The next day. He comes home from school. I stand on the front porch, watching. He waves excitedly from the street when he sees I am waiting for him.
He takes the many steps to our second story entryway the way a smaller child would, his movements with a puppy quality, playful and cute. He bends down to hug me, rests his cheek on my shoulder.
“Hi mom.”
“Hi baby, how was your day?”
“It was good.” His voice is babyish. “I made new friends in my automotive class. Gear heads.” He beams. He is a gear head too. Cars and engines all he talks about, surrounds himself with, the highly intelligent part of his brain.
“That’s excellent.”
After his snack I direct his attention to a package that has arrived. A bench from Ikea that we ordered for Nana.
“Will you do me a big favor?” I ask. “Put Nana’s bench together so she can collect it later?”
He hunkers down on the floor, determination overtaking him. His ADD brain is like mine. Flighty and distracted and with a slippery memory, but with hyper-focus as well, when a project of interest arrises. He is a builder, a mechanic, a creative, a fixer. Just like me. And when something needs building or fixing, he zeros in with ferocity and does not come up for air until the job is complete.
I walk away and busy myself nearby, pointedly not hovering. I want him to struggle with the directions on his own. I want him to fight the stubborn parts without help. This is how our brains develop. This is how we learn to persevere.
An hour later, as he is fighting with a piece that does not fully fit, giving it his undivided attention, we begin to talk. He has asked for help but I am casually encouraging him instead of stepping in.
“If you can’t do it, I certainly can’t,” I lie. Sometimes it’s okay to lie just a little bit.
His head bows a bit in shame, but I make sure my tone and my words offer nothing but grace, there is no room for shame in the aftermath of a mistake. It only weakens our ability to bounce back. One of my greatest accomplishments in bettering my life was refusing to entertain shame. No matter how badly I behave, I bounce back hard and fast, making eye contact, apologies, and plowing ahead to better times. I have been teaching this to him.
Remorse, lots of it. I tell him. Shame. No way. Remorse makes amends and removes us from the mistake, shame makes us stay stuck in the mistake.
“We need to get you into a deeper therapy,” I venture.
“Actually,” he says, “I’ve been thinking all day, and I don’t need it. I will just be good. I promise.”
Bless his heart.
“Sweetheart,” I begin slowly, preparing my thoughts. “The fact is, you already are good. Look at your goodness. We see it every day. You are kind and loving. You are so gentle and nurturing with the dogs and guinea pigs. You give us hugs and cuddles. If we are in pain, you come right to us, you want to fix it. All of those things are proof that the core you is very very good already. That is not the problem.
“It’s that virus we were talking about. The trauma virus. It’s like a bacteria or a parasite, stuck inside the good you, causing bad things to sometimes happen no matter how hard you try to stop them.
“Last night, I saw it in your eyes. The battle between the true core you and the trauma virus. It was making you feel out of control, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“But you fought as hard as you could not to hurt us, even though that virus was telling you to hurt us, you still used all your willpower to fight it. You hit the banister instead of hurting me. I think your goodness was fighting so hard against that virus, wasn’t it? Because you didn’t really want to do that stuff, did you?”
“No.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Yeah.” He keeps patiently working that stubborn screw, never ceasing, never giving up on it. Even though nothing is changing. I think the hole is drilled in the wrong place.
“Yeah. That’s the thing we need to get out. So the good you that already exists can be free. No longer under the control of that terrible trauma virus. Do you agree?”
“Yes. But I don’t want therapy.”
“I know. When I had my bad ovary, I really really did not want surgery. But if I left it in there is would have killed me one day. It would have become a cancer in my body and it would have spread all through my body. I had to get it cut out. Even though it was scary. I promise you therapy won’t be as bad as that! I had to be cut open eight inches! Literally!”
“Will you stay with me?” His voice is small and childlike. “In the therapy? I don’t want you to leave me.”
“Let’s see how it needs to be done, but I promise, the farthest away I will ever be is just outside the room.”
He nods, stands the stool up. “I think it’s done,” he says, trying to hide the screw that won’t go it. “As long as Nana doesn’t sit on it, it will be fine.”
I burst out laughing. He can be so funny. “Um…” I say. “I think that defeats the purpose. Let’s have dad look at it later.”
I send Nana a photo of him that I took while he was laboring away. Bent over, pants slipping down off his narrow waist.
Super Duper! She responds. Do I get the cute boy too?
The crows are here this morning. Their never-ending banter is a dark and ominous sound. But it isn’t bothering me. It fits.
Last night. Nine pm. Everyone is settling down for bedtime. All is peaceful. Jack is in our room. He loves bedtime cuddles, hugs, being in the big bed with us as we settle in for the night. This is the best side of him. Still so innocent and little. Perfect blue eyes looking at us with adoration. His childlike voice telling us things.
But then he asks the question I have been brushing off for a few days now. When am I getting my phone back?
The truth? He’s probably not getting it back for awhile. A boundary that we have set over and over again… has been ignored over and over and over again. I begin to carefully explain some of this. Only boys who follow the house rules get to have phones… we will need to work on that for awhile before you can have it back…
Perhaps, bedtime was not the best moment.
And in the span of a few seconds. The other son appears. I see the switch take place. A muscle in his jaw twitches and his eyes change from perfect… to something else entirely.
