I've been remembering the summer I spent volunteering at the orphanage a lot during this past Thanksgiving/Christmas season.  It was an intense summer.  Some planned experiences and other completely unexpected.

Entering the orphanage for the first time I didn't know what to expect.  Was there a routine to follow?  How were we expected to interact with the kids?  I followed the women I was with to a hot stuffy room with blankets spread out on the floor.  The workers brought the children in and laid them down.  Some of the kids could crawl/drag themselves over to us, but most were not mobile.  The first day we picked up one child, played with her for awhile and then went on to play with the next child.

Many of the kids responded positively to the interaction and would often cry when we set them down.  One little girl cried when I picked her up.  I tried interacting with her the same as the other children, but she only became more upset, calming down only when she was set back on the blanket.  During the rest of our time that day I watched as she reacted the same way with the other volunteers.  Several visits later the orphanage workers quit brining her in altogether, so I went searching for her.  She was laying in a sopping diaper and wet sheets behind the cold metal bars of her crib.

As I walked over to the crib the mere presence of someone standing there clearly made her agitated.  I asked her name.  Nigar.  Nigar wanted only to be left alone.  What made her so fearful I can only imagine, but I decided to spend time with her every day I visited.  Standing over her made her nervous and even a gentle touch drew her into herself even more, so I pulled up a chair and sang.  Eventually she wouldn't wince when I would come in to sing.  I then started to stroke her arm lightly for short periods to see if she would tolerate it and slowly she relaxed with that as well.  It was my hope that eventually she would allow herself to be held without recoiling.  But the summer was over too quickly.  It was time to leave.  I talked with one of the other women volunteering and explained where to find her and what I was doing hoping Nigar would continue to get loved on.  It was hard to leave.  How I wished I could have brought her home.

The family I was traveling with had planned to stop in Turkey for a week and I was very excited about our time there.  It had been my dream for as long as I could remember to return to Turkey and it was finally happening.  Our plane landed and we arrived at the hotel about midnight.  Sometime around 3am I woke up shaking.  Wait, it was the bed that was shaking.  In a 3am fog I finally realized it was an earthquake.  The woman I was sharing the room with was already in the doorway and as I quickly joined her we watched as other hotel guests rushed into the parking lot in their whitey-tighties.  It seemed to last forever, but finally the shaking stopped and we went back to bed.  Smart?  I don't know.  What is a tourist supposed to do once an earthquake is over?  I laid there for awhile wondering if it would start again.  The next morning the news report said it had been a 9.8 earthquake centered about 30 miles from where we were in Istanbul.  The casualty rate quickly climbed from the hundreds to the thousands and kept going up.  Later they would downgrade it to a 9.3 or 9.4 and estimated that over 18,000 people had died.  The area we were in saw little damage, but as I watched the news of all that was happening just 30 miles away I couldn't just sit there.  A group of people from the hotel arranged to go out to help find survivors and I quickly signed up to go.  To be honest I was quite scared of what I might see.  This was not the way I envisioned a trip to Turkey turning out.  As it was, most of the rescue work that could be done by individual people had been done in the first day or two after the earthquake.  By the time we arrived they were brining in heavy machinery to move the concrete slabs that had once been apartments.  Rescue dogs searched the rubble for survivors.  The dogs eventually came and found no one alive at the apartment complex we spent much of our time working.  A couple days later I was able to join a group that was delivering relief supplies to people living in tents cities set up by the Red Crescent (the Muslim version of the Red Cross).   It started to rain not long after the earthquake and the ground of the tent cities was squishy with mud.

I had left for my summer full of anticipation and on a spiritual high. The months leading up to the trip were a break from the normal college routine and I had had much time to sit and be with God, to study the bible and spend time worshiping.  I returned overwhelmed, angry and full of questions.  I was no longer riding a spiritual high, but muddling my way through a spiritual crisis.  There were so many things to wrestle through.

