Joy to the world.
It has been a wonderful Christmas season. We have been focusing on one of God's greatest gifts.....family. I love watching how our family has morphed and changed over the years. Some have gone home to be seen again in the sweet bye and bye and one long awaited little one we will get to meet early in 2013. Of course, there was a special air of celebration as we welcomed Jacob to his first Christmas season.
We spent Christmas out of town at my sisters home. It was a blessing to be surrounded by family who has supported us through all stages of our adoption and have enjoyed getting to know our new little man. Jacob did surprisingly well once our routines were reestablished in our new environment.
At my sister's and brother in law's church I was especially blessed by the message from Pastor Eric who spoke on joy. One thing he said has stuck with me and I dwell on it often.....that joy is not a result of our current situation or our emotions, it is a gift from God.
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit and we cannot know true joy apart from Christ. He offers a joy that lasts beyond a few presents opened on Christmas day. Joy is not dependent on one's bank account, health, or amount of facebook friends. Christ offers a joy that goes beyond the material things that bring us happiness on earth. It is a joy you feel down to the tip of your toes, you hear in the early bird's song, and brings you life in the midst of fear and shame. It is a joy that whispers in your ear it's love for you when you don't have the courage to face another day.
It is hope for our blended and newly created families. Adopting Jacob has allowed me to experience and recognize even more my sinfulness and unworthiness, but has increased exponentially my gratitude (and my joy!) for my Savior. My heart is bursting at the seams with the joy given to us that first Christmas day.
Update on Jacob:
We had a huge week of appointments leading up to Christmas and here is where we now stand:
Early Intervention: Three lovely ladies came out to do Jacob's developmental assessment. Let me tell you, these ladies breathed life and love into me as they doted over our son and "oohed" and "aahed" at the things he was doing. They were positive, encouraging, and great with Jacob. When the time came to share the results with me, instead of giving me a laundry list of things Jacob couldn't do, they told me, "Well, you qualify for our services and it makes the most sense to send in speech therapy." Starting early January, she will be coming to our home once a week to work on developmental skills but focusing on speech, oral desensitization, feeding, and she will help work on strategies to wean Jacob from the bottle before surgery.
Pediatric Dentist: Good news! Jacob's teeth look good. We will begin seeing him every six months and are blessed that he has a specialty in working with cleft lip/palate children. We have been able to begin brushing Jacob's teeth and despite that he doesn't like it (and I suspect his mouth is pretty sensitive to just the feel of the bristles), he opens his mouth without much of a struggle. We will not know if Jacob will get his front teeth but the dentist will help us maneuver these waters when the time comes (I believe that involves a bone graft from the hip and implants but we're just hoping for front teeth!) He told us to prepare for a good relationship with an orthodontist someday.
Cleft Lip and Palate team: This was a long day at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital. It started with an ENT where hearing tests revealed mild to moderate hearing loss. They suspect this is due to chronic ear infections and recommended he receive tubes which they will place during his lip and palate surgery. They hope his hearing will improve once these are placed. We then headed to genetics where they educated and prepared us for surgery and gave us some interesting information on institutionalized children and development. We will be continuing to see them during follow ups with the cleft team. They also gave us some feeding suggestions and special cups Jacob will need to be using pre and post surgery. We then headed to see the doctor who has been greatly praised in our community for his work on cleft children in Cincinnati......Dr. Billmire, our plastic surgeon. He made us laugh the minute he walked in the room and said to Jacob, "Well son, looks like we have a lot of work to do." After assessing Jacob, he decided he will be trying to repair both the lip and palate in one surgery. Otherwise, if he starts the surgery and decides not to do the palate, that will be done a few months down the road.
What about Jacob? Well, we are all making progress. I knew this when I was sitting at the salon yesterday in blue foils and a shower cap reading the children's hospital surgical guide. I couldn't stop the tears when I was reading about the anesthesia and began to think about the procedure. It was almost unbearable to think about sending him into the OR alone, or surgery for that matter. We are doing the work of bonding as a family. Jacob has made his own progress as we have watched him seek out our eye contact in unknown situations and seek out our attention to share his interests. He has an adorable personality and we are working through finding healthy ways to get our attention (he seems to have a "knack" with finding negative ways to get attention.) We have been blessed to have this time with him and are thankful we didn't rush into surgery when we arrived home. Lots of work to be done, but God is the provider of the joy in the midst of the work!
Joy to the world, the Lord has come!
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Adoption. Is. Hard.
This week I was reading a magazine put out by Focus on the Family. Since November was adoption month, it was highlighting "realities" of adoption from real families. One woman said something I think I will remember for the rest of my life. She said adoption was not a destination, it was a journey.
Looking back over our long wait I can see where all our dreams and hopes rested on what we thought would come to fruition on the day Jacob was placed in our arms. It looked something like this: He would be given to us and suddenly the heavens would open. A beam of light would shine down on him and a voice would say, "This is your son, in him I am well pleased." (Haven't I heard that somewhere?) There would be a new star in the sky for him, a new Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor would be dedicated to him, and our family would be perfectly happy and complete. Then reality hits and we find our home is actually in a state of confusion, disillusionment, and often repentance and shame. Adoption is hard, and for as much as we felt like we had prepared ourselves, it's not understandable until you live it....even then I'm not so sure.
