outside the gate

(This is Carin and I think this will be the last time I high jack Anthony’s blog. I think I am ok with letting him be the blogger in our family.)

So many people have been asking us how are we doing? (I take a deep breath) Well, we are better today than yesterday. I have experienced so many “bumps in the road” this month but our family is making it. Let me fill you in on Mia first. She is doing better. She is letting Anthony hold her, kisses all of us, runs and plays, sleeps through the night perfectly (addie was making noise last night and Mia told her to shh.) she loves Aiden, she loves bath time now, and lets us brush her teeth with no more tears. These are such big milestones. I have to look at the whole picture not just one day. Adoption is a long journey and if you fix your eyes on just the immediate you will want to quit. I read so many blogs about adoption so I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking it would be this way for me. I think deep down I was telling myself that I am a better mom and she will immediately love me because I love her. Ha. I was so blind. It has just always come so natural for me to love my other children. It was so immediate and intense from the first moment that I figured it had to be the same with her. I think I set her up to fail. I mean I had all these visions of coming home with a child that was so grateful to me for how I saved her and how I loved her so deeply. WRONG. She is perfectly fine to play and run around with us but the moment she needs love or intimacy she fights it with all she has. It is like a poison she wants to protect herself from. How can a mother’s love feel like poison?? But it does to her…right now. I have to keep saying that to myself…Right Now. This is not our forever. This is not our family or our truth. She will learn to let me in and will desire to be loved. Just not today. I am just being honest. I know one day she will read this and I hope she feels my desperation but also my commitment to love her. My commitment to take all that she can give and still be here with unwavering faith and love. I am reminded daily in this journey that love isn’t always pretty. It can be so messy and ugly but at the heart is a faith and belief that you will get to the other side. How can I quit on her? In a world where we quit everything I want her to see that there was never, ever an option to leave. Never an option to quit or retreat. That is love. Do we only want to stay “in Love” when it is the intoxicating kind?  When it shows you respect and loves you back…does love have to be reciprocated? I think we know the answer. But the only love I ever really hope she finds is in Christ. The love that never turned His back on a world that was killing him. He never ran or said  “wait you ungrateful little snots I take it all back”. And in that picture I am reminded of what Love is and how to love her-with patience and dignity. I pray she will find that love herself when she is a mother and feels like she is alone and far from hope.

Aiden. Yes Aiden is a trooper. I believe he can handle his diabetes with such courage and faith unlike any other person I know. I have been through my grieving process. I cried, I got angry, I begged for it to not be true, and now I am in acceptance. Grief is a funny thing. It is something I had to go through and work through but it takes years off your life. I mean it takes to much energy to not just accept it and find a way to cope. Everyone is so different but I was ready to feel like me again and I knew God was saying, “ok child now let me have it back and you can rest”. Letting him go to school the first day was like sending him to college. It was my first real experience letting him go and hoping the world would help him and be kind to him. I had to trust a school nurse could treat him and truthfully not kill him. I had to trust he wouldn’t switch his lunch with another student and eat 2 cupcakes and 3 little debies. I had to trust that his teachers would see signs of him getting sick if his sugar were to go low. I had to really trust God and know I can’t be there every moment and I am really not in control of his life. RIP MY HEART OUT. I mean I knew I would have to face that lesson sometime but really at 6…I thought I had a few years to keep him before I gave him back to God. But I need to take a few moments to praise his school. The nurse has been great and so kind with him and his teachers…where do I begin. I think so highly of both of them-he has 2-and I would not have been able to walk away so calmly had it not been that I knew these two women love these students and Aiden as much as I do and they are just as concerned for him as his mother is (I mean they are so great I have visions of dropping Aiden off and letting Addie sneak in there to and just leaving her till they notice.) So that is where God has worked on my heart. He has reminded me you really need community. No one can do it alone and we weren’t meant to. Aiden has his amazing school, we have family, and friends. And Restoration who has loved my children and treated them as their own. The meals and support they have given is priceless. This is the first time that Anthony and I have had such an amazing church family and people we know love us and our kids.

So Adelaide. She is my stinker. She is so confused and doesn’t know if she loves me or hates me (She only wanted my sister on Monday, called her mommy, and pitched a fit when she couldn’t go home with her. Yes, I have two children that don’t want me as their mother.) But she has so much personality and life in her I know she will be ok. She will be leading this family in a few months. But please keep her in your prayer because she has really become a challenge for me to handle-throwing a lot of fits and crying uncontrollably.

Anthony and I are making it. I know that sounds so half hearted and some people would wish I said we were so happy but those people are fake. There I said it.(Don’t worry I Said I was done blogging and giving it back to my husband who has a lot more tack.) If you think this blog is too depressing then please don’t have children because at some point or anther they will rip your heart out and I just want to be one of many people who talk about it so you don’t feel alone. Also adoption is not for the faint of heart. It is a commandment in scripture so I do encourage you to read about it and make sure you are working to help orphans. But it is hard. The process is horrible, the money is astronomical, and the emotions are hard. BUT I see families who have come out the other side and they look AMAZING. I mean really beautiful and such a wonderful picture of the love of Christ. (Seriously if Angelina and Brad can do it and they look happy then Mia will be just fine.) So we are so much better than a few weeks ago and a few weeks from now we will be even better. We are tired and broken but God has promised not to leave us this way. Can’t we all find joy in that promise?  JOY IN HIS PROMISES.

~ by Anthony Orzo on April 11, 2012.

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