are times that I feel
like a weight is lifted when I escape the scrutiny of bystanders, but then I feel a
deep sense of sadness realizing this weight/scrutiny will never be lifted for
many of my children. I wonder about famous individuals in Hollywood with the recent suicide of Robin Williams. What it must feel like to be "on" every single place that you go must be a heavy weight to carry.
It is easy to live in this world and develop the mentality that things will be better next week or next month or next year. Things will get better when we get this debt paid off or when our children are older. What we soon discover is that things really are not much better no matter what wealth, fame, success or other achievements in life come our way. I am encouraged by Paul in Romans 8:39 that "neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord". No matter how far we travel, no matter how far down we fall, or how high we rise, nothing will separate us from the love of Jesus. I am certain that without the Lord, we are lost. There is no meaning in life and the world is a miserable place. The difficult part though is that even with the Lord, life is still hard, pain still comes, and individuals may still find themselves on the brink of despair. But even in that despair, the Lord is with us.
Thankfully our family is not on the brink of despair at this moment. We have been there before and we hope to never go back there again! It is difficult to explain though what it feels like to be a family like ours. I know people seem to think we have some magical powers. They want to think that our kids were a mess, but when they came to us, God miraculously healed them from their medical issues or behavioral challenges. They want to think that God took away the pain of their trauma and everything got better. I'm here to say that this is not true. We have certainly seen miraculous things and God has done a tremendous healing in the lives of many of our kids both physically and emotionally, but they still carry scars from the trauma. Often our children did not miraculously get better in our home (at least not overnight). It took years and years and is still a process we are going through.
As many of you know, seven of our children came from what is considered disrupted adoptions. The children's original adoptive placements did not work out for a range of reasons and the children eventually came to be a part of our family. Most of them would not be in a family unit if they were not here in our home. They were at the end of the line and would have moved into the state system or treatment centers. Many were frankly harmful to themselves and to other people and it scared their original adoptive parents.
Having children that have a range of challenges comes with its share of concerns. Having these unique traits on display for the world is a whole story in itself. There are moments of clarity where I notice the strain that it takes on a family unit, but most of the time we just hunker down and keep moving forward with continual prayer, prayer, and more prayer. I have been
so consumed by the journey that we have been called to in our lives that I have
not had the luxury of noticing the moments when we are not under scrutiny.
For so many years, I have had numerous children alongside me that we have simply
grown accustomed to being looked at and talked about. We have gradually grown
accustomed to a new kind of normal. In fact, someone that worked at a rest stop as we were all
traipsing into the bathroom came up to me and said “Oh my gosh. I didn’t realize that Mother Hubbard existed
until I saw you”. I realized later
that they must have meant the little old lady that lived in a shoe (who had so
many children she didn’t know what to do).
Sometimes I am still shocked by these comments. I
don’t often think about what we must look like until it is pointed out to us. There are the rare moments where I look
at other people and realize we look different somehow. Sometimes I notice a
mother walking with 4 of 5 kids and think, “Wow! She has a lot of kids” and then
realize that I have 3x’s as many children.
As our kids get older and I am out and about with various
ones instead of the entire crew, I am beginning to come out of the fog and see things
differently at times. There are actually times when nobody takes a second look
at us. This feels odd, but I find myself relaxing my shoulders, breathing
deeply, and letting my guard down a bit. I had not realized that for years I
was walking around in this “on guard” state of being simply due to the continual questions (and of course raising kids with trauma histories). There is a degree of secondary trauma just from living the life that we do as a family. Don't get me wrong. I love adoption and the diversity of our family unit. I also enjoy sharing our stories and our journey with others along the way, but sharing deliberately for a purpose is different then being asked personal questions with random people wherever we go.
Years ago I met a person
that had adopted black children and one thing she said to me was, “You will learn to not make eye contact with people at the grocery store”. At the time, I thought that was crazy.
Why would I not make eye contact with people when I’m out and about? Now though
I realize, sometimes we’re just TIRED and it is easier to not look at people
and hear or see the response.
I have never really cared much about genetics, but these
things are pointed out to us on a regular basis. I have never had any desire to
create a mini-me, but the Lord somehow thought to give us a couple of mini-me’s
through adoption. Funny how God has a sense of humor! These turn of events have
sometimes popped my mind into the “what-ifs” in life. I’m incredibly thankful for the life that the Lord has given
us as well as the family we are blessed with, but it is a different life then we ever imagined and some of the elements of that life are burdensome.
There are times when people will comment on how much
Naomi looks like me and if the other kids are not with me, I can simply nod,
and smile, and move on with my day. They do not know that Naomi came close to death, that she spent her first 2 months in the NICU, and that she later had heart surgery. They certainly do not know of the miracle of her adoption being a frozen embryo and having an open adoption with her placing family. When people comment on Naomi, they simply comment as though she is a biological child. I actually have a choice and can share her story for a purpose whenever I feel like it instead of being called upon to explain with random individuals.
