Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Beauty Where Are You?


I sit alone here at my PC and the urge to purge takes over.  Alienated.  I feel so alone. 
Tonight we went to support our daughter in a grade school Bingo event – winning the “grand” prize for The Alley in laser tag and other fun…..winning to the point we shouldn’t have declared BINGO anymore – but to the delight of our 10 year old we made a haul.  Free kids meals and ice cream are in our future.

She is tucked in for the night, my husband goes to get his rest as he rises incredibly too early for me to even ponder getting out of bed, hence I sit here alone.  Feeling the weight of my life.

I thought 16 years of infertility was hard.  That is a joke.  That was the easiest part of our marriage as I look back now.  Parenting isn’t for sissies or the weak – yet I’m feeling very weak right now.

The older three – all making choices that have left us in a kind of SHOCK.  What happened to our family?  We adopted them to SAVE them from their very roots that got them in the foster system – so the pain of feeling them RETURN to those life choices is very real.  We thought with church, family closeness, prayers at meal times around a table  - they were destined for good futures breaking the veins of their history. 
Oh, I’ve been deceived and the shock is wearing me down.  My friends and people around me don’t know what to say and they’ve pulled away, I feel it.  I dread the “how are you” because I always feel like being truthful – but people can’t handle the truth usually. 

Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, vaping, blunts, sex, high school drop out, promiscuity, crimes – it’s all there.  Blatantly in front of me and I’ll be honest, I don’t know what to do.  Nothing obviously because the older three are all 18 plus and owning their lives away from us.  One runs constantly, back and forth like a yo-yo. One moved out – no money, no job – but heh…..   The other is laying low after we asked him to leave – robbing us and wracking up the legal charges in the judicial system.  All three have had court visits since the first of the year.  Fines with little ways to pay it – but heh, the cell phones keep going – can’t lose Snapchat!

So this is what God planned for them?  God – I’m mad at you.  I’m angry and don’t even care to attend church anymore – what is the point?  To listen to sermons and teachings that don’t get lived out?  It just hurts….they ask for sharing – hah.  I’m so tired of the “sorrow” of the angst of these years……I don’t want to be that person who shares this crap life my children are embracing.  It hurts too much.  Ironically I teach 7th and 8th graders.  I look at them and think….no one knows the direction they will go – my kids were here too….oh the hope they held at that age.
  
I remember the social worker that declared we were her only success story.  Proud of that – oh, pride has fallen….the “success” is gone and the pain is so real to watch them fall down and down…..two of them joined the church and even got baptized for pete sake……so ridiculous now.  Why I cry out.  I remember the cry to God for “give me just one child!” and the whys of not birthing our children – but the joy in the journey of adoption recognizing God’s plan.  Oh, what a bad joke that I hope is a deep valley with a large climbing hill to come yet….I feel side swiped in this journey.  Disillusionment all the way.  My Mom used to always tell me about adoptions gone wrong – oh, ours wasn’t going to be that way – we’d beat the odds.  Cynicism is creeping in.  I used to look at families who adopted with such great joy – now I look at them and think “hope yours don’t end up on paths like ours!” and I fear for them…..watching and remember the days of diapers and youth sports knowing we had no clue of what was to come and they don’t either. 

So I’ll mark myself late for work and go show up to sit at court – supporting in sadness the choices of one on the run, to see if he’ll do the right thing or whether a warrant for his arrest will be apart of this journey yet.  The trials aren’t over – but the heart doesn’t stop loving despite their poor choices, and thus the pain of this parenting journey goes on. 

How many people are out there, hiding their pain, pretending like they have it together when they don’t?  I’m real – I’m honest.  But it still doesn’t make it any easier. 
The 10 year old sleeps peacefully now – we’ve one more to keep moving with, despite the strains of the older three – keeping it together despite the brokenness that surrounds us – finding beauty in each new day is the challenge I face.  Ironically I’m an optimistic person….but that is getting harder to maintain.

Beauty of life – oh where are you?  I will keep searching…..for the glimpses are what keeps me going.
Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. ~ Ann Voskamp

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