I am not okay.  My breaths feel shallow and my chest feels tight.  My legs feel heavy and my brain feels sluggish.  Our son gets in a car with a stranger and drives off to spend the day with his dad.  And I hear nothing and I wonder.  I catch myself listening for his babbling and crawling only to remember that he is not home.  And then my heart trips over the word 'home' yet again and I wonder where these next months will take him, will take us.  This road of letting go, of letting grief wash over me, as hope builds for the rejoining of the family that should be.... this is the road I know I need to walk for our son.  This is the road of healing and there will be much joy.  This is a slow, painful, necessary road, but I am not okay. 

A Recipe

When your decide to be permanently hospitable in your most precious circle: your family...

A Recipe for Redefining Family

1 dose of pride and self-righteousness (this is for throwing out the window right off the hop)

2 spouses on the same page (because it's a bumpy page any other way is a terrible idea)

3 stages of paperwork, classes, and invasions of privacy (also known as a home study)

4 a moment you wonder if you are crazy and then suddenly you have a son/daughter

5 days and nights of sleeplessness, drowning, praying, and general overwhelmedness (actual amount of days may vary)

6 months of deliberate, conscious actions, touches, words, prayers, and effort to start to connect heats with a stranger who is looking to you to fill every need but would rather not even look at you)

7 twists and turns and heart-plummets as you fall in love with your child and the broken, hurting people who are the other parents of your baby (again, the amount is approximate and can often exceed all expectations)

8 everything that is chocolate; and then ate everything that is salty

9 million ways your heart is breaking but that one little smiling face is worth every one of them (even when tantruming, go figure)

pre10d you're a normal family it's all no big deal because it's way too much to process and talk about on a daily basis - besides, the case worker is calling

11, one more than a nice round 10, because once you've let yourself go to this place of redefining family (and thinking you were in control of the definition), it seems God likes to take it a step further, or a van size bigger.  Do they make bunkbed cribs?  Just kidding.  Mostly.  

breath

My eyes open and I worry that I'm already behind.  She screamed so long and hard it feels like I just fell asleep.  The glowing numbers of the clock come into focus and I breathe out a thank you God that I'm a morning person.  I uncurl, stretch, and make my way to the bathroom.  As I get dressed I'm reciting the things that need to happen before 8:35.  I got this.  Probably. 

Too early, One comes up for a cuddle, anxious as always on a Monday morning.  With an eye out the window for the neighbour kids who need us for five more mornings, I fill cereal bowls and smile as I remember our family win of a skating outing yesterday.  These months have been hard.  Hella hard at times.  Inviting little ones and their accompanying brokenness into our home, into our family, into our hearts.  It is heavy.  It pervades and permeates and doesn't ask permission to hang its darkness over our days.  But, is it just me, or is He deepening my perception of His beauty in this mess?  I smile at the kooky picture of the seven of us, Five's helmet-ed head peaking out from behind me, as we skate on the river. 

My smile falls as I hear the tell-tale sound of One bouncing a ball against the wall in his room.  Sure enough, he woke Two.  I stop him before they all wake like dominos.  Neighbours arrive and the morning is off and I wonder what I will behold today. 

In pockets of peace I remember to breathe.  This Almighty-breath gives life, slows the fickle worried heart so it can truly see.  This circus that makes me crazy?  I love it.  I love them.  I struggle with how much more He might ask of me.  Inside my family or outside.  It's scary to dwell on and I wonder why.  Many days I feel I have nothing selfish left in me, but oh Lord I am so wrong.  I have given, twice.  Poured out in big-enough ways, I tell myself.  Months and months in I am finally seeing how He is working, weaving, winning at the important things in me, in my littles, in those who find themselves inside our spheres.  Dare I say, He is glorying in letting me behold glimpses of the fullness of His radiance.  Where I swear it wasn't before.  Where I wouldn't have thought it could ever be.  Beholding His beauty, pressing on to acknowledge His Emmanuel presence - not only inspite of the painful brokenness, but also right smack dab in those tear-stained, unlikely-to-be-glorious, caught-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place, down-on-my-knees-wondering-where-this-is-going messes.   He is not afraid of messy and His breath gives me life.