The college I attended had people briefly discuss their summer trips during chapel time.  What would I say?  I wasn't sure, but decided to talk a little about Nigar.  I was able to talk with a few people afterwards about the trip and mostly they were positive conversations, but one man did not like the idea of people visiting orphanages.  His objection was along the lines of the fact that these kids were not puppies that people could play with for a short time and leave behind.   In his opinion it was a cruel thing to do. Over the next month I wrestled with questions that people have struggled with for ages and  I came out with a stronger faith in the goodness and love of God and a stronger commitment to my relationship to Him as His child.  One question, though, I've had in the back of my mind since then.  It's maybe not as significant as some of the other questions, but I have still wondered about what the man said regarding the visit to orphanage.  Had my good intentions done more harm than good?

This past November I attended a retreat for foster and adoptive mothers.  One of the speakers was a woman named Stephanie Fast.  She was abandoned in South Korea around the age of 4 and spent the next 5 or 6 years as a street child.  She shared with us a small fraction of what she and many other street children endured everyday.  Eventually she was brought to an orphanage and adopted at the age of 9 by an American couple who had come intending to adopt an infant.  Her story was about redemption which is hard work.  She shared about a time prior to entering the orphanage when she was caught by the villagers she had been stealing food from and was tied to a moving water wheel.  About the time she was sure she would die a man, whom she could not see because of the effects of being drug through the water, took her off the water wheel and placed her on the ground.  He washed off her face, touched her gently and told her "You must live."  He did not give her food to satisfy her hunger or bring her home to give her a family, but he showed her kindness and spoke life into her.  She did not see his acts as cruel, but recognized the kindness and held onto his life giving words in the years to come.  Stephanie told the audience that our kindness and life giving words are not wasted.  They are not wasted.  I have wondered if I should have ever gone to the orphanage.  It made a difference in my life.  It opened my eyes to needs of orphans and people with disabilities, but what about the children I left behind?  Stephanie was in a place where she experienced cruelty just as the children that lived behind the cold walls of the orphanage.  She was shown kindness by a stranger and she held onto the kindness for many years to come.  God uses even our feeble attempts to show His love to His children and I pray that our kindness made a positive impact on the children and helped to show the value of life to the orphanage workers.

Rehab

I recently read a quote by Jon Bergeron, Ph D. for Hope for Orphans.  He said "Adoption day isn't the first day of happily ever after.  It's the first day of rehab."  Reflecting on our week at Outdoor School I think this was a good reminder for me.  In many ways our adoption experience has been ideal.  There's been the normal adjustments when adding another child to the family, but he came home sleeping through the night, is a pretty content boy and has fit fairly easily into our family.  It could seem like happily ever after from our side.  But from his side, it is rehab and we as parents need to be mindful of that.

I was getting ready to take the two youngest to their class the first morning of Outdoor School.  My plan was to stay with our son the whole time, but a part of me wondered if he'd be fine since things have been going so well.  I set him beside some toys and took my daughter across the room to change her diaper.  He quickly realized I wasn't beside him and while I could see him, he did not see me.  He fell apart.  Deep sobbing cries that he cried when we first took him from his foster home.  I finished with my daughter as quickly as I could and took him from the worker.  We sat on the couch while I sang to him.  He cried.  I rocked him.  He clung tightly.  I whispered I loved him.  He kept his head against my chest.  I told him I wasn't leaving him.  Slowly he looked up at me and then set his head back down, his grip remaining firm around me.  This was common in Hong Kong and our first few weeks home, but hasn't happened the past few months.  This is rehab.  His experience has been that new places become permanent and care givers disappear.  And while he is an easy going boy it will take time to see that Mommy and Daddy always come back and new places are not something to be feared.  Overall he had a great time running around outside and playing with the other kids at Outdoor School, but we made sure that my husband or I was with him all of the time.  It was a good reminder that the voice that whispers to keep him close needs to be heeded for this time of rehab, however long it may be.

