Fighting for Love

(I am posting this once more at the risk of worrying my mom and my family.  As if y'all aren't every bit as neurotic.   Please hear the humor and sarcasm and know that I am okay.  Well, I am not always okay, but I am learning to be okay with that.  I am trying to learn to "wear life like a loose garment", as a really wise friend once told me.  Still, loving...laying down your life...choosing grace...it's hard for this girl.  Sometimes, the hardest person to extend grace to is the sinner looking at us in the mirror.)

It is no secret that my family has been in a difficult place for the last several months. . . that I have been in a difficult place.   While I try to be respectful with the pieces I chose to share (after all, much of the story is not mine to tell) I have tried to balance that with honesty and transparency.  My hope is that other mommas might feel a sense of solidarity and know they are not alone in the midst of a whole lotta hard.  And honestly?  I am honest because I  don't want to feel alone.  I want to be known and loved even in all of my sin and struggle and failure.  Isn't that the cry of our heart?

So I struggle to walk the balance beam.  To share enough, but not too much.  I post blogs that others have written and express it so much more eloquently than I could.  I wonder if anyone reads them and gains a glimmer of understanding, or maybe hope for their own hurting hearts.  Sometimes, in my least attractive moments, I just pull the covers over my head and hide.

Today was one of those days.  As my family got ready to head out the door for church, I chose to stay home, unable to face the world outside.  I don't know how to explain to someone who has never experienced the panic of trying to walk out your door and put on your game face when inside you feel like you are drowning.  The desperation of knowing you need to reach for a lifeline, but feeling in all truth as though you are trapped in quicksand and cannot free yourself to grab hold of the raft.   So instead of going to church, I stayed home and listened to worship music on Spotify and podcasts by Francis Chan and begged God to meet me, even in this lonely place.  I begged Him to take my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh, that loves His word, that loves Him, above all else.  I sobbed my heart...the truth that not one ounce of me felt capable of loving in that moment and that I feel like a failure for not loving as I am called to love.  Chan's sermon drew me to these Words:

     "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those
     who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to 
     be false.  I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not 
     grown weary.  But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first."
                                                Revelation 2:2-4

The truth is, right now, in this place I often do not know how to love.  I feel empty.  How can I love when I feel so completely unlovable myself?  I know the answers, but applying them in the context of such desperation can be impossible.   Still, as I struggled to cling to truth, I was drawn to some of my favorite Scripture in all of the world.  I read a section of Psalm 119 every morning to prepare my heart to interact with the Word.  This morning, as I grappled with this idea of fighting for my first love, and of fighting to love those He is calling me to love, I scanned through some of the underlined verses from this beautiful chapter of Scripture:

     "In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.  I will meditate on your
     precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.  I will delight in your statutes;...

     Take away from me scorn and contempt...

     I have chosen the way of faithfulness

     Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise;

     for I trust in Your word...

     The earth, O Lord, is full of Your steadfast love; 

     Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.  You are good and do good.

     in faithfulness you have afflicted me.  Let Your steadfast love comfort me according to Your
     promise to Your servant.  Let Your mercy come to me that I may live for Your law is my 
    delight.

     In Your steadfast love give me life...

     Great peace have those who love your law;  nothing can make them stumble.  I hope for Your
     salvation, O Lord, and I do Your commandments.  My soul keeps Your testimonies;  I love them
    exceedingly.

And in those moments, I chose to fight for love.   And I was reminded that I have been choosing the wrong weapons.  "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.  On the contrary, they have the divine power to demolish strongholds.  We demolish arguments and ever idea that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.  We take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ."    2 Corinthians 2:4-6

So I stayed on my knees and fought, for love and for peace and for joy.  And I begged God to fill me with a love that overflowed.  And I begged Him to show me His love in this moment, in this day.

Then my family came home.   They came home, and the house filled up with noise, and chaos, and whining and arguments and attention seeking behaviors and stress and all of the resolve and quiet joy I had found in the Word that morning faded as quickly as it had come.  And there was my failure, smacking me once more in the face.  Why was I so fickle?  Why was I so quick to fold?  Why could I not cling more tightly to obedience  Why could I not clothe myself with compassion and gentleness.  I did manage to whisper a quiet prayer for the strength to fight for love.