The Other Shoe

For months I've wondered and prayed, wishing everyday for the fog of uncertainty to be lifted away.  This would be so much more manageable, I think, if only I was more knowledgeable about the longterm.  If the plan were tangible, my emotions would surely be balanceable.  But who am I kidding.  Now that they've said the words out loud - just the possibility that she will be leaving - and the futility of trying to keep a steady heartbeat is laughable.  In all probability, this move is her best imaginable, and so I can hold no hostility, besides there won't be capacity when the she moves out and the grieving moves in.  Just as my heart keeps tripping over itself, my stomach is flipping over itself.  I will spend these unremitting days chipping away absentheartedly at the daily, knowing the other shoe is about to fall squarely on the most vulnerable part of my soul.  Because there is no loophole to this loving business.  When she goes, her being gone is only the tip of the iceberg.  There will be the weight of the grief strapped to my chest where I carried her, the dimness of the room that isn't being lit by her smile, the doorway glaringly empty with no one to bounce the Jolly Jumper.  And instead of it feeling emptier, my home and my heart will feel heavy with her tangible absence.  Now I wonder at my ability to give up comfortable.  How many times is the unimaginable loving and losing a child navigable?

Adoption

My caseworker sits down beside me on the couch and I never know where in the world the meeting is going to go.  Today's agenda is Pip and longterm plans - but I never know this until she pulls her haphazard binder from her overstuffed bag.

It seems that everyone who matters is fairly certain that Pip will not be going back to her parents.  And given the last year, that seems reasonable to assume.  Reasonable, at least, to a reasonable outsider.  Slightly less reasonable to me who has seen who wonky and illogical and mysterious and messed-up the system is.  But in any case, that is what we are supposed to be planning and preparing for.

So she hands me a phone number and says I am supposed to call the adoption intake worker.  I will have to ask for adoption paperwork which we need to fill out as soon as possible.  Then we will be put on a list to attend adoption classes and eventually have our home study completed.  Ya know, again.  Because that makes a lot of sense.

But the thing is, my caseworker can't answer the important questions.  What if the case doesn't go the way everyone thinks it will?  What if Pip goes back to mom and dad?  What if she goes to another family?  How do I fill out stacks of paperwork, attend training, prepare for her to be mine forever and still protect my heart in case it all takes a different direction?  How do I trust in the face of so much uncertainty?  How do I love and not lose my mind?

She screams and thrashes in her sleep at the obnoxious time of just-as-I’m-slipping-blissfully-out-of-consciousness-myself.  Eyes closed, she kicks the side of the crib, tormented.  My words do nothing to soothe her, my gentle touch just makes her writhe that much more.  So I pull her out of bed, change the scenery, distract her with a cup of milk.  She studies my face while seems to wonder what we are doing awake in the dark of night - as do I.  Minutes later her head burrows into my chest and her weight sinks into me with trust and sleepiness.  I would breathe in the smell of her, if her frizzy curls weren’t already tickling my nose.  And I am honoured to be the one holding her in as many of these moments as she needs.

Two Daughters

The cry that gets me up of the couch turns out to just be a whimper in her sleep.  I've gotten off the couch an hour into the coveted quiet of evening and tiptoed into the girls' room for nothing.  But it must be one of the very best nothings I have ever been privileged to take in.  One sleeps on her back, arms above her head and lips still parted from where the soother was released in slumber.  I smile at her peaceful perfection in the center of the white crib before turning around.  My gaze searches for the other, pushed up into the corner of her matching crib, bum in the air, blankets gathered and clutched beneath her, curls splayed in the halo of sleep.  I have two daughters.  The words still seems surreal.  I have been entrusted with these two precious, beautiful, valuable, delightful, inherently lovable souls.  May His grace fill me with wisdom and patience and strength.  May His grace overflow to them, for I know I will not ever be enough.

