Month: September 2020

intertwined….

You step inside the story and you become intertwined, enfolded, grafted….

Adoption isn’t the simple act of feeding, clothing, and educating a child. Adoption is grafting. It is the grafting of another life into your life, and your lives becoming one together.

Grafting is a farming technique that joins two separate plants into one. A wound is created in one of the plants, and the other is inserted into the wound so each plant’s tissues can grow together. The plants grow and heal together until you cannot see where one starts and the other ends.

This is grafting.

Scripture speaks extensively about grafting. It was a common practice amongst the farmers and growers of Jesus’ time and the spiritual analogy of God grafting us into His family would have been well understood amongst the hand calloused listeners.

Farmers knew that a plant or tree that was grafted meant faster growth, healing, more fruit, but, you see, to be grafted meant that the plant taking the graft had to be wounded and the branch inserted into the wound was broken off from the original plant.

This is a concept that many people struggle with before and after adoption. Adopting a child is glamorized and we all love the golden hour Instagram moments, but the reality of adoption is that there is a wound made within the adopting family to accept the grafted branch. The branch that is received is a broken branch that has been cut off from familial sustenance. The self inflicted wound of the parental grafted plant is not a mortal wound, it’s a necessary wound. It’s necessary that we know it’s coming, recognizing the initial piercing change of it.

It’s an entering into the struggle and story of the child. It is painful, it is hard, it is time, repetition, exhaustion. It is wholly necessary for the grafting process so healing and growth can begin. It is going into adoption with eyes wide open….knowing that this is the reality of the journey.

For me, the wound was the first few weeks home. I was beyond exhausted, not connected yet, my 40 year old body hurt from suddenly carrying a child around. I’d wake up in the morning thinking, “this is what we chose…this is my life now”…and I’d be ashamed of feeling this way.

It’s utterly overwhelming.

Your life is upside down in every way. The wound is made and the graft is inserted. The grafted branch is heavy, painful, not healed, uncomfortable, you’re supplying sustenance, support, and life to this graft and there’s not much to show for it. It’s just plain hard work and mostly not fun. It feels like it’s bleeding you dry, but it’s not.

There’s a reason God chose you to accept this graft. His strength is gifted to you.

Time passes, and you slowly feel your heart wrapping around this small one…..your tissues enfolding the graft…. I remember a moment so vividly. I used to have to bounce Lian at night, holding him until my arms ached and my back groaned, but he craved this human touch. He would pull at my clothes until his cheek would rest on my skin, and as strange as that seemed to have this small stranger desperate for his cheek on me, I realized that, as a baby, he was never nursed…never had that intimate contact with his mother. Never fell asleep on his father’s bare chest. Never listened to a parent’s heartbeat….and so we did that…every night, until my arms shook with strain as I laid him down, heavy with slumber.

And one night, I’m doing the bouncing routine, I was startled to realize that I loved this child. It hit me full force, washing over me like a wave…tears ran down my cheeks onto his, because I didn’t know that you could love another child like your own.

I didn’t know.

I wondered, but I didn’t know. I hadn’t experienced it yet. This grafting process.

And suddenly that little grafted branch isn’t so heavy, and your wound has healed and his little grafted life is starting to bear fruit and leaves and flowers. There are days when you look at him and wonder if you birthed him, you FEEL like you birthed him, like he was always there, and what did you do before him?

You can’t remember.

This entering into the grafting process is the gift. It’s the willingness to be wounded, to recognize the hard, facing it head on, rejoicing in the journey.

It’s such a beautiful reminder of how God has grafted us into eternity with Him.

I pray that I’m always reminded of this through the daily ordinary.

hope deferred…

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12.

I haven’t written in a long while. Not since Ella’s birthday in May. I just haven’t had the heart to write, there is no exciting adoption update or news, just a vast, unending silence punctuated by the disheartening, autumn crow calls of more bad news.

I am Proverbially heartsick. I am watching my child grow up in fought for updates doled out like a slow drip during a desert walk.

And I’m not alone. There are hundreds of parents, families, Mamas, just like me, yearning to bring their little one home. We’ve worked so hard, waited so long….we’ve wept, written, hounded our agencies…..we posted, blogged, prayed some more.

God, how long? Where’s our “tree of life”? Why must our littles languish in cribs and institutions when we are SO WILLING to help.

