Things have been wild and woolly around here. Despite my desire to keep up with daily/weekly blog posts (I still have so many ready and waiting) I just could not get myself to the blog. And, to be entirely honest, I have been struggling with our 'big life changes' lately.
Sometimes it seems the blog is my therapy. My place to vent and work through my own emotions. Other times I just feel quiet.
Lately, I have just felt quiet.
But it is time to get back on this horse.
Big life change number one: We decided after the accident not to replace Bertha. The insurance paid off the loan and the idea of not having consumer debt for the first time in 6 years was just too good to be true. So we are functioning with two normal sized cars rather than our carry-everyone-everywhere van. In some ways this transition has been far easier than I expected. In other ways it has been a challenge.
We are not as desperate and frantic trying to get kids where they need to be as I expected. Most of the time it is fairly simple to figure out who is taking which kids where and when.
What I wasn't expecting was how much I miss riding in the car with Brad. As super busy mama and daddy of 8, we have come to rely on our 'car time' as an opportunity to chat and love on each other a bit. My mom has commented before on how Brad is always rubbing my shoulders as I drive or we are holding hands. It's a bit sappy. But we are a touch-feely couple and sitting in the car has always been one of the few chances we have to sit down together. I hadn't realized how much time we were spending together in the car. Not having a vehicle that can carry us all together has really cut in to mama and dada time.
Big life change number two: Our first birdie has left the nest. Justin left January 28 for Army Basic Training. We were able to transfer him out of his high school to home school in October to complete his high school diploma. It was monumental effort. But we did it. We were able get Justin passed the ASVAB exam in November and enlisted in the Army. After many, many hurdles the big day finally arrived and Justin climbed into the car with his recruiter to head for the airport.
The last nine months have been... I don't even know how to describe the last 9 months. Justin has spent the last nine months struggling and life has just not been the same for the rest of us during that time. I am hesitant to share details as my 'adult' (pft, 18 is not an adult) son deserves privacy and dignity. But one of the best ways I can portray to you why we have struggled is to share another mama's description of her experience. The below quote is from a blog post that can be found here:
nohandsbutours.blogspot
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Adoption is beautiful, wonderful, fulfilling, and rewarding, but… it can also be messy, difficult, traumatic, hard, shake your faith and confidence, and is rooted in tremendous loss. This loss affects all children in some way, but some children in every way.
The longer a child is without a family, without love, the more that loss and early trauma can play a significant part in how they come to view the world and families and love. And at certain ages, for certain children, that cannot be changed or healed by love alone. Emotional neglect and abuse is just as damaging as physical abuse; it can reach the very core of a child and make it difficult, if not impossible, to change their view of people and the world and the ability to trust those around them.
We were ready and prepared to love our son, but no pre-adoption education class can truly prepare you for the deep, emotional damage some children have experienced. We were woefully unprepared for that aspect of older child adoption.
Over the years our son was with us, I turned to support groups for help and advice, talked to countless other moms of teenagers adopted from China, learned a new way of parenting, anything to try and help heal the wounds of his past. We were unsuccessful in this. We provided a safe haven, an education, helped him learn skills to obtain the independence he so dearly craved, and we did provide love. In fact, it shocked me how much I loved this boy from the first moment I met him (and still do). But he had learned not to love, for loving someone, opening oneself to that vulnerability, causes deep pain when it is rejected, thrown away, so he rejected first… having learned that loving was not safe.
He could not accept our love, could not return it, could not trust that the things we did were based in love. And let me tell you, moms, not being loved back… hurts. Oh my, how it hurts. For a mother, it’s a pain like no other. It shocked me to my core, and shook all my faith in myself as a person and a parent. I told myself over and over I should be bigger than this, we knew it could happen, but really, truly never expected it.
He left us after high school graduation and is living independently now, and is as content as I believe he is capable of being. We remain in some contact, though the walls around his heart remain steadfast. As a mother, I wish I could have been the one to find the way through those walls, but I try to be content in the knowledge that he has an education, and a family who loves and cares for him, and that we will always be there should he need and want us."
We have gone into each of our adoptions with our eyes wide open to the challenges. We willingly and eagerly signed up to love the unlovable. To continue to offer everything we had to give. To receive and accept the good, the bad and the ugly. And even to accept rejection. But that awareness and commitment has not made it any easier.
Kiddos 'growing up' and leaving home is not supposed to be an easy transition. Even the stellar rock-star kids who leave with college scholarships or mission calls or world travel or other forms of productive independence leave with a piece of their mama's heart. But this is our first time around this particular block. And it's been a difficult trip. Seven more to go...
Big life change number three: We are preparing for a move out of state. Oh my heart. I still can't believe we are actually doing this. But God has called yet again, so here we go.
I am a California girl, born an raised. And, while I LOVE traveling and visiting other places, California has always been home to me. This is a big step. But we know that we know that we know this move is right for our kiddos and that there is something waiting for us in our new state. The neon signs are blinking. And so we trust and move forward.
When we moved to our current home a little over a year-and-a-half ago, it was not what we had planned. We took each step blindly and even had to go back and redo a few steps having missed what God had intended. But this home was EXACTLY what we needed. Where we needed to be. What we needed to do. It has been clear as can be every day since then that this was the plan all along.
But I have a little secret:
I am a whiner.
I have willingly and eagerly 'followed' the will of my Father in Heaven, even proclaiming His goodness and mercy often, all while whining on the inside. This home we are living in has been everything we needed. But not what I wanted (it hurts to admit that, so spoiled). We have told friends and family again and again, "It feels as though we live in one town and sleep in another." This house has just not felt like home.
And so... as we prepare for another move it is time to be real and transparent: I am scared. I don't want to move 700 miles away and just feel 700 miles further away from home. I don't want to spend the next 10 years longing for rolling green hills and oak trees and granite rocks and white fenced properties with gorgeous grazing horses and adorable goats. I don't want to be shoveling a driveway of snow in February dreaming of 'the good old days' in California of 70 degree respites in the middle of winter. (I think despite my best efforts, I will do this a bit anyway). I don't want to feel like a California fish out of water in our new state. Everywhere we go people guess we are Californians (I'm not sure what gives it away). I don't want to spend the next however many years feeling like a misfit.
So, now what?
Now I shut my whiny little mouth and put one foot in front of the other. It is time to trust that my God knows better than I do and stop acting like any of the amazing and wonderful things that have happened in the last 38 years of my life have had anything to do with what I 'wanted' at any given moment. He can do so much more than I can.
As a reward for making it through this long list of emotional vomit, I will be sure to get some fun pictures up of the kids and our awesome Christmas and New Years Celebrations. Life just keeps chugging away around me.
