Tuesday, September 26, 2017

The Boat of Life

I recently read this:  “No one puts their children in a boat unless is it safer than the land they are on.”  It moved my mind to push past the many times I wonder why refugees brave the waters in overloaded boats to die horrible drowning deaths on a gamble to make it to a new land…..that phrase gives me new understanding.
 
As we’ve struggled with our foster children we’ve adopted in these teenager years, I ponder that phrase as I see it in their eyes and lives.  Recently our daughter ran off to live with her birth mother.  6 weeks later she returned angry at her birth mother and refusing to speak to her.  During this time so much happened, but at one point my husband and I were able to sit with her birth mother, talk and share stories and see our shared daughter’s baby/early childhood pictures and realize we ALL loved her the same.  But she was too alike to her birth mother to be able to live with her and hearing her birth mother say “she needs you because you are stricter” was the same as she needs structure….rules….our kind of love.  What a HUGE sacrifice this lady made….she recognized something many birth parents aren’t able to grasp.
 
While I dream that one day she will accept her birth mother and talk to her again, and be OK with TWO Mom’s….this journey has taken me outside of my comfort zone as we continue to deal with her lack of self esteem and ability to recognize true wholesome love from us and her birth mother.  The journey isn’t over.  The running isn’t done….I pray it will be….but I can’t control it and have released her to God to watch her when life is too hard and running is all she knows to do.  No matter how unsafe the boat is – she believes her land is less safe so she gets in that boat and runs to a near drowning before coming back. It is so horrifying to watch!

I hurt for her pain.  I hurt that she didn’t get the relief she wanted after 8 years of yearning for her biological family  that the search arrived and she burned those bridges hard as she let loose of 8 years of anger that raged in her being against these people she has blood ties to.  She looked into the face of her birth mother who was a mirror of herself with only fog around the edges to make her look different and couldn’t deal with the reality of her own life.  Acceptance. She still feels lost no matter how many life jackets we throw her.

We journey on – sometimes when the stress is high and my sight fogs over the purpose of this journey we chose, I pray that God will bring us to the new land together and we journey on in that hope.
 
Pray for us.  That is the life jacket we need from you!  Pray we find new land.

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