Two years ago this month my life converged upon the crossroads of stress and chaos. I was thrown suddenly into a daily routine of feeling overwhelmed.
We had come to this point after a few years of discussion and prayer.
But months of active preparation didn't stop the turmoil that happened
in our home and in my heart and mind.
It happened when a certain little boy entered our home with incessant requests for peanut butter and endless punches thrown at my other children. He also came with lots of huge toys sent from a loving aunt, who he couldn't stay with due to her own health issues. So, he came to stay with us until we learned more about where he would stay forever. We were his 5th home in half as many years. To say that there were trust issues was an understatement. To suggest that control was hard to for him to hand over was beyond that. But for all that was going on in this little guy's heart, my own had just as many emotions to sort through.
Maybe it's not surprising that I had such trouble taking in a child with a personality so much like mine. After all, I'm one of the few moms that I know who is has confessed to not being a kid person. This usually receives a sizable share of strange looks, to which I always feel obligated to explain, "I like my kids, just not other people's."**
But here I was with someone else's kid living in my house, balancing the idea that he was not mine (that was thoroughly ground into me in my 30-hours of government-led foster training) but that he needed to feel like part of a family... but not so much that it would scar him if he's ripped away from us and put back with another member of his biological family that could theoretically live in Guam and have never met the child's mother let alone him, but for goodness sake's they share a bloodline!
So, we began this insane trip toward adoption. And long story, medium length have now adopted the little dude, and I do love him now as my own child... because um... he is my own child.
A lot has changed in those 2 years since his entrance. He hardly eats peanut butter anymore, and he knows now that boys need to protect girls, not hit them. But things have changed in me, too.
It kind of hit me this morning that it's been quite a long time since I've dreaded his day's off from preschool as a preview to the eternal wrath of God. It's been even longer since I cried everyday at the thought of being home alone with the kids while Billy left for work.
In fact...this morning, as I brushed my hair I kind of.... felt normal.
**(I also feel obligated to tell all the moms from our homeschool co-op
that the level of distaste for other people's kids is inversely related to a
child's age and his ability to grasp and appreciate the nuance of sarcasm.
Hence, I teach the high school class and merely "hang out" in the 5th
and 6th grade, where this skill is just starting to bloom in most. I also like kids on a case by case basis, so if your child is not yet at Level 4, I might still like him or her. Or I might not. I
also might have just made this all worse.)
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