The start of a new year is always cause for reflection of the past and hopeful anticipation of the future. 2016 was by far the hardest year our little family has ever faced and we are eagerly stepping into the new year and fresh beginnings!
We kicked off the new year with a much-needed checkup for Little Man. In November, we ran some tests and all 3 came back either positive for infection or concerning in some way. One we discovered was a tummy problem that he contracted in the orphanage that causes a lot of pain and difficulty eating. A few days into treatment, he had a pretty significant allergic reaction to one of the medications, so we had to continue treating without that one specific medicine. We just retested this week and are hopeful that the problem has been fixed, even without finishing that medicine. We also ran labs this week to retest "odd" lab result #2, and test result #3 requires a trip to a new specialist a few hours away. So whew! We are starting out with a bang! In addition to that, we are working closely with our pediatrician and other specialists that will hopefully be able to give us some answers about behaviors and struggles that we should have seen more progress on by this amount of time home.
It seems that since Little Man has been home, we cycle through seasons of many, many appointments, new diagnoses, and therapies, and then a short time of adjusting to those changes before discovering new things that must be tackled. A few days ago, I ran a mental list of new diagnoses that we have discovered in the two years Little Man has been home, and frankly, I lost count (or quite possibly fell asleep- that's life with a baby for ya!). The thing about adding a child to your family, whether biological or adopted, is that you never really know what you are going to get! I've heard people say that adoption is a "safer" bet, because you sign papers when you already have diagnoses confirmed, but that's crazy talk to me. I know very few adoptive parents who have not added to the list of needs after their kiddos came home. A hard, traumatic life before a permanent family is considered a significant special need in and of itself.
I often think of a book that several of my friends worked through a few months ago. I am blessed to have friends who also call themselves "moms of kids with special needs," and while all of our kids struggle with vastly different things, we all understand each other on this path that "typical" parents never have to set foot on. The book is called Get Your Joy Back by Laurie Wallin. The title is not meant to imply that special needs parents have no joy, (in fact, the opposite is often the case!), but rather that we are constantly somewhere in the stages of grief. For special needs parents, just when you begin to make peace with something, a new diagnoses or disability may pop up. It isn't just the days that we get a new, scary diagnosis, I've found that I can be blindsided by the sting of grief when I see a "typical" child do routine things during the day that my son cannot. The world, while uniquely beautiful to special needs parents, can be an unending reminder of how different your child's life is. I highly recommend this book for any mom or dad who has a child with extra needs- whether adopted or biological- as it deals with topics such as finding time for yourself, your spouse, dealing with professionals, and a host of other practical things.
One thing that she says in the very beginning is,
"Aging happens as our DNA, the delicate molecular template for life in all our cells, begins to unravel. We all have special structures called telomeres that cap the ends of our DNA strands, stunting the aging (unraveling) process. Unfortunately, stress causes these protective caps to shrink and wear out. In other words, we are actually aging faster than we would have without the chronic, unrelenting pressures of caregiving. Great news, right? In a recent documentary, USCF researcher Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn reported that the length (and thus protective nature) of telomeres is much shorter for parents in our situation. Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky added that for every year of chronological age, special needs moms experienced roughly six years of cellular aging."
*Insert shocked emoji* Except not really. Frequent doses of chocolate chips literally kept me awake and functioning today. The amount of wrinkle cream I could go through in a month also speaks to this truth.
So this year, this month even, we begin taking more steps in piecing back together the little boy sitting in our living room right now. He's cuddled up with a pillow as I type, but when my gaze crosses over him, I can see flashbacks of all the pain he has endured. I hear his screams and see his sheer terror as he left the orphanage, the rages, the medical procedures, the sobbing as he recounts his perspective of his story, my own frustration when his behavior is erratic and uncontrollable and so much more. On better days, I can see what was once the shell of a boy, slowly filling with love and peace and life.
Another adoptive mom posted this song a few weeks ago as her family prepares to rescue yet another child hurt by trauma and I haven't been able to get the lyrics out of my head since then. You can listen to it here: Take Back.
The lyrics touch almost every aspect of adoption- the experience we have lived and the journeys we see others embark upon.
We're gonna take back
All the enemy has stolenI think of the things Little Man has endured. Many things were unable to be controlled. In the womb, physical disabilities formed. Because we live in a fallen world, sickness and disabilities are possibilities. But there are things that have happened in his short life that he has been robbed of since his birth. Because we live in a fallen world, sometimes first families aren't permanent. Sometimes kids endure horrific surgeries and recover all alone. Sometimes kids don't have enough food. Sometimes grownups are cruel. Sometimes the horror of our fallen world is too difficult for a young mind to overcome. Sometimes orphanages are overflowing with precious, innocent children whose joints harden in contorted positions, and bodies and minds waste away from lack of nourishment and love.
