Trauma Conference Recap

We spent the weekend san kiddos at a conference for parents of kids with trauma. At last years conference, I can say I left feeling like superwoman with all these great new tools in my belt for helping my kids to heal. This year was so different. We made so many connections with amazing families and got to share stories, successes and failures, but I left the conference feeling doubt. And not just a pinch of doubt, a whole whopping mountain of doubt. I have an immense amount of respect for the speakers and families at the conference so hearing everyone gasp and the room go silent after I mentioned in a small group that the kids grandparents were taking them to Disney World this fall, I was utterly horrified. I felt a little better after another family talked about their trip to New York City with their child and the accommodations that they made to give sensory breaks and unwinding time, and saw how it could be done in a safe and therpudic manner. T tried to talk me down afterwards from the ledge and reminded me that we don’t live our lives by isolating our children from experiences, and that we have a more “That’s How We Roll” attitude, I agreed, but the little voice in the back of my head keeps saying, “yah, but you’re stupid!”. Sure you could go 90 mph on the highway and not wear a seat belt and not get in an accident but is it responsible? Just because we can does it mean we should or that it is the best decision for our family. We will be going to Disney, because that’s how we roll, and we are accepting the fact that one of the adults might end up in the hotel pool with K the whole trip barely setting foot on the Disney grounds. Taking K to Colombia was a freaking train wreck. But if I had the decision to make again today, I wouldn’t have done it differently. So in a nutshell, that either makes me incredibly dense or a gluten for punishment. Stay tune for Therapeutic Parenting 101 – Trial by Fire

Easter Thoughts and the Bunny

If you havn't been reading Jen Hatmaker's blog, you should. She can be found at: http://jenhatmaker.com/blog.htm. Love this quote in light of my bubble post:

"While the richest people on earth pray to get richer, the rest of the world begs for intervention with their faces pressed to the window, watching us drink our coffee, unruffled by their suffering."

Be the change.

Growing up in the “bubble” and moving to the “bubble”

There was never a good connotation when folks around the area called the town I grew up in “the bubble”. The perception was that if you were in “the bubble”, you were not impacted by poverty, violence, diversity or the real world that was going on outside of “the bubble”. “The bubble”, however, was subjected to racial integration plans of the 1970’s which some, likely well educated buffoon with a bunch of letters after his name had concocted in his corner office thinking,” hey, if we bus kids from the inner city to the “bubble”, peace love and joy will result in racial unity!”. Well, as you can imagine the integration plan was a dismal flop. Much like visiting one of those all inclusive resorts in Mexico for 2 weeks, just visiting there doesn’t make you a part of the community and to the community, you will always be a foreigner. Therein lies the basic problem.
So I am getting my hair done a few weeks ago, chatting with the hair dresser who grew up in the town we are now living, a state away from the “bubble”, and she tells me how growing up here, they called it the “bubble”, oh Lord, I am now thinking, I moved from one bubble to another! But in my new bubble, I have 2 black kids and 2 Hispanic kids. When we bought our house, the racial diversity of the neighborhood/town was not something that ever crossed our minds. I am a huge sucker for oak trees and to be honest, the large yards and 150 yr old oak trees were what drew us to the neighborhood. Three of our kids go to an amazing school outside of the bubble. The school community is close knit and diverse. We love the school and all the families we have met through the school. Sounds AWESOME doesn’t it! Oak trees and an amazing Christian school! But we have 4 kids not three, and the 4th has a 35 page IEP and right now cannot exist in a standard classroom setting without a coordination nightmare between the private school the other three go to and the public school. Sigh…..as I walked up to the door of the public elementary school our 4th will be attending next year, the kids were all out playing for recess. I saw three young black girls, hair beautifully done in braids with beads, standing together chatting on the sidewalk. I scanned the playground, and saw a lone group of Hispanic boys playing together at the base of the slide, and then, a sea of white. Together, yet apart, right here in small town America in 2012. And all those feelings of anger and frustration from my youth came flooding back. To get the quality of assistance she requires for her special needs, without moving far outside of the area, the school she will attend will be predominately white, and in addition, the kids she will interact with have segregated themselves based on race. Where does a little black girl who is being raised by white parents fit in? I already know the answer to this one. What I don’t know is what, if anything, we can do about it but be patient and wait to figure out God’s plan in all this.