During college I worked in Developmental Therapy as a Therapy Technician.  After graduating my boss moved away and I was promoted to her position of Developmental Specialist. (It still makes me laugh that they gave a 20-something childless college graduate the title of Developmental Specialist.  As a mother of four now I can see that I was fairly clueless, in the practical sense, of childhood development).  Many of the kids on my caseload I saw in various settings; at home, at school, out in the community.  Overall, their behaviors were pretty consistent.  One little girl, however, was a very different girl in therapy and at school than she was at home.  I knew I was no expert on parenthood, but could see a lot of the behavior problems she had at home had more to do with parenting style than her disability.  Her mother wanted things to be easier at home, but insisted that the behaviors were due the disability.  The daughter was defined by her disability in eyes of her mother.

We attended Outdoor School last week as a family and it was the first time we were around a large group of people who didn't know that our son has Down Syndrome.  While he does have some of the facial features common in people with DS, it's not always all that obvious and often times people are surprised when they hear his diagnosis.  However, the way he interacts with his world is like a child about 9-12 months younger than his chronological age.  So, at Outdoor School, I struggled for the first time about how to introduce my son.  When asked about his age do I tell them he's 2 and leave it at that.  Do I say he's 2 and has DS?  It probably depends on the situation, but I'm wondering how to decide when it's necessary to reveal his diagnosis.  Where is the line between defining my son by Down syndrome and facilitating how he and others interact together?  I think, so often, people with DS are defined in the eyes of others by their diagnosis.  They are not "Sally who has DS."  They are the "Down Syndrome child" and in a way loose their identity to their diagnosis.  DS certainly affects who my son is, but he is so much more than DS.  I guess I'm not sure how to express that in a simple introduction.

Good Gift

They are words not uncommon to a couple expecting a baby.  Words we probably uttered ourselves at some point in our three pregnancies.  "As long as the baby has 10 fingers  and 10 tens I'll be happy" or "As long as the baby is healthy I'll be happy."  And now I wonder why did I think my happiness should be  based on the health of my child.  In some ways it reminds me of the times I prep my kids before their birthday parties.  "Now remember to be thankful for every gift you receive, even if it's not what you were wanting or expecting."  A gift.  I wonder if we see children with disabilities as a gift.  As a good gift.  I suppose I've been more aware of the words people use surrounding children since adopting our son and wonder what attitudes I had before becoming a parent of a child with a disability.  A family I know was told this summer that they "deserved a healthy child."  There is a whole other discussion about what we as Americans think we deserve, but for this discussion think of the opposite of that statement.  When a child with a disability is born the opposite is either that the family didn't deserve that child or they got exactly what was coming to them.  I don't believe the person meant it that way, but the statement itself reveals the value we place on "normal," typical and healthy.

Everyone of us is living life with challenges.  Everyone of us needs the help of God and a community of people to overcome these challenges.  Most likely my challenges and your challenges are easier to disguise than the challenges my son faces.  What value do we place on people based on their challenges?

My children have received many different types of gifts.  Some work as expected right out of the box.  Others take more time and effort than anticipated.  Both are good gifts.  And so it is with our children.  Psalm 127:3 (NLT) says "Children are a gift from the LORD" and Matthew 7:11 (NIV) says "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"  Good gifts.  Our children are good gifts.  The bible does not qualify it to say "typically developing healthy children" are good gifts.  A child with a disability may not be what some were envisioning, but God whispers "Trust me my child.  Trust me in the unexpected.  Trust me through the difficulties.  I have given you what is good."

3 Months Home

It's really quite amazing how different three months can feel.  When waiting to bring our son home it felt like and eternity.  Now that he's home I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by.   We've taken this time to get settled in as a family of six and begin to get to know our son.  He is a mover, he loves to be in on the action and he's quite the determined little boy.  He enjoys giving and getting hugs, whenever he hears music his little body can't help but bop along.  Our big boys still enjoy playing with him, but they've gotten past the point where everything he does is cute.  There's the normal "Mom! He's getting into my ______!!"  Our daughter is coming to terms with the fact that she is no longer the youngest.  She had to let him know exactly who's boss, but she toned that down a bit (with a good deal of parental supervision!)  She's now claimed him as her brother.