It's in the blood
Of the One Who's worthy
I know God has not forgotten
All that's lost and broken
So, come and see the turning of the times
When I look at Little Man, I see him and our struggles, but I also see the millions that he represents. The millions still waiting. Waiting and dying. But I know God has not forgotten / All that's lost and Broken / So, come and see the turning of the times.Daily I am filled with hope as I read of families- everyday, ordinary families, just like mine and just like yours- who are stepping, with weak, shaky steps, then with solid paces, then breaking into sprints, racing to these kids. I see the pictures and videos of the broken bodies and traumatized minds as they are carried out of these places. Parents whose arms are strong and sure, and whose faces are set like stone as they walk down orphanage steps to bring their children to a future and a hope. And I see these same parents come home, and do the unimaginably hard work of gluing pieces back together, before doing the unthinkable. Going back for more.
We're gonna plunder the pits of hell
We're gonna plunder the pits of hellI listened to this song a few days ago while I did the dishes, tears rolling down my cheeks. It struck such a chord with me- the rally cry of adoptive moms and dads who have struggles far greater than my own, laying down their own lives to ransom those of the forgotten. And the little boy who was under the same roof as me, napping in his room that day. Safe and full, albeit probably getting into some mischief during that "nap," but loved and known nonetheless. Little Man was fortunate that his orphanage was not as bone-chilling as some of the others I have learned about, but I will never be able to call an orphanage good. To that point, Baby Sister who is currently 9 months old, weighs the exact same that Little Man did when he left the orphanage at 3 years old. I am humbled at the resolve of these parents who are in the process of literally pulling their children out of the pit, and pray for endurance for those of us whose children's minds try to take them back and ensnare them in that pit they left long ago. They are truly plundering the pits of hell, wrestling from the enemy all that has been stolen.
We kicked off the new year with a much-needed checkup for Little Man. In November, we ran some tests and all 3 came back either positive for infection or concerning in some way. One we discovered was a tummy problem that he contracted in the orphanage that causes a lot of pain and difficulty eating. A few days into treatment, he had a pretty significant allergic reaction to one of the medications, so we had to continue treating without that one specific medicine. We just retested this week and are hopeful that the problem has been fixed, even without finishing that medicine. We also ran labs this week to retest "odd" lab result #2, and test result #3 requires a trip to a new specialist a few hours away. So whew! We are starting out with a bang! In addition to that, we are working closely with our pediatrician and other specialists that will hopefully be able to give us some answers about behaviors and struggles that we should have seen more progress on by this amount of time home.
It seems that since Little Man has been home, we cycle through seasons of many, many appointments, new diagnoses, and therapies, and then a short time of adjusting to those changes before discovering new things that must be tackled. A few days ago, I ran a mental list of new diagnoses that we have discovered in the two years Little Man has been home, and frankly, I lost count (or quite possibly fell asleep- that's life with a baby for ya!). The thing about adding a child to your family, whether biological or adopted, is that you never really know what you are going to get! I've heard people say that adoption is a "safer" bet, because you sign papers when you already have diagnoses confirmed, but that's crazy talk to me. I know very few adoptive parents who have not added to the list of needs after their kiddos came home. A hard, traumatic life before a permanent family is considered a significant special need in and of itself.
I often think of a book that several of my friends worked through a few months ago. I am blessed to have friends who also call themselves "moms of kids with special needs," and while all of our kids struggle with vastly different things, we all understand each other on this path that "typical" parents never have to set foot on. The book is called Get Your Joy Back by Laurie Wallin. The title is not meant to imply that special needs parents have no joy, (in fact, the opposite is often the case!), but rather that we are constantly somewhere in the stages of grief. For special needs parents, just when you begin to make peace with something, a new diagnoses or disability may pop up. It isn't just the days that we get a new, scary diagnosis, I've found that I can be blindsided by the sting of grief when I see a "typical" child do routine things during the day that my son cannot. The world, while uniquely beautiful to special needs parents, can be an unending reminder of how different your child's life is. I highly recommend this book for any mom or dad who has a child with extra needs- whether adopted or biological- as it deals with topics such as finding time for yourself, your spouse, dealing with professionals, and a host of other practical things.