Papa, your grace changes diapers and paces with discontent babies.  It comforts a whimpering toddler and patiently remains present to a tantruming one.  It does laundry incessantly and prepares food ongoingly.  It makes bottles and restocks diaper bags.  It hugs and kisses.  It reads and explores and crafts.  It answers questions and finds missing shoes.  It makes soccer snack and refills water bottles.  It tucks in and tucks in again.  It isn't flowery or obscure or lofty.  It is alive and active, living and loving and mighty.  It is present and it is enough.  Enough for me, and enough for these five littles.

Heart Transplant

Every moment of anguish vacuums the joy out of the corners of my heart. Tears come or worse, they don't.  Pain gets deeper, breaths get shallower and I wish I had the words.  Any words, dammit.  

It feels empty.  But it isn't, is it?  My grief is not the absence of joy, it is the overwhelming loss of it.  The greater the joy was at the one end of the spectrum, the more encompassing the sorrow is at this end.  I want to wish away the pain, but I fear it would take with it the memories.  Maybe I can't live without either.  Because what-was was wonderful and what-is has to be.  

Truth be told, this isn't the first time I have wondered at His goodness.  Not the first time I have doubted His ways.  I didn't like it last time either or the time before, but oh my soul, did it tangle me up in my Father's love.  

Driven to my knees, sure that this time it was too much.  This time I might not see His glory again, His grace again.  How I long to be proven wrong by His faithfulness, because this time the only thing worse than being wrong is being right.  

It is hard.  Too hard, in fact.  But it is not over.  I refuse to believe this is the one situation He cannot redeem, that this is the one where He washes His hands of me and says 'you're on your own.'  

Most days I beg Him to take this burden from me.  To give me His yoke that is easy and His burden that is light.  Yet I know, in my heart of hearts, that He lets nothing go to waste in the shaping and perfecting of my faith.  I know because of the whispers.  Somedays I barely catch them as they float by on the rhythms of Your glory.  Somedays they arrest me in Your presence and I am known.  

The whispers find the cracks.  Lord, they pour and trickle and puddle in all the right corners of my heart.  And I know that this sorrow today, this is yet another fissure into which You spill Your whispers.  I know it even as I see that my words have morphed into whispers back to You.  

I don't want a heart transplant, I want to see what You do with this one You're cupping in Your hands.  

Goodness

I follow three bouncing flashlight beams through the woods and I soak in this gift, consciously breathing in the tingly refreshment and calling it His goodness.

I lean back on the strong chest of the one who has chosen me and we swing, giggling that what is supposed to be fun just makes us feel dizzy and old - and it is good.

Was it only a few weeks ago that I struggled to sing the truths of His goodness, because my tears belied my words?  Stepping into yet another Sunday, both yearning for and dreading what was ahead.  The power in proclaiming things I knew to be true but that did not feel to be true, melting me into a messy puddle - again.

As I walk the sidewalks to school and the hallways of home, I breathe out His words and find I am breathing in His presence.  In time with my feet, my lips quietly recite God whose thoughts are higher than mine, God whose ways are higher than mine, God whose desires are higher than mine, God whose plans are higher, God whose love is greater, God whose grace is greater, God whose joy is greater, God whose goodness is greater.  The power in proclaiming things I know to be true making a crack for the God of those truths to settle a little deeper into my hesitant heart.

Between straining my eyes to make out the edges of His goodness and practicing praise despite my skewed perceptions, I discover that He has let me ease my way back into believing that He is not just good, but also good to me.  

I thank my Father that there are moments of overlap, in which what I know to be true also feels true.  I thank Him that His goodness also feels good today.

And I thank Him that He doesn't leave me there.  Even as those moments of overlap become more frequent, I feel Him reminding me that He isn't finished.  He has broken my heart for what breaks His and even as He heals it, He weaves into it the thread of His goodness that needs to be shared - again.

A Week Without

Day One: Her mom's joy and her dad's pride are enough to carry me through this weirdly anticlimactic day I've been dreading and waiting for for months.  I am not her momma anymore.