I do not need to
filter questions regarding why she is in our family (adoption or transracial
questions) because she simply looks like me. I can look around without
avoiding eye contact because nine out of ten people will not bother to say
anything to me at all (where as nine out of ten would ask or at minimum look at us
with our transracially adopted kids). There does not “need” to be a discussion
about adoption or a pre-scripted response in my head in order to respond to
well-intentioned individuals. Adopting transracially brings forward a whole new
element that I have always been good with, but it does in fact bring forward
additional details that we need to twirl around in our head and figure out what to do with. I would not change dealing with these challenges, but it is not always easy.
At some point, we reached an acceptance that this life we are blessed
with is HARD and is simply going to be hard instead of looking to the grass on the other side. I love how Erma Bombeck emphasizes that the grass is always greener over the septic tank. Regardless of where you are and how good it may look somewhere else, there is poop over there too. We realize this and to the best of our ability try to find the joy within the moments we are given regardless of whether anything changes or not.
There can though be grieving that comes with this process of acceptance. Maybe in some ways it is similar to the feelings of an adopted
child that loves their adoptive parents (and would not change their life for
anything), but still grieves the loss of their birth family or genetic family.
It is sad that our children have to filter questions regarding their place in
the family on such a regular basis. There is a grieving process for the imagined life (that never really existed to begin with) as we grow to accept this “new
normal”. This is not just from being a transracial family, but also from being
a large family, and from having children with visible disabilities (I say visible because we do have children with less visible disabilities, but we do not need to filter as many questions in these cases). I cannot tell you how many individuals asked what Melissa did to her hand or leg on this trip. It's not bothersome from people we are getting to know through a range of connections. We don't mind educating on cerebral palsy, but it can be tiring when it's just some random person at McDonald's.
I was sitting at a baseball game about a year ago and I realized this sense of grief. We had been invited and given free tickets, so my husband and I
went to an opening game. We were
there without our kids and were
surrounded by typical families (if there is such a thing). My husband said
something about how it would be nice to bring all of the kids (but of course
this is somewhat out of our budget as a large family) and I remember looking around
and imagining our family there. Yes, they would have fun. We would all have
fun. It would be nice to be able to bring them, but then I really started to
notice all the families. Many of
them had bought T-shirts and hats representing the team. Many were buying hot
dogs and drinks for their kids. Do you know how much that would cost for a
family like ours? We could maybe bring them all to a game on some special deal (and a co-worker actually did arrange for us to bring the kids later),
but we would never buy everyone a $5 drink AND $8 hot dogs. That’s just
plain crazy!
Then I started to think about what those families do in
their lives. Maybe they have a house, two cars, maybe they have even progressed
to a mini van. They probably have a dog in the backyard and their kids have
friends over to spend the night. Maybe their parents invite the neighbor kids
over and they set up a tent in the backyard. These are “normal” everyday things
that are simply no longer a part of our lives. We no longer have “normal” with
the history of our kids.
We have long outgrown two cars or even two mini vans. We are
now living a whole normal and it is night and day different from the
majority of the population. This may be even more so now that we live on the mission field with such a large family. Most mission organizations would not even consider such a large family just simply due to the logistics of getting a family the size of ours onto the field. There are (thankfully) rare times when I feel a tremendous amount of
grief about being so very different then other families. I know that what is seen on the surface (happy family: two
parents, two children, decent/middle income) is somewhat of an illusion. Every
family has some degree of dysfunction and every family has trials and struggles
in life. But sometimes…….I wonder, what would it be like if our differences
were not right out in the open for everyone to evaluate and scrutinize?
Although it is not obvious, our kids that “look like us”
have as many, if not more challenges then our kids that look different then us.
The difference is that many people do not realize it and therefore they do not
proceed to ask about it regularly.
There have been many moments of pain and suffering from having children
with significant medical concerns to raising kids with trauma histories. Add on
top of that, all the input from strangers everywhere you go, and it’s not always
easy. We have had to find joy within
suffering in our lives in order to fully appreciate the life the Lord has
blessed us with. This has been a difficult journey at times.
For just as the sufferings of
Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
(2 Corinthians 1:5)
If our focus was on obtaining happiness in our
lives when our kids no longer pop into a fight, flight, or freeze response or
when our kids begin to give and receive affection or when our kids actually
love us unconditionally the way we hope to love them, we would be a miserable
family indeed. Parenting (and especially parenting kids with trauma histories)
is a testimony (to me) of how Jesus loves all of his children unconditionally
even though many of his children do not choose to walk alongside Him, follow his
path in their lives, or even proclaim to love Him.
We also rejoice in our
sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance,
character; and character, hope. (Romans 5:3-4)
For those of you that are in the midst of suffering, I pray
that you find peace within that
suffering. God has not left you alone! He will never leave you or forsake you.
We were listening to the pastor that married us speak at a
church we attended on Sunday. It had been many years since we had seen the pastor and his wife. One thing stood out in my mind while listening to him preach. He commented on how he has
found that even doing work for the
Lord is more fulfilling then any past time activity that may amuse us. I will have
to agree with that. Ministry work can
be boring, tedious, and just plain un-fun (is that even a word?), but I would
rather serve the Lord in tough/miserable times then live a life of ease and luxury,
but forever be separated from God.
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