To an outsider, it doesn't seem we should have many problems. Jacob is adjusting well socially and emotionally. We can love all over him and he can love us back. He even leans in for kisses and in an adorable way unique to the cleft lip child, he leans in, opens his mouth and puckers the best he can when he wants kisses. He is also sleeping through most nights. Huge victories and I'm sure parents everywhere are saying...."lucky you!"
All of these feelings and challenges have forced me to take a step back and reflect on where God is when life gets so hard, especially when you have taken a journey you believe to be steeped in scripture and an outpouring of your love and obedience to Him. Thankfully, this mental journey is not a hard one and I have never questioned where God might be in our struggles. I have felt Him inside me this whole time.
I was blessed to be a pupil of a remarkable Sunday School teacher. There was a lot he taught that I'll never get, but two things have stuck with me and changed my Christian worldview. The first was about the catastrophic effects of sin entering the world. When man first sinned and was kicked out of the garden, it affected not only human beings but all of nature. Until the world once again becomes as God intended, we will never be free of evil, cancer, earthquakes, hate, violence, broken families....the list goes on. Sin is in this world and we will never escape it nor will we escape it's effects, whether they are a direct consequence of something we've done, or something someone else has done.
We were meeting with our eldest son's preschool teachers for a parent conference. Our discussion inevitably led to how he was adjusting since Jacob came along. We shared a small part of our victories as well as our challenges and this opened up a discussion about how God works through adoptive families. One of the teachers had a friend who had adopted older sibling pairs. She shared that they have and still have immense challenges not only with their adoptive children, but also the effects it has had on their biological kids. She wondered aloud why God didn't intervene due to the sacrifices of the parents.
I'll tell you what I told her. My husband was sitting beside me and I had Jacob on my lap. I circled my finger over the three of us and said, "We are not what God intended for Jacob. In a perfect, sinless world, God created the family as husband and wife giving birth to their children and raising them." That is the perfect scenario where our children would feel loved, safe, and flourish in the arms of their parents. I then told her, "We live in a world corrupted by sin. Sin's effects have left us with broken families and hurting children. It doesn't make Jacob any less wanted by us and it doesn't mean that we don't think God blessed us when he was given to us, but we fully understand that in living in a sinful world, we will have to help bear the burdens and consequences that have occurred with the breakdown of Jacob's family." These may include (but are certainly not limited to) issues of trust, abandonment, fear, neglect, and all the effects that living in an institution for 20 months can bring.
While I'm stirring the waters a little, I want to say one more thing. We will never tell Jacob that God created him for us. How selfish would that be? We wanted a child and family so God gave us what we asked for. Now you, dear son, get to deal with the consequences that that brings such as dealing with cross cultural and identity issues, wondering if your birthdate is correct, not knowing any familial history, as well as dealing with why your birth parents did not fight to the ends of the earth for you. Ouch! That's reality when your adopted and certainly something he will deal with. Why would I present a God to my son that could cause such inner turmoil because I wanted a child? Do I believe God united Jacob with us? Yes. Do I believe his referral to our family was random? Absolutely not. It brings me comfort to know God believes we are up to the task of caring and loving Jacob with all the right and privileges of a biological child, but I don't believe God created an orphan so I could be a Mother.
What's the other thing I learned from my favorite Sunday school teacher? That one of our goals in life should be to always pursue knowing God more and that the work done on the cross changed everything. That's what I will tell Jacob when he wants to know about God and has questions. That even in this world of sin, God changed everything with one sacrifice. We are redeemed. What does that mean? He came and took what was His own. That's why you were created dear one....for God. No matter what we deal with in life.....the sins of our biological parents, our adoptive parents (the list is already pretty lengthy), and even from ourselves.....we have been redeemed. One sacrifice for all.
This is what I cling to that gives me hope. Even in the midst of my struggles where I am hardest on myself for my mistakes, I can be thankful that I can keep pushing forward and keep trying to do better because I have been forgiven. It's what will make me a good parent to my children. It's what we all have. The hope within us is for all.....the widower, the unemployed, the person in chronic pain......the adoptive parent.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."--(Romans 5:6-8)
Before I go, I want to thank everyone who has reached out to us. Thank you for the meals....thank you for the emails.....thank you for the calls (and even the return calls when I didn't call back).....for the interest.....for the kind words.....for the authentic way you have reached into our lives and helped us know we are normal and we have hope. You have carried us and we love you! A quick update on Jacob: Next week we have a ton of appointments including seeing the craniofacial team, a pediatric dentist, and early intervention will be coming in to help us with his developmental needs. We have also gotten started with a physical therapist church friend who specialized in pediatric development (you are awesome!) and she has gotten us started with a lot of good things for Jacob. Will keep you posted!