We've started school now as well.  This year I have two kids doing school and two little ones.  The first couple days were . . . well, they were awful quite frankly.  I wondered how in the world we would get through this year, but I adjusted my expectations and we made some big changes in the schedule and things have gone better overall.  I may have some more schedule tweaking to do.

We've also used the time to get a feel for what kind of therapy he may need and how we would work that into our schedule.  As his evaluations for speech, physical and occupational therapy approached, I was feeling like we would probably need minimal help at this point.  As far as his physical development goes he came home doing more than we expected and he's just continued to progress.  Verbally, he's not forming words, but is quite eager to communicate using sign language.  The physical and occupational therapists said at his age, these two therapies as pretty closely connected and the physical therapist felt that he really didn't need much outside therapy at this point.  She gave me some activities to work with him on and we'll go back to see her in a month and then again in about six months.  The speech therapist works mainly with having children learn to vocalize and since he is more interested in communicating through sign right now, she gave me some ways to work with him to help with his beginning vocal sounds as we continue to work on sign language.  In the end he won't be needing a lot of therapy right now.  As he gets older, that could very well change.  I am thankful to have a background in therapy, because I think it's made it easier to work with him.  However, I am very glad to have therapists who are willing to work with us and help us know best how to work with him, since my training is not in these specific areas.

Do you know what his biggest assets in therapy have been?  His big brothers and sister.  He's so determined to keep up with them that he's learned to hop on his little push car to keep up with them (something the physical therapist was surprised he could do), he can climb up on the couch with them now and he's willing to walk across the uneven grass to follow them.  I'm drawing the line at learning to climb on the dining room chairs for now, though.  The last thing I want to see is his little grinning face as he proudly stands atop the table.  While teaching him signs, I was really wanting to use the sign for "more" exclusive to eating, so I know that means he's hungry.  For a few days I was trying to teach him the sign "again" if he wanted to do another activity.   I knew he could do it.  He gave a few half-hearted tries, but just wasn't too interested.  Then I was squirting him and my daughter with water which was quite the fun game.  I signed "again" to have him ask for another squirt, but it was my daughter that started signing it.  He watched her closely and then signed "again" perfectly.  It has since become one of his most used signs.  Most of the therapy at his stage is fun and games and the older kids are eager to help.   Group therapy helps make the learning more fun for him.  :)

From the Darkness

The Blessing of Verity is a blog I follow regularly, but this particular post kept bringing me back over the course of a week.  In many ways it is full of hope, describing the positive changes for children in an orphanage in Eastern Europe and particularly in the life of a little girl named Katie.  But it also shows the reality that there are still children left and there are more children living in similar conditions in different orphanages in the same country.  I left  the blog with my emotions raw and turned to my devotions.

Right now I'm on the fifth or sixth reading of a book called Real Moms . . . Real Jesus by Jill Savage.  It has been a huge encouragement as a mother in my relationship with God and my family.  That particular night I started reading chapter 10: The Truth About Our Emotions.  What struck me was not what the author had to say, but the bible passage she used.  It reminded me of the Musser Family behind The Blessing of Verity.  They were the first to adopt from this orphanage and helped to bring to light the severe neglect of these children.  They have recently returned from adopting Tommy from the same orphanage since bringing Katie home.

Jill Savage uses the example of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11.  She says "When Jesus finally arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days.  The grief was overwhelming as the women led Jesus to Lazarus' tomb.  When they arrived at the place where Lazarus had been laid, Jesus wept outside the tomb."  I do not know the Musser family personally, but I imagine that there was much grief in seeing the reality of the situation that so many children lived in.

"After spending some time in grief, Jesus made a request.  'Roll the stone aside,' Jesus told them"(vs 38-39).  Just as Jesus did not sit in his grief, the Mussers took action and tackled mountains of paperwork to reach into the darkness for their Katie.

"But Martha, the dead man's sister, protested, 'Lord, he has been dead for four days.  The smell with be terrible'" (v39b).  No doubt they faced push back just as Jesus did.  Quite literally the rooms the children were housed in and the children themselves had a terrible smell.  And there are always questions, perhaps in their own minds and certainly in the minds of others.  "Why would you take this one?  What about your retirement?  What about the children you already have?"  And the list goes on.