He is up and out of the room, the childlike posture gone and a savage young man in its place. A loud crash and several house shaking thumps as he flies down the stairs. The thumping and banging continues as he moves through the house.
Slam. SLAM. Bang. Crash. BANG. SLAM. SLAM. Crash.
Jesse and I round the corner and go down the stairs. On the landing, another hole in the wall, the size of a hand. Fear has flooded my system. My eyes are wide, still the disbelief is there every time. But you were just so perfect. How can we go from heaven to hell in two seconds? It is always a shock how quickly heaven can turn to hell.
He rushes us at the bottom of the stairs, like a bull charging. Who are you? The feeling that flits through my brain. This just isn’t the boy I know, this one who shows up only time to time, scary and grown and violent.
A hand out to calm him. Stop, Jack. Stop. Brings him into focus just enough. He does not want to hurt his mom.
He turns and charges my husband. His entire body rigid with coursing blood and anger. Fists straight down at his sides and jaw clenched. Rising up to his full height. Challenging him. At age sixteen, he is as tall as my husband now, though still slight of stature.
My husband doesn’t even twitch. He stands calmly with his arms crossed over his chest, though I know his blood is pounding too, he does not show it.
Jack! I yell from my place still on the stairs. If you attack him, you may have to leave this home! You can only live here if everyone is safe! This is a threat that has slowly entered our vocabulary lately, though it pains us. It has entered by way of fear and desperation. The violence has been escalating. His threatening posture becoming more confrontational and aggressive with each outburst this past week or two. We have to draw a line, right? Unconditional only goes so far when someone isn’t safe, right? It cannot keep going like this, what if it keeps escalating? How much worse could it get? These are all my thoughts and feelings. I do not know how much they are right because I am in the middle of it and cannot see straight anymore.
After I yell this, he turns toward me, his face deep red, nostrils flared, teeth clenched. He launches himself in my direction, but I don’t flinch, I can see again, just enough restraint. He doesn’t really want to hurt me. He has never laid a finger on me. Something has overtaken him but he is still in there. And his line is clear, he won’t hurt a female. See, the goodness is in there. It is. It is.
Instead he starts slamming his hands into the banister beside me.
Over and over and over again.
I have my phone in my hand, ready to dial the police. We have only had to call once before. But it has not been this bad in so long. It has not ever been quite this bad. He is so much larger now, stronger, older. There is such a big difference between a tantrum and assault. We are quickly crossing that line.
Then I see blood dripping down the back of his arm. He scraped himself on something while in his rage. I grab a tissue, approach him confidently, maternal concern radiating toward him so he knows the threat can be over. Let me show you love right now, maybe that will fix this. I begin to dab at it. He lets me, I can feel his demeanor change toward me but he is still radiating his anger at Jesse, he is accusing, because of the threat. The threat to send him away. We have crossed a line now, one we thought we would never come to. Talk of maybe we cannot keep the promise to never send you away. It feels like a terrible betrayal. I can see the fear and panic and utter heartbreak in his eyes. My heart breaks too. I hold the tissue on his arm, so he feels me there, loving him anyway.
He is liking the show of care and love from me. I can feel him relax a little bit. I carefully hold his arm in mine and dab the blood away. But the argument is too much still and Jesse is standing the ground… Yes, Jack, we stand by it. There is a limit to what you can do in this house. We have a limit to what we will live with! My husband almost never shouts.
In that moment our boy runs to the garage and flees on his bike. Shouting I’m never going back there I’m never going back there
God warned us to expect hell to break loose. He told me opposition was coming, back at the beginning of June, in words and in dreams. He kept saying to me at random moments Watch out for the stumbling block. We are on the threshold of something new. Something important. And he is reminding me that there are dark forces that want us to trip and fall. I live in such a state of freedom that I forget this sometimes. That there is a dark opposing side, a war around us not of flesh and blood. And things are getting all stirred up in our lives. For a number of reasons.
One. Jack, who has been developmentally delayed, is now developing very rapidly. He is making the transition from a small boy into a strapping teenager, body and mind, six feet tall now, thirty pounds heavier than when he came to us. A transition that is supposed to be gradual, taking years and years. But it is happening all at once, now that he is in such safety and nurturing and nourishment, he is catching up fast. And the testosterone that floods all teenage boys is kind of like cocaine at times. It sometimes makes them insane. Even healthy boys.
Two. As he is developing and his outbursts are less childlike and more man-like my husband is having to assert his dominance in ways that is triggering his trauma from past dominant male abuse. Now Jack is trying to assert himself more, he wants to dominate my husband instead, he wants to be in control. This is a hard balance to work with. When dominating him is necessary at times to maintain safety. But when it also triggers his trauma and makes him react even more domineeringly. When my husband, his father, has to be the authority in the home but at times this authority is too much for a scared boy to handle.
Three. This month is an anniversary month of a very significant past trauma.
Four. He is beginning to feel a bit threatened by the idea of another child coming into the home. He curls up beside me sometimes and says what if you like her more? What if she is your favorite? It is heartbreaking.
Five. As I mentioned, I don’t live much under the reality of demonic attack, but there are times when there is no denying it. There are forces that hate what we are doing and planning to do and they want to spill out destruction on us, make us slip and fall, create chaos so that we do not move forward, cannot be successful. God had warned us to watch out for this recently. The demonic forces in these kids’ lives thought they owned this child. We are standing up and saying, no, they belong to God, you cannot destroy them. This is a big assertion to make. This fight, to pull a person from hell and show them life, free them from the clutches of something very evil that believes it owns them, it is a bloody battle.
