Adoption (part 2)

 A lot of the specifics of our family's adoption experience are to private to share here, but some are an open book. The short end of it is that the situation with the biological family was not anything like what we were told in the beginning. We trusted the bio mama. As I told in Part 1, we tried to help her keep her kids and make a life for all of them together. She was not interested. Yet we still trusted what she said about the bio father and extended family members...until we started to learn differently. Mason and Brenton struggled with nightmares for the first couple of months. They had grown accustomed to having medication (either Melatonin or cough syrup/cold medicine) to fall asleep, so nights were a little rough for a while. At 9 and 10 1/2 years old, neither had ever been to school, and lacked the skills usually assessed for kindergarten readiness. They couldn't tie their shoes. They struggled to pay attention to anything that wasn't electronic entertainment, meal times were loud and dramatic because they hated everything I made. Lying was a major problem...at least for one of them. Even if I saw him with my own eyes and heard him with my own ears, even if I had VIDEO of him...he'd still deny any wrong doing. No amount of evidence mattered, because he could not admit it. 

A couple of weeks after their arrival, I asked Brenton, who was seemingly having the harder time with the transition and was the pickier eater, what his favorite foods were so that I could try to make some of them. Meal times were rough for him because he hated everything and gagged on it. He said he liked rice bowls with black beans and cheese. So I made a big pot of rice, another big pot of black beans, some taco meat, and set out cheese, shredded lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and some avocado...thinking everyone could build their own bowl. Well, he took one look at the beans and screamed, "THOSE ARE THE WRONG ONES! I HATE THOSE BEANS! I HATE EVERYTHING HERE!!!" Scott was nearby, and suggested that maybe he could build his bowl with other things that he did like. (The other kids just stared because I don't think they'd ever heard any child talk to me that way.) He agreed. And Scott said there would be dessert for anyone who finished their food. But then he gagged on it and sat through the rest of dinner, sulking. After coaxing and even trying to get him to just take a couple of bites so he could still have dessert (a negotiating tactic we'd never employed with our other children), Brenton still refused...so the only thing we could really do was excuse him from the table without dessert. He lost it and muttered that he hated everything here and hated us and then stomped upstairs. 

I know it wasn't personal...I knew it then. But I'd tried specially to make something he'd enjoy and utterly failed, and his words just pierced. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and I just broke. I quietly gathered my dishes and the others closest to me from the table and busied myself in the kitchen while tears just silently dropped out of my eyeballs. Scott came in to offer some comfort, and I just cried on his shoulder. When I opened my eyes, I saw Brenton watching us and then quietly slip into the other room. So I dried my eyes as well as I could, and turned back around. Scott went back to the other kids in the dining room. 

After a minute or so, Brenton crept over beside me at the sink and said quietly, "I didn't mean it. I don't actually hate it here." I reached over and gave him a little side hug and said, "It's okay, honey. This is a hard thing. We'll figure it out together." He picked up the dish towel, dried dishes for me without a word until the other kids were done eating; then they all went outside. 

But that was a huge turning point! Things were different after that between me and Brenton, and he has never let on about hating a meal since then...even though I KNOW there have been some he really didn't care for! He's learned to try a lot of new foods, and he's discovered a lot of new things he likes. And he beams when he's praised for making healthy choices even when junky ones are available to him. 

Both boys weathered so, so much over that next year. I realized after a few weeks that I was over my head with how to get them remotely caught up on school. I was homeschooling Julia at the time, but it wasn't as though I could spend a year on each grade level with them. And how could we afford curriculum for multiple years? I reached out to our elementary school for help, and I'm not exaggerating when I say a whole community of help emerged! I continued to primarily keep them at home until August 2021, but the school kept me supplied with materials, game ideas, and support. In the meantime, we also taught them skills they'd missed along the way...basic chores, personal hygiene and care, tying their shoes. They learned how to fish in our backyard pond, we got cavities taken care of at the dentist, and began to figure out the extent of what was going on with Mason's arm. 

When we met the boys, he could not lift or move his left arm from the shoulder...at all. It caused him a great deal of pain, even if someone accidentally just bumped him. It was one more thing in the long list that had been overlooked or minimized by bio mom. After surgery, a bone graft, and now a year and a half (and counting) of intensive physical therapy, he now has nearly full range of motion and comparable strength to his other arm! All of that was a LOT of additional trauma for him (and honestly, for the rest of us too), but he is doing SO much better. 

We've been able to build relationships with some biological family members who genuinely love and care about the kids and are willing to place their well-being as a top priority. We've sadly had to end contact with other family members because they were compounding pain and trauma and were unable to place the children's well-being first. 

We continue to struggle with some attachment issues. No matter how many resources you read, no matter how many other families you know who have experienced it, nothing can really prepare you for the heartache of loving a child who cannot really love you back, at least not with the depth or empathy typical among family. It's an ongoing struggle not to respond to that pain by barricading my own heart, and I'm convinced it's only possible because the God who IS love (1 John 4:7) has given me His Spirit, and His Spirit enables me to love like He does. Some days, it feels like just choosing to execute actions that are loving: giving hugs, playful nudges, warm smiles, picking up a special rock that I think he'd like, grabbing his favorite snack while I'm at the store...even when the emotion feels fragile or like a vapor. Other days are easier. Some days, I let my guard all the way down and I'm vulnerable--I have yet to experience benefit from this, though. Somehow, it seems that my greatest attempts to reach him result in either a tale of a made-up experience in which his "real mom" did the same thing or something more magnificent, or an outright rejection/voiced longing for something different or more extravagant than what I could provide. It is HARD...but he is worth it. He deserves to be loved and taken care of and raised so that he has choices available to him for his future. Even if he rejects it all, he deserves the chance. I just have to remember that it's not about me...and in the (paraphrased) words of my friend, "if it didn't feel at least a little like dying, it wouldn't be the Gospel."

Just last week, we celebrated 2 years of having Mason and Brenton home with us. They have come SO far. WE have come so far! Adoption has irreversibly changed all of our lives, and some of it has been excruciatingly painful. Some of it continues to be. But there is so much beauty and joy in seeing God redeem and rebuild what was broken! I'm grateful and humbled to be a part of such a remarkable story...and a picture of what He worked internally in me, and in all who have been justified! I just need to keep my eyes tuned to see it.