"Jesus responded, 'Didn't I tell you that you would see God's glory if you believe?' So they rolled the stone aside.  Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, 'Father, thank you for hearing me.  You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me'" (vs 40-42).  Putting aside conventional wisdom, the Mussers trusted that they would see God's glory in the midst of the impossible.

"Then Jesus shouted, 'Lazarus, come out!'" (v 43).  Being the hands and feet of Jesus they traveled thousands of miles to call Katie out of her hell.

"And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in grave clothes, his face wrapped in a head cloth.  Jesus told them, 'Unwrap him and let him go!'" (v 44).  Katie was unwrapped from the neglect, starvation and fear that she was bound in.  She was not dead in a literal sense, but had been given a death sentence by her society.  She was alive, but not living.  She existed.  Barely.  Because a family had the courage to follow God into the darkness and unknown, the life of Katie and dozens of others have been transformed.

We live in a culture where we want to make our mark in the world.  How much more of a mark can God make if we are willing to follow even into the unknown.

Brandi lives in this orphanage.  Brandi still waits for a family to call her own, to help unbind her from merely existing.  If you know someone who would follow God into the unknown would you share this blog post from Katie's mom with them?

God has a path of faith for each of us to follow.  Where is He calling you?

Settling In

We've been home with our son for about 6 weeks now.  We were just talking about a few of the changes we've seen in him since getting home.  While in Hong Kong and when we first arrived home he ground his teeth a lot.  They said that was normal for him.  Just the other day we realized that we haven't heard him grinding his teeth in quite some time.  I don't know exactly what that means, but we think it's a good thing. :)  In the beginning he didn't want to be put down in the grass in the backyard (it is dry and prickly, so who could blame him).  We could tell being out in the yard was stressful for him. Now, he's still a little slow to get down, but as long as he has his shoes on he soon wants out of our arms to get to the sandbox or little playhouse we have.

When he first came home he would fall and we'd think "Ow, that had to hurt" but he had no reaction.  He'd just get back up and act like nothing happened.  Now, he reacts.  It's not an overreaction, but he cries and comes to seek us for comfort.  For those who know a little bit about attachment in adoption, you'll know that's a great sign for attachment.  At the beginning we were still strangers.  He didn't know how we'd react, but now he knows we're here to comfort him.  After a hug, kiss and little snuggle he's ready to hop down and resume playing.

It was also interesting to see the big difference in how adoptive parents reacted vs people who haven't adopted.  The adoptive parents would always ask permission to hold him and even touch him.  If I said yes, they were still hesitant.  We're learning that part of his personality is to be friendly and if he's not tired he'll usually go to people outside our family.  At the beginning of an adoption this is actually quite stressful as an adoptive parent, but most people tend to think this is a good sign.  Why is it stressful?  Because attachment in adoption is a really important aspect in forming healthy relationships.  In extreme cases a child can develop Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) where they are charming to everyone around them except to the person or people they should attach to.  Because of past hurt or neglect in the area of attachment, in order to protect themselves from being hurt by their adoptive parents they will do everything to push them away.  If the child has learned to attach to a care giver, as our son did with his foster mother, they tend to have less problem attaching after adoption.  Thankfully, our little guy seems to be doing well in attaching to us, but in the beginning we weren't sure how that process would go.

All three of our older children are "typical," meaning they do not have disabilities.  I wondered how our life would change when we brought our son home.  Would Down Syndrome be a large part of our lives?  How different would it be to have a child with a disability?  We are not very far into this journey, but DS has not played a significant role in our daily lives.  He'll start therapies soon, so we'll find ways to accommodate those into our schedule, but day to day he is not our son with DS.  He is simply our son.  Our son who likes to hop right in a good wrestling match with his older siblings.  Our son who finds it fun to yank on his big sister's ponytails.  Our son who happily pushes boxes around the dining room.  Our son who makes changing his clothes like wrestling an alligator.  Our son who wants to snuggle when he gets tired.  Our son who gives us so much joy as do all of our children.