In one of my recent dreams, a dark storm was closing in. I stood inside a garage, the door open, and watched. The atmosphere was heavy, dark, like terror descending. Open fields were all around us with one huge tree about a hundred yards away. Then suddenly black figures began to emerge from the tree, heading my way. They were not quite human, not quite animal, something horrible.
I quickly hit the garage door button to close it. I knew it was not the answer, but it would put up a boundary quickly, buy time, for a planned escape. The door blocked the large ones out, but a few small ones slipped underneath just before it closed. I knew I was armed and skilled, ready. I pulled a weapon from my side and easily killed them with one shot each.
God was saying to me in this dream, you need to be heavily armed right now. Heavily armed.They will be coming from all sides.Because what I am calling you to is so much bigger than you know.You are entering a season where you will need to be heavily armed.
It isn’t only coming through Jack. Just as God said, we have seen other oddly timed difficulties as well. Strange injuries that appeared to have no direct cause. A blindsided breakdown in a family relationship. Two out-of-the-blue work betrayals. All in the span of a month or two, right as we started pursuing our next adoption.
Stumbling block. Look out for the stumbling block.
Not enough to derail us, just enough to throw us off-kilter, lose our balance. In a time when we need that balance more than ever. Extra stress and pain that bring with them an element of weakness.
God has been speaking to Jesse too. You are warriors. I gave you warrior souls. You are fighters. Any battle you are thrust into, you never give up. You fight until it is won. That is why I chose you for this.
We have many people lifting us up in prayer, lots of protection. We do not feel defeated, only fortified. The boundaries are being engaged and the weapons are being drawn. This is battle. For lives. And we will never stop fighting for these kids.
***
He is back within minutes. He always comes back to us within minutes.
He is our boy again. His movements back to being childlike. The raging man already put away. He doesn’t even like that guy. He comes back very quickly. Our “ten-year-old” is now riding his bike in circles in the street in front of our house. Sad and despondent. Ashamed and wondering if we will welcome him back.
Come on back inside honey, I say. We are all safe now. So let’s put this aside for tonight and go to bed, okay?
Headlights approach from the end of the street.
Is that the police? He asks.
No, I didn’t have to call. Because you went for a ride and you calmed yourself down. You are very good at that. I can see there is no danger anymore. Now we just all need to go inside and get some rest. We are all safe.
Lightning begins striking in the distance. A few tiny rain drops touch my face.
I don’t want you to lock up my bike, he says.
We won’t lock up your bike. You know why? Because getting out for a ride helps you when you are mad. You always come back better. And you never go far. You always come back to us. Because you love us, don’t you? And you trust us.
He circles and circles. Opens the mailbox. Closes it. Circles some more. Stops and studies a rock. Circles.
You said you would never give up on me, he says.
We won’t.
But you said you would send me away. You promised you would never send me away.
Oh God give me the words.
We were scared honey. You know what it feels like to be scared of someone don’t you?When you get that angry, it can be very scary.
But the last time I went to the hospital I never got to go back home. I lost my family.
I know, honey. And they told me it was the hardest thing they ever had to do. They loved you so much. But they knew they could not help you get better. And you did not belong to them. You still were in foster care. But we are not your foster parents. We adopted you. That is a forever promise. Even if things did get so bad, you had to leave for a bit, you would come right back home after you were better. Because you do not belong to the county anymore. You belong to US.
But I don’t want to leave.
Then let’s make sure that never happens. Let’s do this together, figure this out together. So you don’t have to. Can you do that?
Yes.
Okay, come on in then. Let’s get ready for bed.
He drags his bike up the stairs and down the hallway, into his bedroom with him. The threat of being taken away too strong in a little boy’s heart. A boy who has been taken away too many times. He needs the security of knowing we can’t take his only way to escape from him.
Tucked in bed, he looks so drained, utterly exhausted. Covers up to his chin, I brush his hair back from his forehead again and again in a soothing rhythm.
Everything’s going to be okay, I murmur. His eyes drift closed.
Everything’s going to be okay.
***
4,889
August 1, 2019
by thebohemianjournalist 0 comments
Okay, we are planning to bring in another teenager. We need to make room. What does that look like for us? How can we prepare so that this is good for everyone?
Life is kind of like a big house filled with rooms. And each room is filled with a certain number of things that require energy and time from us.
We go through life filling rooms, and emptying them when we must. We add a new thing to life. Or we remove something from it. We only have so much time and we only have so much energy. We need to budget and spend wisely. When a new thing comes in, sometimes it means other things have to go. Sometimes it just means organizing it all better.
I am the kind of person who needs a lot of margin in life. I don’t like anything bursting at the seams. I love being busy and active and a lot of variety and movement in a day. But I also have margins that are very important to me that I keep open. I have quiet time with the Lord every day. I listen to audio books to unwind. I get in bed early and read every night before sleep. I get at least one whole day a week that is relatively empty and quiet.
These things are very important to me.
So I am always tossing things that are less important for things that are important to me. I like it this way. It makes me feel healthy and balanced.