The Prodigal Son - Rembrants Painting

I have had a little obsession with the prodigal son lately and as hard as I try, I can't seem to shake it as it seems to come up in different contexts. I originally used the parable to explain something that happened in December with the focus being on the son's return home and how we, just like God, should open our arms and forgive past events. A book then appeared at our adoration chapel in January that was titled "The Prodigal Son". The book focuses mainly on Rembrandt's painting "the Prodigal Son" and the characters that appear in it. Curiosity got the best of me and i picked it up and started reading. You see, lately, may of the blogs I read have put out pretty strong Christian calls to aid orphans in distress. I have seen horrible and terrifying photos of special needs children institutionalized, chained to bed, starving. God's children, neglected and in need. As the book points out, however, it is much easier to see the failures of the younger son in spending his fathers wealth and living a life of sin and his return seeking forgiveness than the elder's failures. The fact is, many people don't know or haven't seen what life is like for a child confined to an institution and so, as it is, it can be said, "I didn't know, I'm sorry, I should have done something" as the younger son. I see myself at the elder son whose failure is much more difficult to put a finger on. Outwardly, I have been faithful and dedicated to God's will in my life, making the choice to raise 4 beautiful kids over material things. The quote in the book that got me, however, was "Whenever my virtuous self is there, there also is the resentful complainer". Yes, me, the resentful complainer, the one that looks at all the expensive cars in our church parking lot and wonders where their treasure truly lies, the one that judges families whose first priority in their adoption is to have the youngest and healthiest infant available, never giving the children that have been waiting a second look, when we were, ourselves, at one time more focused on how many countries we could travel to rather than how many needy families we could sponsor and were in fact that same family that wanted a young healthy baby for our first adoption. In many ways, through my life journey, I have traveled beyond that "me" mentality, but in many ways, I have so far to go in accepting God's plan for my life and not complaining about how I see others not following God's plan or being resentful of choices they have made. God gave us free will, and each of us alone will have to explain what we did with that free will. I would rather not have to explain why I became a resentful complainer when there is so much good in my life.

Unhappiness

Today's Daily Devotional in Crosswalk was entitled "Unhappiness - A Tempting Choice". In leaving 2011 with great prospects for a lot of growth this year, we have had a rough beginning to 2012. It is so easy to be consumed by unhappiness when everything seems to be fighting against you. But it was comparing my short-term feeling of unhappiness where the Devotional really hit home and gave me a different perspective on how K may see the world, not on a short-term basis, but every day of her life. The Devotional said: "In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis explores this idea that we can become too attached to our brokenness. He sets up a fictional scenario where souls in hell get a second chance at heaven. But they ultimately do not choose heaven - they can't even enjoy heaven - due to their excessive attachment to hell. This seems downright crazy..... it's a very real trap we fall into every time we hold too tightly to our hurts and sorrows instead of releasing them to God." This SO hit home when I thought about the special breakfast that i had planned for just me and K last week. She LOVES food and eating, and it thought this would be a perfect chance to get some one on one time. As I sat across from her at the restaurant and watched her body language and listened to what she was saying, I was surprised how distracted she was. I could see, she wasn't enjoying herself. The wheels were turning. Was papa staying home with the other kids? Was she the only one that was going to school? Did papa take the other kids to breakfast? Was I going to leave her at the restaurant? (yes, I am serious, she asked me that). Holding on so tight to her hurts and sorrows, always the victim, attached to her hell. If I apply how I have felt over the past 3 weeks and try to imagine that unhappiness consuming me for days, weeks, years, impacting everything I do and say, is this how she sees her world?

Ahhh K, the pendulum swings again

After reading a friends blog, I got to thinking about how much K has progressed in the last year and a half, but how, like their son, something happens and you just get smacked upside the head, and the little house of cards comes tumbling down. We have struggled with pee since K came home. She was completely potty trained, so much so, that she very effectivly used the pee when it suited her, to get attention, to show displeasure with your clothes choice for her, and she knew it, she would give me this look and then piss her pants, wow! I don't even have words for what ran through me when she did that. After pulling out the therapudic parenting tricks of the trade, we had seemingly resolved most of those issues. But the pee remained, most notably, as soon as we put a pull up on her for the night, they gave her a free license not to have to hold it anymore (I might point out that she is wicked immune to the stuff possible because where she came from, reports have it that the smell of urine is overwhelming and I guess after awhile, you just don't smell it anymore). Seriously, pull up on, 15 min's later, pull up is wet???!! Come on! So it was time to jump into the deep end of the pool and start working on overnight toilet training, the pullups are gone and it is underwear and a waterproof pad. Amazingly, though we have a lot more laundry going on, the overnight training has helped her during the day, frequently, she would have 2-3 accidents a week at school and home and since we started the overnight thing, it is down to pretty much zero, yah!! for the little successes! There is nothing worse than pee soaked pants and underwear after they have been sitting in a closed plastic bag all day. That was until this morning when the zombie reappeared. Routine is get up in the morning, use the potty, get dressed, come down for breakfast. A quite awake K came down, was directed to the potty, stood flatly in the center of the bathroom and peed all over herself, the floor, the rug, just feet from the toilet, I found her, still frozen, standing in her own pee, staring at the wall, unphased by any of it. I know, I know, the puppet show at school yesterday freaked you out to the point that you pinched all your friends, and then everyone praising you this morning for making it all night and staying dry was too much when you have such a bad image of yourself that you need to mess it intentionally before it happens accidentally. The revised routine: get out of bed, go into bathroom, pee on your self, clean up your pee, come down for breakfast, start fresh and try again tomorrow.

