Mixed bag

Warning: This post is a poorly edited compilation of the scribblings we’ve been able to bash out on the keyboard in the past few weeks. You may even note that the voice shifts as both E & B contributed musings. Hey, this is what you get for the price of admission.  :-)

It’s been an interesting [first] week or so. Lots of changes for everyone. We’re all home together…why does Ca get to sleep in Mama and Daddy’s bedroom and I have to sleep in my own room?…why does she get to eat what she wants when the rest of us have to eat what’s served?…dentist appointment for all the kids (lots of anxiety for Ca)…she’s the youngest, why does she get to stay up later…Daddy’s back to work…now the older three are going to school…busyness…lots of busyness.

Quote of the week (from I, in an email to his classmates from last year):

“Life with a child who speaks almost no English is very complicated. I know more Mandarin than Ca knows English. Which isn't very much at all.”

Complicated…there’s an understatement. 

We’ve had some extremely difficult days this second week home (8/31-9/4). We are choosing to share them here for two reasons: (1) to help all our readers understand that adoption is often excruciatingly hard work so that they can have a better sense of reality and most importantly (2) because we want to be known. Adoption isn’t just the preparation and the getting home, it’s the every day afterwards. When we adopted S, we turned inward to care for our family and inadvertently shut others out, leaving us isolated by our own actions when things became hard. We are in the midst of things being hard, and while we can’t go out for coffee or Skype with each of you, we can lob glimpses of our life into the ether and hope that it provides some connection.

B went back to work on Monday, the three oldest kids started school on Wednesday. Ca cried on Monday, asking why couldn’t Daddy stay home? I (E) didn’t have the words to explain, so we were just sad together. She was sad again on Tuesday morning. She’d been well prepared for Wednesday and wasn’t the least bit sad when the other three kids left for school, but very excited to spend the day with Mama. 

Our biggest struggle has been S’s relationship with Ca. He’s had a big hill to climb - first, his parents cause him insecurity by leaving for 17 days. Then, when they finally arrive home, they bring a small person who requires an inordinate amount of their attention. Like any young child who’s just become a big sibling, he’s torn between wanting to love and hug and pet and squeeeeeeze her, and wanting to ‘give her back to the hospital’, so to speak. So, he vacillates between excessive affection and vehement rejection. (C’mob, you probably have your own story of when little Jimmy bit his baby sister…) But imagine if the infant had the ability to intentionally provoke the toddler, and if the infant remembered and harbored resentment for the response. Unfortunately, when S gives excessive affection, Ca is generally pretty callous and harsh in her rejection of the affection. It’s one way for her to be clear in her nearly all-English environment where she lacks the lingual nuances available to her in Mandarin. This tends to evoke S’s violent reciprocal rejection. When we intervene to prevent the perpetration of the angry desires, Ca occasionally taunts and makes faces. And when we don’t fully and properly correct/discipline her (because we have neither the relational capital nor the language skills to do so), poor S is sent into a tailspin. It’s a train wreck.

Back when we first started this adoption journey E & I (B) said that we felt we had more to give - that there was some “margin” in our lives. Things had stabilized (whatever that means) and we were willing, eager even, to invite some more chaos into our world for the benefit of all of us in this family. We believed then, as we do now, that challenges and - not to be overly dramatic by applying this word to our situation - suffering, even, is used by God for our benefit and His glory. 

Today [Wednesday of week 2], E remarked that all her margin had evaporated. Indeed, I have felt occasionally that I’ve reached the end of myself. In those times, when I feel as though I’ve been all used up, it has been a great comfort to me to recall that one day this earth will be burned up in judgment and God will make everything new. God will consume it all and it will be to Him a praise and glory. He will unmake all the atoms in the universe. What does it matter now if I feel like my life is out of my control? Like all of creation I am meant to be used - however God sees fit - for His glory. 

You may hear in this a note of fatalism…that God is supremely powerful, inscrutable, perhaps even detached or distant. That we are pawns in His game, to be used, but not regarded. A few years ago, that’s just how I saw Him - a ruler and lord who cared only for himself and ignored the cares of his people. Recently I’ve been persuaded that His glory is not only good for us, but also is the most delightful thing we could experience. His good is far better and far more satisfying than the good things we often desire.