In truth, it has been a very difficult and confusing decision, whether or not to adopt again. Jack’s needs from seem to consume all of our energy. How can we have more for another one? And one that will likely have special needs of her own? Jack has already challenged me greatly, encroaching on my previously very wide and carefully carved-out margins. That’s what kids do, don’t they? They fill up your world, and margin can be hard to find or create. I have become so much less selfish since my boy came into my life. I like that a lot.
Balance is being achieved. He is feeling safer and safer with us. He calls us mom and dad now. He trusts us, and is finding more and more rest in our authority and the boundaries we have set for him. We have showed him the difference between threatening authority and healthy good authority. He is relaxing in this.
This, along with the educational support we are receiving from Huntington, and the margins are clearing again. The relief was so wonderful that we were concerned about adding another one anyway! Now that we had peace and rest and margin returning to our lives, why ruin that? Why fill that room up with something else?
But we feel called to this way of life now. Was it all just for Jack? Or are there more for us out there? And if so, when? Now or later? So many questions.
I felt pregnant with Jack, have I mentioned that before?
My soul and spirit went through all the same stages that my body and soul went through when I was pregnant with Jadon. I felt something shift and change inside of me in the early part of 2017. I felt it change me, swell inside of me. I felt the words in my soul, a child is coming. This was like finding out I was pregnant.
Then a few months later, it got stronger. It was growing within me, and I felt the quickening. A fluttering of life. And just like with an actual pregnancy, it was happening only to me. I was telling Jesse what was happening, but he was not experiencing any of it personally yet. The man only experiences it from the outside. But we mothers, it is happening inside of us. We know this person differently, internally, we know the process so intimately, so much more fully. I have heard it said that the woman becomes a mother at conception, but often the man doesn’t really become a father until he holds the baby for the first time. This is different for every man, of course, but the truth remains. Holding it inside is a whole different experience. Only the woman knows what this experience is like. It is exquisite.
Then, about seven months in, there was a strong urge to start nesting. At this point, we knew the gender. God had told us he was giving us another boy. And I began preparing for him, getting his room ready, planning the things we would do with him and for him. I nested and nested.
Then there was the moment we first saw him, heard his name, read about him. This was like having an ultrasound. The first glimpse, so close yet still so far away.
And then the day we got to meet him. This was like the day of his birth into our world.
And the day he moved in, was like coming home from the hospital, this new person now a member of the physical family.
So when Jesse says to me, are you sure we can do this? Are you sure we should risk adding this third child into our family? We are just feeing that margin really return into our lives, do we risk losing that again?
I tell him,
Babe, I felt pregnant with Jack. I knew it in my bones, in my soul, in my very core being. I was pregnant with him. I knew he was coming, without a doubt, as much as a pregnant woman knows she will be giving birth one day.
So now, no I don’t know exactly how long this pregnancy will be, I do not know the due date. But I do know, I feel the same exact way. I feel pregnant with this one. Just as I did with my other two.
It is the same. I felt it in my core, a shift, a change. I’m pregnant again.
Then I felt it swell and grow within me.
Then the quickening.
Then the gender reveal. It’s a girl this time. A girl!
Now the nesting has begun.
I do not know exactly who she will be. I do not know exactly when she will arrive. But I do know, she is coming.
But there does need to be a shift in our priorities. Some things need to be moved around. Because margin is a necessity for us.
We always make room for the things that are most important to us. By removing things that pale in comparison. Busy is not a word I use to describe my life when people ask how I’ve been. Words like peaceful and relaxing and wonderful are the ones I like to use. Of course I have busy days, but there is always a resting point planned at the end.
So how do we make room, when God asks us to do something? When we are pregnant with a new thing that we know we must create space for in our time and energy?
First, we start by letting God lead the way. He will help navigate every detail. Then we proceed by making sure the things that should be at the top of the list are there.
1: Important relationships, with God, family, and friends. There needs to be enough time and energy for these. If there isn’t, then you know things are already out of order.
2: Next, I believe, comes your personal health. Enough time, space and energy to be eating and drinking properly. This includes planning and preparing wholesome balanced diet. Then exercise and movement every day. Then adequate rest, for the body, mind, and spirit. Enough sleep, but also periods of rest in between to recharge and heal when needed. Such as a quiet hour reading on the deck, getting a massage, or doing something else that brings rest to your body or soul.
After this, things get much more open to differing in our personal lives. For my husband, the next thing on his list is his work, making sure his family is provided for. This is common for a lot of men. While for me, the next thing on the list is the kids’ schedules (my work). Making sure everyone is where they need to be, gets what they need. For others it may be a ministry, or something else entirely.
As long as the things that are most important remain on top of the list, and you make sure you know where your stopping point is, exactly how much margin you want or need on the other end, so there is an end to your busy-ness at certain points, time and energy reserved for complete emptiness or a hobby or relaxation… Then the large space in between these two bookends is open for all the other things we may need or want to fill it with. And these are the things that can be tossed in and out, moved around and repositioned to make it all work.
To make room, for us, this time, means that we are adding something to the top of our list. A new person, a new relationship of high priority. I am adding a new schedule to my life that I will need to help this new person manage. Extra homework. Extra deep talks. Extra shopping trips. Extra love and quality time. Extra energy poured out to shape and guide and parent a new life entrusted to us.
And as long as I keep some margin open, I am willing to let go of other things that will make this possible.
Because I am pregnant with her. Perhaps not in my body. But in my soul. In my spirit. And that means that a birthing is going to take place.