Faith

Faith, for me, has been a sort of love-hate relationship. With 4 adoptions, my faith has been tested more times than I care to count. I always went into each adoption overflowing with faith, but often mid-stream, I am embarrassed to say, the cup ended up empty and I would put my energy into forcing my will on the situation, not relying on God's. Then something changed, maybe temporarily, but hopefully permanently, all this practice with faith was tested when a family member had emergency open heart surgery just before Christmas. I could have cried, I could have screamed, but driving up the morning of the surgery, listening to my favorite Christian music station and hearing songs of worship and praise, it was like it all came together in this immense peace that came over me that everything was going to be ok. This huge mountain would be moved and i just needed to trust in God. And I did, and everything was ok. So I started to wonder if this deeper sense of faith was going to stick around in me for awhile. We then watched as one of the Congo adoption families lost their son after a 7 month battle with leukemia and a few short days later, another Congo adoption family lost a daughter they will never hold to malaria. As a mom, even the passing thought of someone losing a child sends a lump in my throat so big I can barely swallow, and this was no different. I sat sobbing on our bed after kissing my 4 sleeping kids foreheads one more time that night. I cried for the families but also cried out of fear of the unbearable pain of losing a child. Then my grandma died at 96 yrs old, an amazing life lived to its fullest, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren and I praised God for the wonderful life she had lived and how her pain had been washed away and her senses restored, how she had been made anew through her baptism and faith and my heart rejoiced knowing she will see and hear the choirs of angels in heaven and that she was blessed, and that she had faith in God's plan for her. Pastel in a sea of black, light in a time of darkness and wondering.....this is my FAITH in my God and Savior.......my PEACE in a will that is His, not mine.....

Love the Higher Law

What an Iconic, Inspiring, Reflective, Epic song. Surely one of the best of all time. And if this version of the video can't help touch the coldest of hearts, nothing can.. The only thing left to say is. "Love the Higher Law"

Peace

(might want to pause the music player at the bottom of the blog before watching)

A hard topic, but one that needs to be heard...

We recently received this link from a friend.  It a hard topic.  One difficult to read and ponder.  Unless you are Mother Teresa, it probably hard not to find yourself within this article somewhere, somehow.  Hard not to feel guilty or angry or both.  If nothing else, minimally, its an interesting read.

You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart

Peace

Happy New Year and Torching Ano Viejo

I'm all for any holiday traditions that involve torching something or throwing something on the roof, so I jumped at the idea of incorporating Ano Viejo, a Colombian tradition into our family traditions. Here are the steps:

1. Make a creepy looking doll out of old clothes and set on front porch for the week after Christmas or until the neighbors start whispering things about you.

2. Write all your baggage that you want to leave behind going into the New Year onto pieces of paper and stuff into creepy doll you have lovingly referred to as Ano Viejo during the past week (you know, I wonder if Ano Viejo is cold out there...I think Ano Viejo is staking me like a creepy clown, etc)

3. Now the best part! Torch that sucker!

Ano Viejo made me reflect on the finer points of our family and what makes us uniquely us:

Our kids walk around the house singing Le Mis.

Macaroni and Guacamole are the same thing here

We took 4 kids under 6 roller skating on Christmas Eve and no one broke a leg

We followed that by 3 kids under 5 at the dentist at the same time, done, done and done

Our Colombian daughter can Ethiopian shoulder dance and loves Doro Wat

There is a great debate currently whether what T & E saw whizzing by their heads in the basement was a bat or a bird.

Everyone calls nuts "gubas", its the only Lingala word we use, even when we are speaking Spanish, they are still gubas

Our 3 yr old has barfed everytime he has drank a mango lasse at our favorite Indian restaurant so he is now on a lasse-free diet

I caught myself before finishing the 8-mil e lyrics to "The Roof is on f ire" tonight

E2 loves telling the story about the time he fell off a camel on 'opia

The quote of the day is "Mom, can I have more rootbeer float? I horked down the first one"

I love my family!