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| Having Fun at the Park |
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| Giving Big Sister a kiss |
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| Cameron and Rhylan pose for a picture |
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Mother's Day Reflections
Tomorrow will be Mother's Day and it will be very bittersweet for me. I think of my own mom (of course) and grandmas, but this year one other Mother has entered the picture, Rhylans China Mom! My heart goes out to my own mom who will hurt and grieve as she tells her youngest son once again "good-bye" as he deploys. Oh, the anxiety his deployments cause!! I am reminded that he has deployed before and that God was with him then and will be this time too! No better hands could he be in!! Please pray for his safety, good wisdom, and decision making to keep his unit secure and safe!!!!
In the past two weeks twice I have been asked point blank, "Do you think her birthmother ever thinks of her?" I sigh as I really have no answers but this question has arisen multiple times in my mind. I am burdened by what I will tell her as she grows...I really have NO answers. I recently read that you should begin telling them their story very young. I have practiced a few times over the last few days as I rock her to sleep and I usually become teary. I really want her to just "know" that she was adopted and grow with that fact and not "discover" it one day. So now I keep it simple by telling her she was born in China and has a China mom too, and it is SO cute she shakes her head up and down saying yes!!
I came across this blog entry on another blog and she got it from another blog....handed down. It is SO GOOD and I take NO credit, it is not mine but I wanted to share it and have it in my blog for easy access, so I can always refer to it!! I pray that someday I will be able to handle the two mommy issue as well!!
Here it is:
When my boys were little, I use to worry about handling them as teenagers. I hoped this...I wished that....
A wise woman told me not to worry about those days ahead. When I got there they would not be as tumultuous as I expected. The same grace that God gave me in the present, would be waiting for me there, in their teen years, when we arrived. God's grace, she said, is given in daily doses. She shared with me that I feared the days ahead because I did not yet have the grace I needed to live them. I only had the grace of the moment. Here we are many years after that advice, our boys are 18 and 15 and you know what? She was right! When Hope came into our lives, there was a day I fretted about with her as well. It wasn't her teen years. It was the day she would finally know that she had another Mommy. I've never experienced jealously towards her birth mother. Perhaps my time in China prior to Hope's arrival, working with oppressed women there, gave me a compassion that united me to them rather than divided me from them. I've always felt a pain in my heart for the pain in her birth mother's heart at the reality of having to give up a child. No matter the reason, whether it was purposeful because she was a girl or not purposeful because Hope was dying of heart failure and she could never provide the care she needed, a mother still had to lay the child she carried in her womb, delivered, held and nursed at the gate of an orphanage-and walk away. FOREVER. Never knowing what would happen to her. You don't dislike someone who walks in shoes that you could never wear. You respect them for doing their best with a tragic situation. Even if their best is one that has left heartache in its wake. All you can do is respect it and honor it. Casting doubt and negative feelings on her mother and her father's choice, doesn't help anyone heal. Especially my daughter. And the fact is in the end, we just don't know why Hope had to leave their lives.
In the past two weeks twice I have been asked point blank, "Do you think her birthmother ever thinks of her?" I sigh as I really have no answers but this question has arisen multiple times in my mind. I am burdened by what I will tell her as she grows...I really have NO answers. I recently read that you should begin telling them their story very young. I have practiced a few times over the last few days as I rock her to sleep and I usually become teary. I really want her to just "know" that she was adopted and grow with that fact and not "discover" it one day. So now I keep it simple by telling her she was born in China and has a China mom too, and it is SO cute she shakes her head up and down saying yes!!
I came across this blog entry on another blog and she got it from another blog....handed down. It is SO GOOD and I take NO credit, it is not mine but I wanted to share it and have it in my blog for easy access, so I can always refer to it!! I pray that someday I will be able to handle the two mommy issue as well!!
Here it is:
When my boys were little, I use to worry about handling them as teenagers. I hoped this...I wished that....
A wise woman told me not to worry about those days ahead. When I got there they would not be as tumultuous as I expected. The same grace that God gave me in the present, would be waiting for me there, in their teen years, when we arrived. God's grace, she said, is given in daily doses. She shared with me that I feared the days ahead because I did not yet have the grace I needed to live them. I only had the grace of the moment. Here we are many years after that advice, our boys are 18 and 15 and you know what? She was right! When Hope came into our lives, there was a day I fretted about with her as well. It wasn't her teen years. It was the day she would finally know that she had another Mommy. I've never experienced jealously towards her birth mother. Perhaps my time in China prior to Hope's arrival, working with oppressed women there, gave me a compassion that united me to them rather than divided me from them. I've always felt a pain in my heart for the pain in her birth mother's heart at the reality of having to give up a child. No matter the reason, whether it was purposeful because she was a girl or not purposeful because Hope was dying of heart failure and she could never provide the care she needed, a mother still had to lay the child she carried in her womb, delivered, held and nursed at the gate of an orphanage-and walk away. FOREVER. Never knowing what would happen to her. You don't dislike someone who walks in shoes that you could never wear. You respect them for doing their best with a tragic situation. Even if their best is one that has left heartache in its wake. All you can do is respect it and honor it. Casting doubt and negative feelings on her mother and her father's choice, doesn't help anyone heal. Especially my daughter. And the fact is in the end, we just don't know why Hope had to leave their lives.
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