Our son came to us believing in God. What a blessing that was! His birth mother has faith and he also had other carers and mentors that took him to church and nurtured his faith as he grew.
This is a miracle to me. That someone who has seen such a terrible life is still so open, and at this age, to knowing God. His older sister, the one who stayed with birth mom, got a tattoo on her back for her sixteenth birthday. It is a picture of a snake biting a hand and the script says trust no one. When I saw it I felt so sad for a belief system so grim. Jack, on the other hand, often doodles on his hands and arms with markers and pens; he’s creative. He draws crosses and writes things like, Love will save you and Jesus and family is everything. This is how I know he will be just fine. He wants to be fundamentally good and see goodness around him.
I spend a lot of time in the secret place, praying for him. In the early days God spoke to me clearly during one of these weeping prayer times, where I was offering up the depths of my soul to him. God kept saying, this one is mine. I preserved him. This one is mine. Mine. I preserved him. I wrote my name on him. He is Mine.
I sobbed and sobbed.
I can see the mark on him. Two of his other sisters have this mark too. They were adopted as well, earlier on than he was. And one of them in particular I bonded deeply with. She has a faith in her so strong I can feel it, it is the same faith I feel in myself, forged in the darkest of places; this is where it grows. The easy happy things are nice in life. But it is in the darkness that the bond grows. The darkness can make us run away from God and become lost. Or it can make us grab hold of him as he reaches for us, and cling for all we are worth.
I clung.
That sweet young girl clings.
I hope my son learns to cling.
He has asked me, on a few occasions, while feeling miserable, why did God let it happen to me? Of course he must ask. Of course we all do. What a valid question. Why? God of the universe, all powerful, why did you not say NO?
I have told him many things in response.
There are lots of reasons why terrible things happen. God always opposes evil, it is only a matter of how and when.
I remind him, that God did intervene. He did move him eventually to safer places. And now he is with us. God came through, even though many years were of suffering, he has most of his life left to live outside of that. The worst parts did end. Even though it wasn’t right away.
I tell him about light and darkness. How evil has been given permission to mix here, with the good, in this galaxy where light and darkness live together. The only place where heaven and hell both share space.
Because of this, in order to survive, we must develop something special to cope. This special thing is called strength.
Strength, however, cannot be achieved without having to fight against something, having to withstand a kind of pressure. Strength does not happen on its own. It is always fought for. And in order to fight for something there is always an opposing force, an opponent, a powerful or heavy thing that must be faced and defeated.
This is the only way to become strong. A life without any of these terrible forces, a life without any hard things, is a life that will give only weakness to us. I tell him that he can decide to let everything that happened make him stronger, make him filled with more faith and more substance and more wisdom and character than anyone who had it easy.
God intends to wipe out evil. And he will. But not quite yet. Right now evil gets to live freely too. And we all get to decide how much evil we wish to let become a part of us, and how much good. We all get to decide. If God started controlling the people who are choosing evil, he would have to abandon his entire promise to give us all free will. He would have to start controlling all of us. Which would mean changing our thoughts, changing our choices, and paralyzing us when we are about to do something wrong or harmful to someone else.
So he made this amazing dance take place.
A dance in which evil can make its own choices, and those choices, though often harmful and abusive to others, will create a stimulus for the people who choose to have more good in them. A stimulus that will build this invaluable currency in us: STRENGTH.
If we use this dance properly, if we understand and choose well our place in the steps, we can be sure to do the following:
1: Choose never to harm another person with our own wills. And if we do, or do by accident, we make it right and learn to stop the behavior in future.
2: Set boundaries when we can, between ourselves and others who choose to do harm.
3: When someone does hurt us, when something evil or terrible attacks us, we can choose to respond in the ways that Jesus demonstrated to us.
Bond deeply with the father.
Never pay back evil with more evil.
Let the stimulus that evil creates make us better, make us stronger, make us purer.
Know that above all, God is still good and that can never change. Jesus was arrested, mocked, hated, lied about, hunted down, tortured, and gruesomely murdered. Yet he never got the actions of evil people confused with the goodness of God.
People can be terrible, I tell my son. But God is always good. Don’t get the two confused.
And he seems to really be grabbing hold of this answer.
There is a nest of Magpies in a big pine tree in our back yard this spring. Every day I hear them screeching up there. I see the parents dutifully gathering suet from the feeders on my deck and carry it up to them.
I knew they were getting ready to start learning to fly because their sounds were getting louder and louder and more mature. They sounded so grown. But still babies too. Calling to their parents for everything.
Yesterday morning I heard their racket outside but it was different. There was a frenzy. I went to investigate and saw they were out of the nest. There was panic and stress. Two of them had gotten outside our fence into neighbor’s yards, one behind us and one to our left. They were trying to wedge their way back in through holes that were too small. Another one was sitting in the bottom of a bush in our yard a few feet from the others. I could hear possibly one or two more that I could not see, in the lilac bush in the neighbor’s yard. They were all understandably upset.
I scanned for mom and dad.
Then I saw them. They were flying around from branch to branch in the trees above the babies, giving orders, sending signals, speaking a language that, strangely, I realized I could understand. Because it was all so familiar.
The necessary stress and panic and patience involved in this time of their offspring’s lives. This in-between stage of:
You must start doing this though you are not ready but if you do not start you will never be ready.