One thing that she says in the very beginning is,
"Aging happens as our DNA, the delicate molecular template for life in all our cells, begins to unravel. We all have special structures called telomeres that cap the ends of our DNA strands, stunting the aging (unraveling) process. Unfortunately, stress causes these protective caps to shrink and wear out. In other words, we are actually aging faster than we would have without the chronic, unrelenting pressures of caregiving. Great news, right? In a recent documentary, USCF researcher Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn reported that the length (and thus protective nature) of telomeres is much shorter for parents in our situation. Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky added that for every year of chronological age, special needs moms experienced roughly six years of cellular aging."
*Insert shocked emoji* Except not really. Frequent doses of chocolate chips literally kept me awake and functioning today. The amount of wrinkle cream I could go through in a month also speaks to this truth.
So this year, this month even, we begin taking more steps in piecing back together the little boy sitting in our living room right now. He's cuddled up with a pillow as I type, but when my gaze crosses over him, I can see flashbacks of all the pain he has endured. I hear his screams and see his sheer terror as he left the orphanage, the rages, the medical procedures, the sobbing as he recounts his perspective of his story, my own frustration when his behavior is erratic and uncontrollable and so much more. On better days, I can see what was once the shell of a boy, slowly filling with love and peace and life.
Another adoptive mom posted this song a few weeks ago as her family prepares to rescue yet another child hurt by trauma and I haven't been able to get the lyrics out of my head since then. You can listen to it here: Take Back.
The lyrics touch almost every aspect of adoption- the experience we have lived and the journeys we see others embark upon.
We're gonna take back
All the enemy has stolenI think of the things Little Man has endured. Many things were unable to be controlled. In the womb, physical disabilities formed. Because we live in a fallen world, sickness and disabilities are possibilities. But there are things that have happened in his short life that he has been robbed of since his birth. Because we live in a fallen world, sometimes first families aren't permanent. Sometimes kids endure horrific surgeries and recover all alone. Sometimes kids don't have enough food. Sometimes grownups are cruel. Sometimes the horror of our fallen world is too difficult for a young mind to overcome. Sometimes orphanages are overflowing with precious, innocent children whose joints harden in contorted positions, and bodies and minds waste away from lack of nourishment and love.
It's in the blood
Of the One Who's worthy
I know God has not forgotten
All that's lost and broken
So, come and see the turning of the times
When I look at Little Man, I see him and our struggles, but I also see the millions that he represents. The millions still waiting. Waiting and dying. But I know God has not forgotten / All that's lost and Broken / So, come and see the turning of the times.Daily I am filled with hope as I read of families- everyday, ordinary families, just like mine and just like yours- who are stepping, with weak, shaky steps, then with solid paces, then breaking into sprints, racing to these kids. I see the pictures and videos of the broken bodies and traumatized minds as they are carried out of these places. Parents whose arms are strong and sure, and whose faces are set like stone as they walk down orphanage steps to bring their children to a future and a hope. And I see these same parents come home, and do the unimaginably hard work of gluing pieces back together, before doing the unthinkable. Going back for more.
We're gonna plunder the pits of hell
We're gonna plunder the pits of hellI listened to this song a few days ago while I did the dishes, tears rolling down my cheeks. It struck such a chord with me- the rally cry of adoptive moms and dads who have struggles far greater than my own, laying down their own lives to ransom those of the forgotten. And the little boy who was under the same roof as me, napping in his room that day. Safe and full, albeit probably getting into some mischief during that "nap," but loved and known nonetheless. Little Man was fortunate that his orphanage was not as bone-chilling as some of the others I have learned about, but I will never be able to call an orphanage good. To that point, Baby Sister who is currently 9 months old, weighs the exact same that Little Man did when he left the orphanage at 3 years old. I am humbled at the resolve of these parents who are in the process of literally pulling their children out of the pit, and pray for endurance for those of us whose children's minds try to take them back and ensnare them in that pit they left long ago. They are truly plundering the pits of hell, wrestling from the enemy all that has been stolen.
And so we put behind us a difficult year, while straining toward a year that will bring both joy and challenges of its own. There will be more uncharted waters. More diagnoses and treatments, specialists and difficulties. But this year, we also resolve to take back more of what the enemy has stolen. There will be unmeasurable giggles, ice cream cones, Sunday night dinners, academic progress, playful games of tossing socks at each other on the living room rug, uncountable hugs and kisses, renewed strength, and medical marvels. We look forward to many happy moments while also realizing that there is much work to be done. Work that is a bit scary for us. You see, taking back a childhood from the enemy is tedious, exhausting work. It drains everything out of a parent, and is never far from our minds, even in the easy moments. In taking back, there will be tears, exhaustion, temptation to throw in the towel.
But most importantly, in taking back what has been lost,
There will be joy.