We made it through lunch and finally, finally, we pulled on coats and scarves and hats and piled into minivans to go pick out a Christmas tree.  Friends, this is literally one of my favorite days of the year.  I love holidays, I love tradition, and above all, I love, love, love Christmas!  As a kid, even before the days of Pinterest, Mom made this holiday so, incredibly special.  She found boundless joy  in every bit of it - the tree, the decorating, the baking, the hospitality and gathering of family, the chaos, the Christmas music, the gifts.  She went all out.  I remember the excitement and anticipation as she would hoist me into the storage room above our basement stairs so I could hand down the dusty decorations and lights and ornaments.  She made it magic and it has remained so for me even as an adult,  so in the midst of the chaos, I fought to find joy for this moment.

We pulled into the lot and crowded into the small store to claim our cider before we set off to find the perfect tree.   As my crazy family crammed into the shop, smearing finger prints over the glass that encased the sweet treats, I smiled despite myself.  I still struggle to understand how happiness and grief can live together in such close quarters, but that is exactly what they do.

My load continued to lighten as we made our way outside to examine the virtues and flaws in every tree.  The cider, the crisp air, and the infectious delight of the kids as we laced our way through the rows, exclaiming, "Look at this one!"  "Oooooh!  What about this one?!"  was enough to lighten the weight and force the sadness to give way, and after much debate, we settled on a tree.  A ridiculously huge, beautiful, pine-scented, mammoth of a tree.   I am not even sure what happened from that point, or why, but as I began to herd the kids back toward the store, Stephen grabbed my arm, leaned toward me, and said in a low voice,  "She just pulled the tag off of the tree and said, 'Merry Christmas.'"

     "What?  She ...what?  She did what?  Where is she?"

He pointed, "The lady in the red vest."

     I weaved my way through the tress my eyes already brimming with tears as I grabbed her.  "Thank you.  Thank you so much."  I wrapped my arms around her,wondering if she had any clue what her incredible gift of kindness meant to me.  I choked out an awkward, "Merry Chrsitmas" and retreated in a bit of embarrassment at the wave of emotion.  The rest of the trip was a blur, picking out a huge wreath for the barn since the tree had been gifted to us, letting the kids pick out sweet treats - fudge and frosted sugar cookies and chocolate covered pretzels, piling back into the vans to head home.   As I considered God's extravagant answer to my prayers that morning, a tangible sense of His grace and love washed over me.   I grabbed a card from the floorboard of the van and scribbled this note,

     "My family has been through a phenomenally hard couple of months.  You could not possibly know how much your kindness meant to me.  I pray that you are blessed as much as you have blessed us."

And I was reminded again...even when my love fails, Yours never does.  Today was exhausting and hard and beautiful and filled with joy.  Tomorrow, I will get up and fight for love again.
 

The Rest of the Story

So I am having a bit of writer's remorse.  Not for being as raw or as honest as I was in the last blog. I was completely blown away by how many comments and messages I received from people who felt like they were reading their heart.  Any insecurity I was feeling faded pretty quickly.   (Well, there is always insecurity.  But that's another blog, another time.)   I know that there is something SO comforting and powerful about hearing the words (or seeing them vomited out in a blog?) that you've been too afraid, ashamed, prideful, isolated, or for whatever other reason, unable to articulate.  If one person was encouraged, comforted, validated, or moved toward understanding, I am so glad I hit "Publish".

Still, I feel some uneasiness with leaving that blog to stand alone for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I am afraid I gave my Momma a few more gray hairs.  In a staff meeting yesterday my husband flashed his phone at me when her name popped up on the screen.

"She's worried about me.  The blog."

I mean, it's my Momma. She loves me.  (Hi, Mom!)  After ensuring that I was not on the verge of a mental breakdown, she promised to take me to lunch.  And buy me a rug for my living room. Seriously.   Because what makes you feel cheered up more than a new rug?  You wish your mom was as cool as mine.  You can rest assured that I will be finding more reasons to write cathartic blogs about the hot mess that is my life.  And it wasn't just her.  I received pretty prompt messages from my big brother, my sister and my sister-in-law.  I love that my family loves so big.   We don't see each other often and we might be the definition of dysfunctional, but let me tell you what I know for certain:  when there is a real need, my family will move mountains to help or to be there.  That, my friends, is good stuff.