The parents were saying I’m here, come this way, this way back to the nest, no you can’t fit through that way, come this way. Yes this way. You’re alright. I’m here. You’ll be a really good flyer soon.
The babies cried and cried. My little chihuahua, Maximus, (who does not know he is a Chihuahua, so please don’t tell him) wanted one for himself. And mama swooped down on him, enraged and protective. I had to call him away before he got pecked.
Jack and I stood nearby, watching the scene. And I said, this is what we have to do with you sometimes, huh? Coax you back to the nest when you are stuck out there in some bush somewhere. He laughed and I hugged him.
My magpies and I, we have a long road ahead of us. We are both teaching our young to fly at the same time, and there is going to be so much fear and stress and panic involved, before they are actually capable. It was a long night for them. I still hear their crying from inside the bushes, spending their first night outside the nest because they couldn’t find their way back to it. A long night for the parents and the offspring. Until they gain their footing in this strange new world.
Life has become balanced again for the time being. I have come out of one season with Jack, and thank the Lord, entered another. One that is once again predominantly happy.
But it is important to note, that although one was dark and another light, one was heavy and another lighter, one was filled with pain and exhaustion and the other much more peace, that… One was not bad and the other good. There are times when building strength is more important than having happiness and comfort. One precedes the other. One seems to make the other possible. They go hand in hand. They must alternate in our lives, a nice mixture. If happiness and strength are what you hope to grow in your garden, then struggle and discomfort are often the water and the sunlight we need to grow it.
I have found that my garden of happiness grows best with plenty of pain and struggle mixed in, in alternating seasons.
I said to my husband in recent years, I have realized that I thrive in the valley. It was a realization that hit me one day when I looked back at all the turning points in my life and I saw that after every single season of struggle I come out with more happiness, more of everything good.
Like pavlov’s dog, sometimes I even get excited when a new struggle hits. As soon as something awful starts, I begin expecting and looking forward to the reward that’s on the other side. The best times of my life have always been right after the absolute worst. And every best time seems better than the best that came before it.
In this past season, homeschooling Jack, I was depressed. I had no energy. I felt little-to-no joy in my daily routine. I lost most of the things I loved about my day. I woke up in the morning and the first thing that hit me was dread, I did not want to get out of bed. This is not me.
But it was for a time. It became me for awhile. For a few months, this was where I was and how I felt.
And you know what?
It was okay.
It was okay to not be okay.
I kept telling myself, Uncomfortable does not mean bad. It just means growth.
My husband looked on in horror. Where is my wife? he kept asking. This is not you, he kept saying.
My instinct was the same as his at first. I wanted to flip a switch and just be happy. I felt like it was wrong for me to be unhappy. And of course there were happy moments all mixed in. But the struggle was real. I was still laughing and enjoying and living, enjoying friends and church and outings, but it was shadowed, tainted, with a lot of low moments and a lot of pushing through. It was just enough unhappiness to feel uncomfortable. And just enough struggle to give me a chance to grow.
And I want to grow.
I was right where I was supposed to be. This place was the only place that could make me stronger. If you try to lift something that is too heavy, it does not always mean that thing is too much, it sometimes means that you must grow. You must strain and train and push and pull and challenge yourself day after day after day. Until one day, the thing you could not move, suddenly it budges a bit. And then little by little it moves more and more. And then one day, in the future, you realize you are carrying it around and it is so easy that you cannot even really remember how it felt to be too heavy.
And that is why God values strength over happiness at times. That is why it is okay to not be okay all the time. To not always be happy and comfortable. there doesn’t have to be comfort, just acceptance. There can be peace.
And that is why I have decided I thrive in the valley (gosh dang it.) Because the valley, as it turns out, is my training camp. I have learned on some level to enjoy going there, even to choose to go there by embarking on difficult life tasks, choosing things that I know will be challenging. Pull up my sleeves, take a deep breath, and head in. Knowing I will come up and out one day and will have conquered whatever dark or heavy things it brings with it, learned lessons only this journey can teach me, built the muscles only lifting this thing over and over again can build. And then I will be up on top for awhile. Until it is time to go down to another valley, to begin the fight to conquer something else.
Growth is in the struggle. Growth is in the discomfort. Growth is in the pain. Growth is in the moments that we sit with something terrible and we wrestle with it until we have won. Growth is being not quite yourself for awhile so you have to fight to find that person again, only better.
So much has changed and shifted and happened, I don’t even know how to effectively capture it here. I have been in a dark season of struggle for the past several weeks. I will try to summarize, but I don’t feel I even have the energy to write all the details down.
See, I had felt like I was entering a different sort of season entirely. We bought the house on Windfield in January and for the first month I could not have been happier. It is a glass house, built in the 80’s. Windows everywhere. Sun flooding in and making my whole world glow. My plants have never been happier, and neither have I. I began painting the entire interior in the most perfect shade of white. Cleansing and perfectly essential.
And then it happened. At the end of February, almost exactly one month later. February 21st…
School has been a nightmare with Jack. An absolute torturous nightmare for all involved.
For my husband and I who feel like we are pushing a hippopotamus through a mouse hole.
To the teachers who pull us aside during conferences to discreetly ask if he has brain damage.
To the other school staff who never stop having to manage his erratic behavior and outbursts and truancy.
