Friday, January 25, 2013

Where the Hell is GOD in all of this?

Six years ago we were waiting on two beautiful Haitian babies. We were young, in our mid twenties, had a five year old, three year old and one year old...all that we needed for our lives to feel "complete" were these two, darling brown eyed babies to help make our family, after all, God had led them to us.

While we waited, while the days and weeks, months and holidays without them in my arms passed...I comforted myself with the promises of them being in Gods hands, when they came home being it his will. When little Gibson died of diarrhea and dehydration, being buried, with out the tear soaked kisses of me getting to say good bye, with out me having the closure of watching his little body being put in the ground....I often handed that pain, that loss, to he that loved him first, and loved him more, his creator.

Choosing action instead of bitterness, I began working with and for my children's Orphanage, referring children, traveling for updates, parent trips, adoption process work....we then found, and adopted four more beautiful children....
As part of my job and new responsibilities, part was hand choosing with prompting and prayer the children for particular adopting families. I lovingly wrote updates and sent pictures to families that years later would disrupt, in pain, and sadness after months or years of their children's trauma taking too far a toll on their “before Haiti”, “before adoption”, “before trauma” families. How my heart understands and breaks and wants to know why.
I too have walked this path, of loss, pain , and letting go when no other option are left.

Even in the throws and pain of the Earth Quake, the losses and trauma, the fear and things felt seen and experienced that changed us all, God was there, his promises, miracles and surrounding angels guided, lifted up and were felt, seen and one of the most sacred religious experiences of my life. To deny that would be denying myself.

And now, three years later, like many families,after the miracles, after the beautiful ceremonies and finalization’s....I am needing him, searching for him...grasping desperately for the way I used to see him, need him, and understand him, and have to figure out for myself as I have changed, how much bigger my relationship and dependence and faith need to be, and how I will exercise it.

I think after you have been in war, after you have lost all you knew to be true, you have to redefine the whats and the whys and the hows. You have to decide HOW you are going to choose to see things, trust and put your faith in...because the ground is still shaking.
And with how hard and scary things are right NOW, the future scares the shit-ous-kies out of you...

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following. “

I have learned I can do that.

There are days I am still angry, I want to know why, why I felt led to my children, led to the pain it has caused my before seemingly normal little, happy family. I want to know why so much pain and trauma that is so contagious is allowed to the very small and helpless, and why it can be passed through sharing and inflicting abuse, changing all of us, changing me, how I felt about the world, being a mother, God.
How can all of this pain been his plan?
Does he KNOW HOW HARD IT IS?
Does he KNOW how alone and scared and shamed and desperate this is?
How angry I am that first my beautiful adopted children were damaged so badly, and how it was O.K. to bring that damage and pain into the four walls of my home, and worse, inside the chambers of hamburger meat that used to be my heart?

What it feels like to be abandoned by other believers?
Judged?
Misunderstood? 



of course he does.......

And then I think of the other believers, ones whom did not have it easy either, ever.
Martin Luther King jr.
Job

Nelson Mandela
Mother Teresa
Our Founding Fathers, and so many others that believed and lived adversity.....
And I decide I am in damn good company.We all are in damn good company.
I look around at the caliber of people that are getting up and doing what I am doing everyday, all that is hard and lonely and desperate...and I am blown away with the brothers and sisters in this new tribe, people that support and challenge me everyday. Regardless of religion, I see a infinite amount of will and love, acceptance and GOD inside of them.

And once again I can find hope.
And then I find God, and I grow stronger in my faith and hope in infinite love, for that if anything is something I can believe in.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Repair shops



Just the other day my dear friends little girl ran away. Again.
Not far. But she is six, and it was in the rain trailing toys and bedding with her...

Once the crying and the raging was over there lay a lot of muddy, messy toys, one disreguated little girl and an amazing, but exhausted Mama. How much I love this particular Mama. While texting back and forth with “A” I was remembering a tactic we use at times when we find ourselves stuck.
Their needing to be a repair, after behavior...and well, the Repair being too much, physically or emotionally for the child to be able to fix it alone.

Ahem, I made so major screw up with my kids a couple months ago to afford me to actually NEED to mimic opening a business, to help THEM fix something destroyed during big feelings... in the name of me not dealing with it in a better way and upping the anty, got myself in a pickle, in MAJOR need of repair.