Day Two: Texts from her new home fill some of the emptiness in my heart.  As do the countless expressions of support and prayer from family and the reminder of the Truth on which I stand.  I am not alone anymore.

Day Three: The missing grips me and I bury my head in another novel; maybe someone else's story will hurt less than mine today.  I am not strong anymore.

Day Four: I know that only time can heal, but time is not cooperating.  It crawls lazily and nothing I do succeeds in hurrying it along.  I kick it once more anyway, because I have to try.  I am not gracious anymore.

Day Five: It aches below my ribcage but above my stomach.  How does it feel like both a mass and a vacuum all at once?  I am not whole anymore.

Day Six: I slow myself down on the outside, trying to live in each moment.  Maybe if I soak in the goodness of the precious ones around me, I won't dwell on the one who is no longer mine to hold.  It almost works.  I am not calm anymore.

Day Seven: Is it a bit better today or is it just the chocolate talking?  Either way, distractions start to distract and joys start to bring joy.  I am not absorbed anymore.

First Birthday

It's too bad I'm ready, because when I was up to my eyeballs in scrubbing toilets, doing dishes, and sweeping floors, I was just busily preparing for my baby's first birthday party.  Now the house is neat and tidy and my heart has time to unravel into a selfish mess.  Every milestone is a reminder of the ones I will never see.  Every smile a countdown to the last.  This celebration just points to all the years of parties I will never be invited to.  Because I can love her like she's mine, but she's firstly someone else's.  It's not us or them.  It's them and then, if need be, us.  This daily lesson in being second is more like having my heart trampled on than I would like to admit.  And it colours every moment, making it more difficult and more necessary than ever to behold His glory.

Fraction

If I carry just a fraction of your grief today and you carry just a fraction of mine, perhaps our loads will be just a bit lighter.  And if not lighter, at least they are a different shape for a few hours.  So yes, tell me about your mother's alcoholism, your debilitating depression, your son's classmate's leukaemia, and the nine years it has been since your daughter was stillborn.  I will hold your hands and your grief.  You will hold mine and we will all pray for something outside of the normal loop we are stuck in.  We may not feel stronger because we have loved and lost, but we are more gentle, more kind, more empathetic, more aware, more open, and most definitely not alone.

Not Consumed

It is because of the Lord's great love that I am not consumed for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness.  

I am going to be okay.  And, in fact, here and there, I am already okay.  His love is good and his compassion is faithful and I am His.  

Surviving

I don't know how well I am surviving.  I don't know what to say or write or how to answer everybody who cares.  It's hard.  I cry.  Regularly.  I get mad at myself because I can feel that my brain is computing slower and I am unable to remember what we have up tomorrow or the day after.  Some days it doesn't feel like I am drowning and I almost turn down the friend who offers to bring supper.  Thank goodness I am lazy and say yes anyway, because a few hours later I am undone again.  

I am frustrated that so many parts of the system and process seem really dumb and illogical and sloth-like and inconsiderate.  I wish I could actually do something.  And then a few minutes later I am so glad that I can't.  Because I truly have no idea what the right decision is for Little Pip.  And being in perpetual limbo feels like nobody knows what the right decision is.  All I know is that the whole damn thing hurts so much.  

My heart is sad and sometimes it comes out as angry.  At everybody whose fault it isn't.  And then also at God.  When I finally have peace and quiet that lasts more than ten minutes my soul tries to pray, only to find itself instantly overwhelmed and desperately looking for something or someone to distract it from the pain.  What is remarkable to me, is that by grace greater than I can fathom, the same heart that sinks further into grief with each passing week, still desperately listens for the captivating melody of glory that weaves patterns of joy and grace into even these murky depths.  And so I guess it is by that divine hope that I am surviving.  

