Stories

Paul has been delving deeper into his life story as of late. Partly because I finally got it together enough to transfer his story from "out of my mouth" (his phrase for the paperless storytelling that sometimes happens in those dark and dreamy moments before sleep) and onto the printed page.  And while I love "out of my mouth" stories, there is something solid and substantial about holding a story, with its heft and crackle and smells of ink, firmly in one's hand.

We are a people of story. We need stories to learn, to grow, to make sense of the world around us. Stories connect us to our past, give us roots, a sense of place and permanency, fill us with resolve to spread our wings and seek new adventure. Stories give us hope.

No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.  - Maya Angelou

Children from hard places especially need story, need to tell and retell story in part to answer the big questions that comprise their past: Who am I? What happened to me? Is what happened to me my fault? What will happen to me now?

These life stories can be difficult because they contain such sadness and tragedy and loss. There are unanswered questions - unanswerable questions. Paul's story, which is his own private story and only his to tell when he is ready, contains many such questions. There are huge gaps about which we know nothing. It's a many-piece puzzle with no picture reference and no way of knowing how many pieces might be missing. It's easy to want to fill in the gaps with wishful, loving platitudes "Your first mother and father loved you so much that..." or with what-might-have-beens or with outright untruths. But this is something we cannot do. We cannot lie or platitude or wish away those hard gaps.

I naturally use story in my counseling work (where it is sometimes called narrative therapy or metaphor therapy, which you really only need to know if you're preparing for the board exam). My office is stuffed with folktales and fables and "Tell a Story" games and personal narratives littered on scraps of paper, complete with childish illustrations.

Sometimes I get calls or emails from teachers whose students have written such a story with a bit more...darkness...than they are used to seeing. One student with a hard, hard past, after months of games and metaphors and play both in my office and in family therapy, finally penned his story to paper. Penned it for a class essay project, which after reading the teacher quickly escorted to me.

The student entered my office warily, and when he saw the story on the table his eyes blazed and his arms crossed.

"You're not in trouble," I said. (They never are in trouble with the "upstairs Mrs. Thompson." That role is completely out of my giftedness. They may have to engage in some natural consequences or "energy renewers" when they are with me, and I have been known to encourage students whose poor choices left havoc in their wake to get busy cleaning up said havoc, but never "in trouble".)

He didn't look convinced. "This is Powerful." I looked him in the eye, placed my hand on the story. "Powerful."

"It is?" He seemed to consider this. He knew full well that the story he'd written wasn't "good" or "neat" or "lovely", knew it wasn't written with the only goal an A at the end, knew the language contained therein wasn't much tolerated at this private Christian school. But powerful? Yes.

We sat at the table and read the story and acknowledged its pain and considered it in the objective sunlight streaming from my brilliant window and both knew something had changed, something had healed.

"It isn't finished," he said finally, with that twinkle in his eye I'd learned to recognize.

"No," I agreed. "It isn't finished."

And he went on to write more of his story, and he is still writing, and now the stories reach beyond himself to others, to my own little guy, from healing his own hurt to understanding and empathizing with the hurt of those who've walked a similar path.

And so we help Paul tell his story with those same goals of understanding, healing, growing, with those same goals of hope. Patty Cogen, in Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child, recommends using the wording Big Change in the child's life story to note those life altering losses and transitions surrounding first family, caregivers, orphanages, adoption, moves. So much out of their control. So many Big Changes.

Paul has questions. "But how did you know to find me MIS?" he asked one evening after pouring over the pictures of one such Big Change, the day we met, May 7, 2012.

So many thoughts whirled through my head. How had we known how to find him? How had our little family connected with this one particular little boy half a world away? International adoption laws and adoption agencies and missionaries and matching meetings that seem on the surface so random yet are anything but. "We prayed for a little boy and God used our adoption agency to help us find you," I finally answered.

He considered this. "But how did God even talk?" he wondered. Then, brightening. "I know! In you's heart."

In my heart. Absolutely in my heart. That is where his story and my story connect, where his part one ends and part two begins, the day his name flashed across my email, the day I saw his pictures, the day I read what little I know of the first part of his story - joyfully and fiercely in my heart.

A Cry of the Heart

My head has been telling me I need to deal with something that my heart would just as soon avoid, thank you very much. Because sometimes staying clinically detached from my own big feelings is a most necessary coping mechanism. People sometimes ask me, especially when I worked for Child Protective Services, how I manage not to bring those sad and painful stories home with me after being embroiled in them during the day. And the answer - I just don’t.  I do what I can do and give the rest to God. I compartmentalize. I distance. I read. I write. As willing as I am to encourage and empathize and jump into someone else’s grief journey, I’d just as soon avoid my own mud pit.

But the truth is this big feeling is staying with me, like a wet blanket I can’t quite shrug off. It’s there, weighing me down, not really affecting my day-to-day but always with me, right at the edges of thought. And so sometimes the feeling leeches out. I tear up at innocuous comments or sappy commercials or, say, while playing a party game with my siblings. My daughter wants me to see Les Miserables with her because she knows I loved the book and the play and because I love sweeping, soaring, musical epics. Let’s see: a story about loss and redemption and abandonment and punishment and death in which reviewers said, “Wonderful - I cried for three hours.” Cried for three hours? No, thank you. How ‘bout some Will Ferrell? Talladega Nights? Sweet baby Jesus? Anyone?

There is also the danger that detaching from the sad, painful feelings creates a detachment from the joyful, loving feelings. One can’t numb the negative feelings without also numbing the positive. And there is so much positive, so much joy and love that I don’t want to miss.

That’s what my head is telling me. My heart, however, is sticking its fingers in its ears and yelling, “Na na na na na I can’t hear you!”

