We are just emerging from a three-month-long (Feb-April) journey trudging through the swampland of trauma and grief with our most attachment-challenged child. Deep, deep, painful waters. But, very necessary for her healing. From my own journey through the grief of infertility, I remember learning that grief is God's gift to help us get from one place in our heart to another.
Shortly after my RADish wrote me her first ever love note, she told Jason and I her entire. life. history. for three hours one early February Sunday afternoon. Amazing evidence of her trusting us enough to entrust us with her life story, but oh, so vulnerable . . . which then led to three months of nearly daily rage, turned to grief (MAD covers SAD). Early on in these three months, God helped me to see that my sweet girl was profoundly sad (behind all that mad, controlling behavior), so I changed my approach to empathy and God used that empathy in the midst of her mad, mad, mad to begin really reaching her heart. God is so good to gently lead and guide us in the way we should go.
Sometime in March, I started a blog post (never posted) that describes part of the three-month swampland!
I don't ever want to forget the pain and agony it is for a child to have to learn to trust again. To learn to love again. I don't want to forget the torment of a child entangled by the evil and oppression of abandonment and rejection.
I don't want to ever forget what it is like to have my child entrust her entire life history to us. While I'd like to forget, I don't want to forget the utter horrendousness from which God has rescued her. I don't want to forget laying on the couch because I could not function after hearing it all, but hearing Jesus whisper to me, "I know. I know." I don't want to forget the encouragement it was to realize she trusted us enough to tell us. I don't want to forget what it was like to really SEE her and KNOW her and how that has helped me love her better. I don't want to forget that I think she is the bravest girl I have ever known in my life.
I don't want to forget what it is like to see her twirl around in my living room, realizing she is already a shining display of God's mercy and love, even though her road to full healing is still quite a long ways off. I don't want to ever forget knowing clearly - after hearing her full history - that our God carried my sweet girl every single day of her life. He rescued her from unbelievable oppression and evil. I don't want to forget how this knowledge spurred me on to keep enduring the very difficult days.
I don't want to forget God's "incomparably great power" (Ephesians 1:19) that can transform a child from darkness to light - often on a daily basis. I don't want to forget what it is like to walk by faith, trusting God is working and healing, even though what my eyes see looks absolutely opposite: Desolate. Hopeless. I don't want to forget how thankful I am for the Holy Spirit who gently guides me to know what to do and when to do it as her mom when I ask Him for wisdom.
I believe that we are in the middle of some major progress towards healing and attachment with our child. But, it has been rough - to say the least. I don't ever want to take for granted all that she and we have been through when things are going smoothly again. Because I don't want to ever forget what an unbelievable miracle it is for this child to have survived such abandonment and rejection and be able - through God's mercy and power - to begin to trust again.
I don't want to ever forget the sweetest blessing and relief to my own soul to spend hours rocking my baby girl, with her head buried deeply into my chest, learning to trust like a newborn baby.
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“Grief is not something to be fixed. It is something to be borne, together.” (Melton)
My sweet girl and I . . . we have been bearing up under her grief . . . together. What does a child need most when she is very, very sad? A mommy to comfort her, snuggle her close and hold her tight, carry her, rub her back and pray for her . . . often for hours in a day. All of the grief of the past three months has produced the fruit of a stronger-than-ever attachment growing between her and I because I have spent so much time comforting her. And more importantly, she has let me. So painful, but so beautiful.
I so badly want to do something to remove the painful, shattered pieces from my daughter's heart. Instead, God wants me to go to the depths with her in her grief, comfort her and speak Jesus's truth to her broken heart. He is near to the broken-hearted. He is her Healer. He is her Redeemer. He is her Savior. He is right now taking the broken, painful, yucky, owie (the way I pray it with her) pieces of her life and He is making something beautiful out of it.
This is my hope. My God is able and I believe He will continue healing her.
{Somewhere along the way, Abram turned four, Isaiah jumped on a bike and rode it without training wheels the first time and my oldest girl has become an awesome, mature helper to this mamma!}