I think that’s what frustrates me the most. There are people who are bravely willing to help, basically standing there with arms outstretched running to the waiting and we can’t get to the need.

Then, there’s this…..

I am definitely NOT a dreams person. In fact, I are overly critical of people who dream dreams and use them to justify all sorts of unbiblical things….I am of the school of thought that dreams need to be tested against scripture and tested hard.

But how many “coincidences” does a skeptic need? I guess, for me, a plethora.

It goes like this. Late fall of 2015, we had started our adoption journey. We wanted a little girl with minor special needs. Well, God laughed at us and we fell in love with the now-famous Lian. After we had accepted his referral (for you non-adoption people, it’s basically a process where you tell China that you accept this child and then they say, “are you sure” and you’re like “yeah” and so on…all in official paperwork forms accompanied by the familiar fees of consternation, namely because you never have enough money when said fees are due)…but I digress…

We are all formally accepted and “locked in” with Lian. It’s a big relief to know and it’s all “yay” and “wow” and “God is so good”, and so on and so forth.

And then I had this dream, one of those vivid dreams that you wake up with a start and wonder what’s going on. I mean, in the vast majority of my dreams I’m searching for a bathroom, which seems to be my lot in life (shout out to all Mamas who’ve had multiple kids, you are my tribe), but this dream was so incredibly different.

I’m in this vast, cement space, multi-leveled, many rooms and hallways. The floors and ceilings are cement, the walls are cement, there are stairways, ladders, all cement. And I’m searching for a little girl. I know it’s a little girl, I’m certain of it. Very certain. There’s nothing in these spaces except cement and shadowy gray faceless figures. I’m climbing cement ladders, I’m passing these figures and begging them, “please, help me find her, she needs me…” Please.

But the figures are silent and go on about their shadowy business…I’m on my own. I keep seeking and searching, going down stairs, climbing ladders, searching hallways, looking into echoing rooms. A feeling of desperation is taking hold of me. Why can’t I find her? I know she’s there. I feel it in my depths.

I come upon this ledge and start climbing down this cement ladder that is carved into the wall, and at the bottom of the ladder is a pile of bags and cloth. I fall to my hands and knees, desperately shuffling through the bags and cloth, feeling, searching for her and I find her! She’s wrapped in black cloth like a swaddled infant and as I turn her over, her straight black hair falls across her forehead, eyes closed, gray complexion, she’s lifeless.

In my dream, I wail, holding her face to my chest, rocking back and forth…. because I was too late! I failed her. She needed me and I wasn’t there…… I feel her soft cheek against my neck, and she suddenly gasps and cries. I look into her face and watch the rose blush rise into her cheeks, her dark eyes open. She’s alive!

And I startle awake with tears on my face, pounding heart.

The greatest puzzlement at the time was why this dream about a little girl? We are adopting Lian…a little boy…..why would I dream this? I remember the next day I was so overcome by it that when I saw my friends, I told them about the dream and it brought tears to my eyes again…I got choked up.

But we had Lian, he’s not a girl, and so, I just passed it off as some strange dream due to feeling overly emotional about adoption or eating too many chips….I don’t know.

Fast forward years…..to this year. Hands down, one of the hardest years of my life….we were supposed to travel to get Ella last December….then paperwork delays….it’s February….then COVID…and NOTHING…nothing but endless sighs, that sharp internal heart clench, deep breaths for more bad news.

We can’t go….there’s no end in sight. She’s a plane flight away, seemingly so easy and yet so impossible.

And I’m questioning God and questioning Him hard. I’m praying, I’m doubting….I’m quiet, I’m mad, I’m accepting, I’m raging. I’m all of it. (not all in the same day, mind you, that would be a lot)

One morning, in the fuzzy minutes between wakefulness and slumber this dream that I had years ago, popped into my head….this 2015 pre-adoption dream! So vividly. As if I had just had it.

Suddenly all the pieces fell into place….the search, the unhelpful gray people, the frustration, the hopelessness of it all….but I found her. I didn’t stop looking, regardless of how many cement ladders, hallways and rooms I had to traverse.

I know why I had that dream. I know why God brought it my remembrance so suddenly. Because I was doubting this journey. Wondering if God was closing doors. Wondering if it was all going to work out.

So, there’s my silence in a nutshell. This internal raging battle for this child that I love so dearly and want so desperately to be here in my arms.

There will be great rejoicing when this little one comes home.

And so it goes.