Because, honestly, I don’t quite know how. I’m not sure exactly what I’m feeling - sadness and guilt and resignation and anger and even maybe a bit of relief which leads to more guilt and even more anger and also some hopelessness, woven in with a despairing sense that all of this was never even part of my story and therefore not even my feelings to feel and so I'm just being a shmuck.

It’s a mess. I’m a mess.

So I’ve decided to deal by writing it out, journaling, blogging, thinking as I think best - through my fingers.

To recap: Before we adopted Palamang, in several pictures we had of him, we noticed him with a particular little boy. In one sweet video, a group of preschool boys are singing the ABC’s and this little boy (little little, tiny tiny) joins them, hand on Paul’s head to make the turn then sitting next to Paul and tapping his foot to the ABC beat.

There are a total of six boys in this video, but I don't have permission to show their photos.

When Paul came home, this was the little boy he missed. The little boy he talked about. They’d shared a sleeping mat. They’d chatted and patted each other to sleep. Paul had protected him (at least in Paul’s mind) against monsters and big boys. Then Paul met his new mommy and daddy and Retselise was left behind.

On the day we met Paul, Retselise watched the proceedings from the fringe. Sam took this picture.

Paul wanted Retselise to get a mommy and a daddy, too. We asked how we could help him and we were told to pray for him and his sister, to pray that they would be matched for adoption. Because they were ready. Paper ready. So we prayed.  And when we learned that there was a shortage of food and of electricity to cook the food at his orphanage, we saved money to donate and then asked our friends to donate, too. (Which you did. Thank you.) 

And then we started talking. No, not really talking. Scattershot, unfinished questions and half-formed arguments and looks that communicated more than words. “Could we...?” “What if...?” “Two more...?” “Why...?” “Why not...?” “But it’s so...” “Expensive.” “Scary.” “I can’t manage...” “Vitamins.” “Matching socks.” "To plan dinner." “How?” and “Could we? Could God?”

And then Lesotho signed the Hague Convention for Intercountry Adoption and suspended acceptance of new adoption applications until March 1, 2013.  So we took a deep breath and said, “OK. We have some time. We’ll pray. And when Lesotho reopens, we’ll see what God says.”

So I prayed. And I asked God to make it very clear, in two very specific ways, if this was what He wanted for us, for our family, for Retselise and his sister. I put out a fleece. Two fleeces. Because this was too big for me. Too big in so many ways. We'd spent all our money on the first adoption and didn’t see another $30,000 appearing on the horizon anytime soon. We’re still, as parents, figuring out attachment and trauma and sibling relationships with the first adoption. Could we handle two more? Because while I know and respect that there are families happily raising tribes of four kids, six kids, twelve kids, we've always been an only child household. Was this what was best for our kids? For these kids? Were we what was best? Because adoption isn’t about good intentions. It must go way, way beyond good intentions into therapeutic parenting and balancing everyone’s needs and educating ourselves and structuring our lives and putting them first and... and... and. And dear God, I can’t remember to complete a ten-day course of antibiotics. How will I ever remember daily, to the minute, lifetime use of anti-retrovirals? How?

And also there’s the selfish side of me, the side that likes quiet time and date nights and sleeping until 7 am. The side that worries how to pay for school and activities and clothes and college. The side that hates going to the doctor, even when it’s not me going. The side that mutters grumpily about the chauffeur duties for two children, let alone four. That side. I hate that side, but it's there all the same.

Then we got an email that Nancy, while delivering food to MIS, found Retselise very ill. My heart lurched. We prayed and friends prayed and many, many people prayed. And God answered - answered big on what was a very difficult day with horrific news about other six year olds, seven year olds. Retselise was released from the hospital to the care of Ministry of Hope Lesotho, a smaller, supportive foster home whose director is a trained nurse and a social worker, who prepares the children emotionally for family life, for adoption. Retselise was smiling. He was eating. We told Paul. He said, as if we were a bit late to the party, “I know. He’s gonna get’em mommy and daddy.”

One of my “fleeces” - answered.

One down, one to go. I started rearranging bedrooms in my mind and planning a bathroom schedule and reading recent studies on HIV treatment and researching the best school placement for an eleven year old English Language Learner. Would Sam share a bedroom or move into the office? We still weren’t talking, weren’t saying the A word out loud, but was it feasible to add a third bathroom?

Then another email - back in the hospital. Hopeful but please pray! And another, Christmas Eve: He’s taken a turn for the worse. The MoHL director is going to the hospital to say goodbye for all of us. And finally the dreaded confirmation. He’s with his Daddy, the one who loves him best, free from pain and sickness, loneliness and hunger. 

It was Christmas so I wiped my tears and smiled and sought comfort in Scripture and tried not to beat myself up for my doubts and my worries. Because now, in retrospect, what did it matter if we had to share a bathroom or a bedroom or add a leaf to the table or buy more fruit or navigate the complexities of the Jefferson County ELL program? It didn’t matter, none of it matters. God could handle all of that. But God had other plans. The dream I had was not the dream I had asked God to give me. I dreamed Retselise went home. But not to my home.

When I told Paul his eyes grew wide with surprise and he stomped his foot and he said, “I’m sad! I’m SAD!”

Then he wanted to know. "What about Retselise’s mommy and daddy? He have mommy and daddy in heaven?" “Yeah, buddy. He has a mommy and daddy in heaven. A great mommy and daddy.” And Paul nodded, content that his prayer had been answered. Retselise finally had a mommy and daddy, too.

The faith of a child.

Because I’m still struggling. I’m still stomping my feet, with eyes wide in disbelief. “I'm sad! I’m SAD! I AM SAD!”

That's what my head needs my heart to admit. I'm just sad.