“There are scars,
still. Even within the miracles.”
I said that this last week, while visiting with a wonderful mother, and answering some questions about my life, my travels, how my family was built and my work in Haiti.
I have thought about that a lot this week.
The scars.
The aftermath of struggle, even after the meant to be, after the “I prayed about this”, or “this felt so right”, the how did this fall so perfectly into place, but feel like such a train wreck in the aftermath.
We all feel this. At one time or another, about an adoption, a job, a health recovery, a marriage, parenting, moving, a life altering thing, that felt SO SO right and SO SO wanted, and yet here it is the gaping scars and struggle afterwards.
In that moment I was sharing about an 8 month old baby girl brought to the Orphanage while I was working and doing Child Development assessments. Her face seemed thin, yet her dress was covering her legs and arms and seemed to have some weight on her.
I almost dropped her.
In the same as when you go to pick up a box expecting it to be heavy, and it is empty. That 8 month old child weighed 4 pounds. She was starving and emaciated, and her poor mother also starving had lost her breast milk.
In hopes we would accept her daughter into the Orphanage that we might save her, she had layered over 15 onesies to make her baby appear bigger than she was.
We tried a bottle, but the sweet little girl just vomited up anything we tried to give her.
I went with her mother to the hospital, where they refused to admit her, because she was too far gone.
The nurse tried an IV at the Orphanage, but she was far too dehydrated.
I asked her mother what she wanted to do, and she simply cried, and said she didn't want to watch her baby die.
For days nights, I and other volunteers held this little girl, alternating pedialyte, and pedia sure through an infant Tylenol medicine dropper. Miraculously she lived.
Still to this day the effects of this early starvation, no doubt plague this little girls need to never feel satiated, physically and emotionally.
Scars even in the Miracles..
I think of my children, and how far they have come, and yet the still desperate, quirky behaviors that still pop up, reminding me...”scars even in the mountains they have over come, they have carried some of those things, fears, anxieties with them”.
I don't know if it is media, or fairy-tales, that makes us feel so robbed when at the end our miracles lie more speed bumps, struggles and anxiety ridden decisions to be made. Why we cant tie everything up in a perfect 90 minute story line, or in a beautiful “and they lived happily ever after”...I don't know. I would like to blame Disney for not following the original as written storylines.
What I do know, is it really isn't that way for anyone.
I said that this last week, while visiting with a wonderful mother, and answering some questions about my life, my travels, how my family was built and my work in Haiti.
I have thought about that a lot this week.
The scars.
The aftermath of struggle, even after the meant to be, after the “I prayed about this”, or “this felt so right”, the how did this fall so perfectly into place, but feel like such a train wreck in the aftermath.
We all feel this. At one time or another, about an adoption, a job, a health recovery, a marriage, parenting, moving, a life altering thing, that felt SO SO right and SO SO wanted, and yet here it is the gaping scars and struggle afterwards.
In that moment I was sharing about an 8 month old baby girl brought to the Orphanage while I was working and doing Child Development assessments. Her face seemed thin, yet her dress was covering her legs and arms and seemed to have some weight on her.
I almost dropped her.
In the same as when you go to pick up a box expecting it to be heavy, and it is empty. That 8 month old child weighed 4 pounds. She was starving and emaciated, and her poor mother also starving had lost her breast milk.
In hopes we would accept her daughter into the Orphanage that we might save her, she had layered over 15 onesies to make her baby appear bigger than she was.
We tried a bottle, but the sweet little girl just vomited up anything we tried to give her.
I went with her mother to the hospital, where they refused to admit her, because she was too far gone.
The nurse tried an IV at the Orphanage, but she was far too dehydrated.
I asked her mother what she wanted to do, and she simply cried, and said she didn't want to watch her baby die.
For days nights, I and other volunteers held this little girl, alternating pedialyte, and pedia sure through an infant Tylenol medicine dropper. Miraculously she lived.
Still to this day the effects of this early starvation, no doubt plague this little girls need to never feel satiated, physically and emotionally.
Scars even in the Miracles..
I think of my children, and how far they have come, and yet the still desperate, quirky behaviors that still pop up, reminding me...”scars even in the mountains they have over come, they have carried some of those things, fears, anxieties with them”.
I don't know if it is media, or fairy-tales, that makes us feel so robbed when at the end our miracles lie more speed bumps, struggles and anxiety ridden decisions to be made. Why we cant tie everything up in a perfect 90 minute story line, or in a beautiful “and they lived happily ever after”...I don't know. I would like to blame Disney for not following the original as written storylines.
What I do know, is it really isn't that way for anyone.
When our “meant to
be’s” feel like a proverbial Ice Cream cone that just face
planted in the dirt.
What I do know, is the Notebook, is just a movie, and Cinderella probably drove the Prince nuts with her OCD need to clean the castle, and slightly more disturbing propensity to talk to vermin and make them clothes.
I do know that even in relationships with spouses, children and other family members what was such a firm answer to a hope, dream or prayer, can also turn to pain, and loss and something you never ever imagined. I do know that just because of the pain, doesn't mean it wasn't right or good or even miraculous, it is all still part of the miracle, even in the change or need to regroup and replan. It is still part of what is to come.
The scars are part of the beautiful. The miracle more real than the fairy-tales. We are supposed to have hard and good, and ugly and beautiful. Heart ache and Loss and Love and Anxiety all wrapped up in there.
We are.
Even when it sucks.
Even when we try our hardest and it doesn’t look or feel close to enough.
Healing can take a lifetime.
Healing and Happy endings never, ever end up looking like we thought they would.
Ever.
Look around.
Look deep within.
Even in the good.
Even in the hard.
Breathe.
You are a beautiful mess of a miracle, right now, exactly how you are ,full of scars and overcoming, we all are.
Keep going, keep accepting.
I see you.
You beautiful mess, you.
Look deep within.
Even in the good.
Even in the hard.
Breathe.
You are a beautiful mess of a miracle, right now, exactly how you are ,full of scars and overcoming, we all are.
Keep going, keep accepting.
I see you.
You beautiful mess, you.