To our son, who hates every minute of it every day and never stops kicking and screaming against it.
A nightmare.
It was February 21st when we had to pull him out. Because the behavior was so bad, and escalating so rapidly, that he was a hair’s width away from expulsion. He was failing every single class anyway. It was just a dead-end.
I cried to my mom on the phone the day we knew we had been painted into this corner. It was a Thursday. We had been on the phone with multiple school staff all day. He had run away from school. Left in a car with older kids and disappeared for half the day. Something snapped inside of us and we knew we had to act drastically. The dreaded horrific word that no one with a child like Jack could utter without tears involved:
Homeschooling.
I felt as if I had no other option, at least for awhile. At least until we could get some things in order and back on track.
I knew that this meant my life was effectively altered, every minute of it, every day. No breaks from this child that has the ability to bring me to an exhaustion I can’t remember ever feeling before. Some days I had mini mental breakdowns, hiding in my bedroom.
And now
I have
to
teach
him
too??
How
the
*&%$
was
I
going
to survive
this????????????
As it turns out, not well.
The breakdowns became daily rather than their usual weekly. I fell into a kind of numb depression and trudged against the increased current suddenly whipping mercilessly through every day of my new life. And then there was the regression. He would often be roughly the emotional age of four or five. All. Day. Long. Tantrums, rolling around on the floor and all. Keeping him focused for more than a couple minutes at a time took every ounce of energy and patience I had. While I tried to teach him Algebra and how to write a book report. It was impossible.
I kind of lost joy for life for a time, and this is almost unheard of for someone with my personality. But, there I was, unrecognizably negative and depressed. I cried every day.
Journal Entry Continued.
Slowly, I have started to shrivel in this strange new time that I did not see coming. Into a kind of weary depression. I don’t want to become like this, but it feels involuntary. It feels like grief. Like a death or loss. Loss of a life that I really loved. A life that just kept getting better. It was hard, of course. So so hard. But the only solace that I had was the break school gave me. Parenting a child with such special needs is already so exhausting. So depleting. How do you get time to recover? Only in the gaps. The spaces where someone else takes over just for a little while and you can move away and clear your mind of the constant vigilance and effort, stop and breath and then take some time to do something you need to do, something you want to do, something just for you.
But that is gone now. And I know I am grieving.
It is not just that he is home all the time now. That would be like summer break. No. It is that I am now his school, his teacher of every subject, his only daily interaction, his only lifeline. I am now carrying all of it. And there is no relief anywhere I look. When the snow comes it is even worse. Trapped indoors and cold and feeling like my world has become ice instead of the sunlight I so loved. An ice storm hit us here in Colorado. And it was one of the worst days. All the windows were covered in it. You couldn’t even see outside. Trapped in an ice house. The wind howling outside like a very sad woman.
It sounds melodramatic but I feel as though I don’t recognize my life. Like I have lost it, what I wanted it to be. And this is a sacrifice I am willing to give, but my will and my heart are struggling to find the same footing. My heart is still grieving and my will is coaching it to get stronger and give more and never quit until I have done right by this boy who needs so much, and has always gone without it.
But then it slowly caught up. My heart caught up with my will. I am nothing if not adaptable. And I adapted to this new life. The little joys came. The weather cleared. The sun came out. He started going to the skate park for hours at a time. I had some relief.
I also had thrown tenth grade out the window and went back to the basics. Schooled him at his level in every subject, filling in the gaps. In this he started to thrive and gain confidence.
But there is no way I can keep him trapped in this isolated protected time-lapse. Because he is not seven or eight years old. He will be a legal adult in just over two years. He needs to make it farther than this. And I need to figure out how to get him there.
And then we figured it out. We found the answers we were looking for.
God is so faithful. He always always comes through.
When parenting a child or a teenager that comes from a rough background, the mess can seem so big that it is hard to know where to focus your attention and energy. It is a constant moving target as you face irritating, inconvenient and oftentimes bizarre little things every day.
It is so important to step back regularly and evaluate the big picture:
1: What kind of person do I want my child to become?
2: What kinds of virtues does he need to achieve this?
3: Where do I need to focus the majority of my energy and attention in order to help him develop these core virtues?
The answer to our troubled kids becoming healthy adults that contribute more good to the world than evil, depends solely on their developing of core virtues.
Not values, mind you. These vary from person to person, defining simply what each person finds to be most important to them personally. Virtues are as irrefutable as mathematics. They do not change from person to person, they are set foundations of character and wisdom and health.
Kindness. Humility. Integrity. Honesty. Purity. Honor and respect. Goodness.
What kind of man do we want him to become? And sometimes that means ignoring or setting aside a lot of distracting details of the moment in order to continue building these critical foundations of health and goodness.
Anger and outbursts are unavoidable. With kids in general. But then these kids have also suffered incredible loss. Have missed out on key developmental stages and emotional growth. The anger seems to always be there. It comes out differently with different kids and its root is almost always fear, but it is almost always there. That is why many people are afraid to take these kids into their lives, especially teen boys. It is scary and hard to have this in your home. It can turn your life upside-down at any moment, change the course of an entire day, ruin trips and plans and suck all the happiness out of a room in an instant.
The triggers can be predictable and they can be unpredictable. They can be big or small. But when it comes, it is like a sudden storm that blows in and there is nothing to do except weather it. Wait for the sun to come back out.