Case and point;
Some of my children have very thick ethnic hair, that takes A LOT of hours fingers cramped, back aching to do...yet I really enjoy doing it and love to see the end result, as they do,until they are mad, or bored, or it is 3:25 p.m. And the world isn't fair, AGAIN...or they are angry with me for some reason. And then undo or RIP OUT their hair, that I have spent HOURS sometimes days to do.
*In case you are wondering, THIS one thing CAN make me lose my shit cool, like non other...
and so I epically fail in my response and follow the moment up with a, “Fine, I am DONE helping you with your hair, you do it yourself, look ridiculous, let it matte, I am not helping you anymore if you keep on messing up what I try to do.” (See I am TOTALLY HUMAN)*

Wellll CRRRRAAAAPPPP....
5 days in and I am noticing we are going to have to go out in public someday I am realizing....and unless I shave their heads bald and claim lice, (and I home-school) I AM LOOKING LIKE A NEGLECTFUL WHITE MOM TO BROWN KIDS.
( This can be a BIG issue in adoption of cross race families caucasian Moms not taking care of their childrens black hair)
Well damn-it. I can't win. ( and yes, that is how I felt...this marathon of who was going to wait out “The great Hair stand-off of October 2012” and I the idiot that through the gauntlet down was going to eat crow. (because I was an idiot and threw down a natural consequence gauntlet)
…..and so I had as Opri would call it an AHA! moment...

S.P.A.C.E....
PLAYFUL came to mind.....

So I had my oldest draw up a sign.
We got out nail polish.
We pulled out hair dryers and make up and hair do-dads....
“SASSY's BEAUTY SALON” was open for business....for FUN....
We started with the boys....and before I knew it, everyone was fixing each others hair....and my problems and the stand off forgotten.

And so, we have begun to open Repair Shops all over our home.

I have learned after an initial melt down, my kids can stand in the wake of their destruction and have guilt and shame in the result...yet have so MUCH anxiety, and feel so completely overwhelmed in the HOW TO, clean it up, fix it, re make, undo, that they become paralyzed and once again triggered. 
 
That shame builds like the giant tin foil ball Pee-wee Herman kept adding to every Saturday morning when I was growing up as a kid.

 
So far we have had a
“Grumpy's Carpet Cleaner” amazing how fast eye liner, oil paint and other not so exciting fluids and solids are cleaned up when I have a crew...with names and all. For the record, I am ALWAYS Billy Bob.

A “Wonky Days Dry Cleaners”...where we DRY and CLEAN up wet and dirty things.
A “Frustrated Fred's House Keeping and room cleaner”.
A “Bugged and Bummed Bathroom Cleaners”....

and my personal favorite “Pouting and Plugging pluming”....my kids are learning to unclog and spider toilets with the best of them.

If we can turn the repair into a game, where workers are payed with grapes, raisins, skittles and hugs...when the WHY, and HOW the job that needs to be done was created and is overlooked in the name of fun and togetherness.

We all win.
The broken gets fixed...and really MORE than a repair is made.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Army Crawling my way into 2013.

Anyone else feeling this way?

As I listen to all of the “New Year/New Life/New Resolutions”...and I am thinking "Shhhhhuuuutttt upppp, good for freaking you, I am just trying to get through the day, sometimes hour over here."
Apparently I am not so much myself.
I find myself in a funk most DSM manuals would label as Seasonal Depression.
Yep.
Don't I know it.

This time of year, after the rush of the holidays, with the added drama and trauma of attachment and emotional disorders, I find myself in the running on empty zone. Depleted and running more on auto pilot than I would like to admit.

I love the serenity of winter, the pristine white and the calm I see out side my window.
Yet inside, my little Haitian babies and this Leo is missing the sun, the days where the outdoors is our living room. I miss it fierce. So do they.
And so we all digress.
They act out, pull out the myriad of behaviors I thought we had dropped between 2010/2011, and I cocoon, go into survival mode and allow the stress to begin doing what it does best.

To ward off the blues, the anxiety and insomnia that comes when this hits me, I have to be proactive.
I have to be proactive for myself. I have to be proactive for my babies. I have to have empathy that we are all feeling this way, instead of being irritated and frustrated with behaviors.
THIS SUCKS.
Some days I would like to act like the troll I feel like.
Some days I totally do.

And then I take inventory, take responsibility (pout a lot a little, cause sometimes it sucks to be the adult) and I make the changes I need to.

I start making lists.
I start faking it until I make it.
I start making plans to go out with friends.
I shower, and get dressed.
I start exercising, even for just 30 minutes a day.
I stop eating crap, and write down my meals.
I seek art, and dabble in color.
I turn the music up and dance.
I sometimes will go as far as a 10 minute session at a tanning bed, for the warmth.
I start de-cluttering.
I remember to be grateful.
I hug my kids.
I pray.
I meditate.
I paint.
I forgive myself for feeling the way I feel.
I take naps.
I let go of what I can, it will be there when and if I need to pick it back up again.
I write down what is important.
I watch things that make me smile, feel inspired, and happy.
I reach out, even when I don't feel like it.
I let myself try again, even if the day was a total fail.
I start all over again.

Regardless of how much I want to huddle under my covers with M&M's and a good book in the same yoga pants I have been wearing for the last 3 days.
I hop on that elliptical. I open that good book and read it to my children. I push myself, I talk about it, I share why I feel a certain way, and you know what, they share too. Vulnerability can be such a beautiful thing.

Just in case anyone else out there is army crawling there way into 2013...you are so not alone.
The sun is going to come out.
Until then grab those boot-straps kid, it's gonna be a long winter.
We got this.