Secondly, more than just giving my family further reason to believe that I am an emotional basket case is this:  while the last post was absolutely authentic, it was still only part of the picture. The whole truth is that it was not the whole truth.  It was still a cropped picture of reality.  And that just isn't sitting well with me.

My biggest fear about sharing the crazy hard that is inherent in fostering and adoption is the possibility of turning someone away from this beautiful calling.  But the problem is if we are not honest, how can we possibly equip people for the task.  So how do we balance this?  How do we tell the whole truth?  Share the uncropped picture in all of its tragic beauty?  It is remarkably challenging to articulate the whole scope of joy and pain that this journey has encompassed, but I want to try.  Because the unabridged truth is that as deep and overwhelming as the trauma and grief have been. . .the moments of gratification and joy are equally profound.  I truly do not believe that one side of the coin can exist without the other.  The harder we fight to overcome, the sweeter the victory!

So, I dedicate this post to my Momma (mom, can we go rug shopping this week?) and to telling the whole story.  Because alongside of the struggle and the pain, there is so, so, so much goodness.  There are beautiful moments.  They are not the only moments.  And there are more ugly, painful moments than I want to share, but the beautiful ones are just as real.  And they are precious.  And sometimes I post them on Facebook not to fool you but to remind myself of just how much goodness I have a tendency to miss.

And there are funny anecdotes.  A lot of them.  Like the time last week when Charlie walked into the room after a shower with 2 large squares shaved into each side of his head. (My biggest parenting fail is that I do not have photographic evidence of this.)  When Steve asked about them, he answered with all seriousness, "I didn't know it was a razor.  I thought it was a head massager."  And the truth, way too willingly and smugly supplied by his sister, "He was trying to shave Nike swooshes into his head."   (Steve kindly reminded him that I primarily use that razor to shave my arm pits.  Call us for parenting advice any time.)

Or the time that we walked into McDonalds and I got the kids situated in booths while Stephen ordered.  A sweet, older couple was dining a few tables away and smiled warmly at us while I tried to corral the kids at several different tables.  (This exercise is a bit like trying to herd fleas.)  I mustered a smile in return and the husband asked with all the pity sympathy he could muster "Are you guys a church group?"  I cherished his baffled look as I chirped, "Nope.  I birthed every one of them from my loins!"***

And there is so much more than funny stories.  There is meeting absolute heroes of the faith who have endured SO MUCH with their kids for the sake of Christ.  So that those precious ones would know Christ.  There is hearing, "Mommy!" instead of "Chris!" for the first time and the startled look on both of our faces.  There is a dinner table crammed with so many people and so much laughter it makes your heart hurt.  There is watching your pasty white toddler, who has always and only known this family, run and leap into the arms of his chocolate brother and proclaim, "I wuv you Chawie!!   There is sitting on the deck and watching an entire gaggle of kids run and squeal and catch lightning bugs at dusk.  There are teachers who have seen the progress from the beginning and who wrap their arms around you and tell you that you are genuinely making a difference, when you cannot see it.  There are baptisms and conversations about Jesus that make your heart soar and ache and real moments that cement this truth into my soul.  Every bit of hard is worth it.

And perhaps most significant is this:  the absolute helplessness, abandon and joy of reaching the complete end of yourself.  Knowing that you cannot take one more step apart from Christ.  Choosing love when you cannot possibly choose love again.  But you do.  Or you don't.  And you fall on grace and find that the Cross really was enough.  That there is nothing you can do to add to it or take away from it.  And even though you have failed so many times that you cannot own up to all of the failure, you pick yourself up and try again, because there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING that you want your kids to understand more than the reality that His grace is enough.  For you.  For them. There is no trauma, no failure, no past or present. no pain or grief it cannot overcome.  It is enough. That is the whole truth.