For us, as the parents of a hurt and scared and angry kid, it is important to accept that God does not calm every storm.
Many storms we are simply meant to weather. To strap ourselves to the nearest immovable object and hold on until it passes. Strength is built this way, in US–the parents–first. And then, as we persevere, and as we keep building the foundations of virtue beneath our wounded kids, soon those storms can begin to quiet and still within them.
If every storm was stopped or avoided we would not have the opportunity to develop this strength. Bad weather conditions us. It is good for the soul. To learn to embrace this truth is to embrace the power that is built only by standing against something harsh and terrible, until you grow into the kind of pillar that is not knocked over.
Many people may look too much at the details of a stormy child.
The shouting and throwing things. The slamming doors. The insults and verbal attacks. The terrible noise and uncomfortable tension. The breaking of objects, holes smashed into walls. The loss of sleep and fear for our safety. Embarrassment of being witnessed or overheard.
We want these things to stop. And understandably so. We may react with anger of our own.
But I choose to see a different picture when I look at my stormy child. These storms inside of him are not going to be disciplined out of him. They are the result of terrible evil things being poured into his soul for years and years. They are the result of far too much chaos being poured in, to ever just be reasoned back out.
If we look at him from the perspective of this bigger picture: what kinds of virtues does he need to make it through difficult things in life, including this? We see that what he needs to learn the most right now, isn’t the self-control to stop the storms, but how to resolve and make amends afterward.
The storms are a long way from being settled inside of his soul. The details of the storms themselves might not be the most important focus at this time. We need to show him how to come back from one. How to show remorse, make amends, say I’m sorry, ditch shame and learn forgiveness, unconditional love, and a desire to do better next time, even if that desire is not immediately fruitful. It is a big start.
In the first few months he was incapable of saying the words I’m sorry.
He would hold onto the anger even after the storm had passed and he would isolate himself, refuse to look at us, speak to us. Refuse to come back and join the family. I believe this was the result two things.
One, he had been wronged over and over again by so many people and no one had ever apologized to him for it. He had never seen regular examples of remorse or apology before, despite horrendous crimes against him.
And two, a palpable atmosphere of shame and rejection hung in the air after he had behaved badly. Because he had always been sent away for how he behaved. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He was waiting for us to be like every other person and say, that’s it, that was the last straw. We don’t want you anymore. We can’t do this, it’s too hard.
So we had to work on this first. We had to work on the foundation of removing shame from the behaviors, and teaching him that we saw deeper into his value than how he was exploding. We saw him, through his behavior, through the wounds that caused the behavior. And he had the opportunity to come back and make it right every time and every single time we would be waiting with open arms and hearts to forgive and a fresh new start.
Remorse and forgiveness. Two very valuable virtues.
It was clear he had not been shown what true forgiveness meant before. And how can anyone ever understand God if he does not understand forgiveness? How can anyone ever know love if he does not understand forgiveness? How can anyone ever feel secure in a family without regular movement to-and-fro within that family… of forgiveness?
So we decided to stop reacting to his storms and see what happened. Let them blow through the house. Let the chaos pour out if this damaged boy and not add too it. But wait it out. Not threaten or punish or shout back. Not try to control it or stop it or discipline him in it. And then afterward, when the winds were dying down we would go to him and sit beside him and say, ok, glad that’s over now. Let’s forgive and plan to do better next time, and apologize and move on.
For the first few months it would take hours of gentle coaxing to get him to mumble an I’m sorry and give a hug and reluctantly rejoin the family.
Then gradually it took less and less time.
What we were building was a foundation so much deeper than any behavior reformation focus could have ever given us. We were building a foundation of trust, acceptance, and unconditional love. Things he had never truly had before. Things that were unknown to him. And it was so important because on this foundation all other things could be built.
We did discipline him for his behaviors, but this was also done patiently and with love, and selectively. Such as having to repair or work off damage done to our home or belongings. Or replacing video games with a family night of interacting over board games instead. And most of the time he was able to calmly accept these consequence afterward as well. Not under shame, but as a natural course of action in a world where effect follows cause.
We are believers in Attachment Parenting. It is a method of parenting that focuses solely on building a foundation of attachment first, so that the child develops a sense of security so firm that all other things run smoother within it. It operates on the understanding that the most important thing, when you have an infant, is meeting his or her needs immediately. This builds a foundation in their little clean-slate brains of trust and security and safety. The very first thing they must learn in life is that you are there. You are there. You are there. You will always be there. And in this they learn, I am safe.
Jack does not have that foundation yet. But we are building it. One day, one reaction, one hug, one forgiveness, one new shame-free start at a time. What we want him to learn, what he is starting to learn is, I am safe here. On this foundation, everything else can be built. Because the more safe he feels, I believe the less and less the storms will come.
The storms are beginning to reduce in severity and length. They are becoming less violent. They are becoming less filled with fear. And then suddenly, one day a miracle!
He began seeking us out afterward. Seeking forgiveness, seeking resolution, seeking to apologize. His arms outstretched, to grab hold of us and say I’m so sorry. And we say Thank you baby, I know, now let’s start over. This pattern is making him desire to act out less. These are the first steps.
The reality is that it will take years for him to fully work out all of the damage inside of him. The damage that makes these storms blow. But it really only took a matter of months to set a foundation sturdy and strong enough to hold fast to each other when they do.