Looking back over our long wait I can see where all our dreams and hopes rested on what we thought would come to fruition on the day Jacob was placed in our arms. It looked something like this: He would be given to us and suddenly the heavens would open. A beam of light would shine down on him and a voice would say, "This is your son, in him I am well pleased." (Haven't I heard that somewhere?) There would be a new star in the sky for him, a new Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor would be dedicated to him, and our family would be perfectly happy and complete. Then reality hits and we find our home is actually in a state of confusion, disillusionment, and often repentance and shame. Adoption is hard, and for as much as we felt like we had prepared ourselves, it's not understandable until you live it....even then I'm not so sure.
To an outsider, it doesn't seem we should have many problems. Jacob is adjusting well socially and emotionally. We can love all over him and he can love us back. He even leans in for kisses and in an adorable way unique to the cleft lip child, he leans in, opens his mouth and puckers the best he can when he wants kisses. He is also sleeping through most nights. Huge victories and I'm sure parents everywhere are saying...."lucky you!"
All of these feelings and challenges have forced me to take a step back and reflect on where God is when life gets so hard, especially when you have taken a journey you believe to be steeped in scripture and an outpouring of your love and obedience to Him. Thankfully, this mental journey is not a hard one and I have never questioned where God might be in our struggles. I have felt Him inside me this whole time.
I was blessed to be a pupil of a remarkable Sunday School teacher. There was a lot he taught that I'll never get, but two things have stuck with me and changed my Christian worldview. The first was about the catastrophic effects of sin entering the world. When man first sinned and was kicked out of the garden, it affected not only human beings but all of nature. Until the world once again becomes as God intended, we will never be free of evil, cancer, earthquakes, hate, violence, broken families....the list goes on. Sin is in this world and we will never escape it nor will we escape it's effects, whether they are a direct consequence of something we've done, or something someone else has done.
We were meeting with our eldest son's preschool teachers for a parent conference. Our discussion inevitably led to how he was adjusting since Jacob came along. We shared a small part of our victories as well as our challenges and this opened up a discussion about how God works through adoptive families. One of the teachers had a friend who had adopted older sibling pairs. She shared that they have and still have immense challenges not only with their adoptive children, but also the effects it has had on their biological kids. She wondered aloud why God didn't intervene due to the sacrifices of the parents.
I'll tell you what I told her. My husband was sitting beside me and I had Jacob on my lap. I circled my finger over the three of us and said, "We are not what God intended for Jacob. In a perfect, sinless world, God created the family as husband and wife giving birth to their children and raising them." That is the perfect scenario where our children would feel loved, safe, and flourish in the arms of their parents. I then told her, "We live in a world corrupted by sin. Sin's effects have left us with broken families and hurting children. It doesn't make Jacob any less wanted by us and it doesn't mean that we don't think God blessed us when he was given to us, but we fully understand that in living in a sinful world, we will have to help bear the burdens and consequences that have occurred with the breakdown of Jacob's family." These may include (but are certainly not limited to) issues of trust, abandonment, fear, neglect, and all the effects that living in an institution for 20 months can bring.
While I'm stirring the waters a little, I want to say one more thing. We will never tell Jacob that God created him for us. How selfish would that be? We wanted a child and family so God gave us what we asked for. Now you, dear son, get to deal with the consequences that that brings such as dealing with cross cultural and identity issues, wondering if your birthdate is correct, not knowing any familial history, as well as dealing with why your birth parents did not fight to the ends of the earth for you. Ouch! That's reality when your adopted and certainly something he will deal with. Why would I present a God to my son that could cause such inner turmoil because I wanted a child? Do I believe God united Jacob with us? Yes. Do I believe his referral to our family was random? Absolutely not. It brings me comfort to know God believes we are up to the task of caring and loving Jacob with all the right and privileges of a biological child, but I don't believe God created an orphan so I could be a Mother.
What's the other thing I learned from my favorite Sunday school teacher? That one of our goals in life should be to always pursue knowing God more and that the work done on the cross changed everything. That's what I will tell Jacob when he wants to know about God and has questions. That even in this world of sin, God changed everything with one sacrifice. We are redeemed. What does that mean? He came and took what was His own. That's why you were created dear one....for God. No matter what we deal with in life.....the sins of our biological parents, our adoptive parents (the list is already pretty lengthy), and even from ourselves.....we have been redeemed. One sacrifice for all.
This is what I cling to that gives me hope. Even in the midst of my struggles where I am hardest on myself for my mistakes, I can be thankful that I can keep pushing forward and keep trying to do better because I have been forgiven. It's what will make me a good parent to my children. It's what we all have. The hope within us is for all.....the widower, the unemployed, the person in chronic pain......the adoptive parent.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."--(Romans 5:6-8)
Before I go, I want to thank everyone who has reached out to us. Thank you for the meals....thank you for the emails.....thank you for the calls (and even the return calls when I didn't call back).....for the interest.....for the kind words.....for the authentic way you have reached into our lives and helped us know we are normal and we have hope. You have carried us and we love you! A quick update on Jacob: Next week we have a ton of appointments including seeing the craniofacial team, a pediatric dentist, and early intervention will be coming in to help us with his developmental needs. We have also gotten started with a physical therapist church friend who specialized in pediatric development (you are awesome!) and she has gotten us started with a lot of good things for Jacob. Will keep you posted!
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