***Of course I did NOT really say that.  But I wish I would have.

Even When My Love Fails

Tonight, I am weary to the bone.  Like a bit of rope drug too many times over a rough edge, I feel frayed.  Sometimes I wonder if the next bit of friction might cause me to snap altogether.  Forgive me if I risk a little too much authenticity here tonight.  Maybe I will edit this post to make it a little more palatable.  Maybe I will just vomit it all out on the page.

Here's the deal.  Trauma. Freaking. Sucks.   It is two and a half years in and I find myself torn between two extremes.  I SO desire to paint the beautiful lie.  The Photshopped picture of adoption.  The one where there are elements of truth, but they have been edited to look a little more picturesque.  Whitewashed.  The subjects and the setting are real, but the lighting has been adjusted, the ugly parts of the background have been softened, or erased altogether.  I want to share the picture that draws others toward the beautiful story of being grafted into a family.  The one that screams of redemption. One that makes everyone line up at the closest adoption agency to get on board as foster parents.  It is so easy to do, you know?  To post the right pictures on Facebook.  To share the funny tidbits and laughable anecdotes.  To photoshop reality into something that looks authentic but is at best only a shadow of the truth.

The other half, the part of me that is desperate to come clean, screams to share the raw, unedited truth.  The kind of truth that makes you squirm because there is a little too much reality.  Too much pain.  Too many rough edges.  The real picture is much less attractive.  Someone is almost always forgetting their game face.  There is anger and frustration and exhaustion and giving up - trying but failing again.  And again and again and again.

There is walking on eggshells...always the eggshells in hopes of maintaining peace.  Constantly wondering if today will be free of a blow up that will set the entire house on edge.  There is the deep, deep mourning of what was.   What was true for my family before we chose to take on so much hard. There is desperately missing days of easy, comfortable joy.  There is guilt and shame and pain and struggle.

There is second guessing EVERY parenting decision, where you once felt confident and secure.  There is battling hard to love authentically in the face of hate and venom that you KNOW is not really directed at you, but makes you bleed just the same.  There is secondary trauma, when you begin to live so defensively that just sharing a room causes your heart rate to rise and your guard to go up because you simply cannot do battle anymore.  There is rejection and failure and feeling like you just want to lay on the ground in the muck because you cannot get up again.  There is feeling so exhausted and bone weary that you cannot put one foot in front of the other.  There is hiding at home because you simply cannot plaster on the fake smile. . .not even (especially not?) at church.  There is this desperate desire to be known. . .really known.  For others to know how much you are struggling.  But that desire collides with crushing guilt that you might turn someone away from this holy call to  love beyond yourself, if you are that uncomfortably honest about the hard.

And even in the midst of the true story is the truth:   I would choose every bit of it again.  I would choose the ones that no one else wants to choose.  26 placements in less than 2 years.  Twenty six declarations of rejection in twenty four months.   I will look you in the eye and from the bottom of my heart, I will say, "I choose you."

In the midst of more struggle and trauma and pain than I ever could have imagined . . .I choose you.  I will fail.  I will put up walls of defense when I should tear them down.  I will sin.  I will keep a record of wrongs when I should forget.  I will get angry when I am called to be patient.   I will lose my temper when I should be slow to anger.   I will blame when I should choose compassion.  I will grieve and mourn when I should hope. I will be jealous of those who reach your heart when I could not, though I should rejoice.  I will give up when I should persevere.   I will choose self protection when I should lay down my life.   Even so, I will choose love.  I will choose you.  Because even when my love fails?  His NEVER does.

Redemption is not pretty.  It is not sanitized or fluffy.  Our redemption cost Jesus EVERYTHING.  It cost His reputation, His standing, His life.  He gave up His very nature, every comfort, every privilege, every advantage, so that we could find life.    He took on every bit of our sin and shame, deserving none of it.  He CHOSE suffering, not for His sake but ours.  How could I expect it to cost me any less?

The truth?  I feel like a failure most days.   I suck at this. . . this laying down of my own life when it really matters.  Tonight, the truth is I feel discouraged and defeated and alone. The truth is that sometimes just surviving today is the best I can do.  The truth is that I also still feel fiercely called to this path.  And the truth is, I will pick myself up tomorrow, and whisper to my heart that mercy triumphs in the end.  And despite every bit of hard, I will choose love again.  Because even when my love fails, His Never does.  And that is enough.