Impossibly Slow

My heart decelerates to an impossibly slow rate, each beat exaggeratedly dragging on and allowing my mind far too much time for far too many thoughts.  The first isn't even fully formed before the second knocks it down and the third clambers desperately over them both.  My head is working out the completely irrelevant logistics of what clothes to pack, what toys to send, and how the move-out date fits into our schedule, so that it doesn't have to focus on how exactly I will hand one of my own over to her own and walk away.  The incurably long lulls between each protracted, plodding pulse move time in the most twisted of slo-motion movies.  I watch myself read and reread the email and marvel that I am not crying, not shaking, not panicking.  You can do this, I tell myself.  I hear myself saying that I'm so glad the agency has no absolutes; so glad everything is case-by-case.  A few short months ago, on paper and by the numbers, this was never 'supposed' to end this way.  But how great for H that she has earned the right to parent.  How wonderful for Little Pip to be able to be back with her mom, her dad, her brother, her grandparents, her heritage, her family, her home.  There are more words coming out of my mouth about the wisdom of the powers that be and of the One to Whom Power Belongs.  But the thought that clambers desperately over all the others, is the one I cannot say aloud: I love her deeply and I don't know that I can want what's best for her more than I want what's best for me.  Tonight my grief outweighs her joy.  May she forgive my selfish soul.

Court Day

Does the alarm wake her from an exhausted, fitful sleep or was she up all night worrying and working through scenario after scenario in which she has no say?

Does the water of the shower washing over her shoulders do anything to ease the anger at those who have taken her baby away?  Or does it multiply the tears of anguish as she looks back and wonders how her life has come to this?

What does she make herself for breakfast on the day she fights to get you back - and can she even eat a bite of it?

What shoes does she choose to walk up the steps and stand in front of the one who will decide whether she is fit to parent or not?

Does she get to court an hour early to make sure she doesn't miss one single moment or does she slip in just before the buzzer to avoid an extra second of scrutiny?

Does someone walk with her and hold her hand in support or does she bravely go it alone?  Does she have your picture in her wallet, on her phone, in her mind?

Has she bought you an adorable, cozy blanket, in hopes that you will come home with her?  Are there toys and stuffed animals waiting in a box that she can't bear to open yet?

Does she think back to the moment she first held you?  Pink, wet, new, perfect?  Can she cling also to the smiles and cuddles of the last months, even if they were all contained to a few hours per week within the same four walls?

Does she cry in front of everyone or wait until she's alone?

Grief

It sweeps over me in the oddest of places and I wonder what they think of the lady with the stroller, crying in the line for pancakes.  It's awkward and inconsiderate in its timing and refuses to be contained to the corners of my day and my life in which is would be more appropriate or at least less inconvenient.  But please don't try to take this grief from me.  Sure, it hinders my joy.  Certainly, it dampens my carefree spirit.  But, oh, does it shield me from arrogance and ignorance!  It shapes my words with gentleness and opens my eyes with empathy.  It makes my soul bleed compassion and acceptance.  I know it makes you uncomfortable that I can't talk about this without tearing up, but please please don't take this grief from me.  It is what I need to be what she needs.

Catch-22

The trick about it all, is that I need to love you as my child, which doesn't sound that tricky.  But loving you as my child means that I can't imagine a day without you, while I work towards a life without you.  Because they say what's best for you is to learn to love and trust me for now, so that you can learn to love and trust your mom and dad forever, when they are ready.  And this all sounds very reasonable until that moment when I do love you and I realize that I am hoping and praying and working towards something that will break my heart into a million pieces.  Because, Lord help me, I love you as my child.

Beauty for Ashes

Peace snuck up on me as She snuggled in for her bottle and The Three lounged around us on the couch in various stages of planes/rockets/landing pads construction.  You said, "See?  See how full your heart can be?  This is of me."  And from the seed of peace was born a fragile sprout of joy.

My heart wavers, but my feet stand solidly upon this confession: You bestow a crown of beauty for these ashes, joy for this mourning, and praise for this despair.  You are Redeemer and this grief is not the one grief you cannot redeem.

I will not be shaken.  May my heart join me up here on this Rock so that we may sing for joy.