disruption

Last Friday, before a judge, Jonny and I took the final steps in the process to allow Ezra Samuel to be adopted by his new family. We relinquished our parental rights, and he was immediately thereafter adopted by his new family. My stomach was a wreck all week leading up to that appointment, but I woke up Friday feeling very peaceful and spent my morning working in the soil, while being flooded with memories both good and bad.

I remember:
The agonizing months of waiting to bring our boys home
The stark contrast between raw fear and indescribable love
Praying more than I ever have in my life
The phone call with the news that we would really be able to bring them home
Not being mentally prepared for Beatrix’s homebirth because my mind was so wrapped up in that news that we received days before she was due to be born
The surreal feelings that surrounded those weeks after her birth, plagued with sleep deprivation and unbelievable excitement
The day that the kids and I left Jonny at the airport only six weeks after Beatrix was born
The fear that I may never see him again
The pain of separation that we had never known
The tears my boys cried on the way home
The phone call that Jonny made it safely more than twenty four hours later.
The shock in his voice, I don’t think he was aware even, witnessing third world poverty for the first time in his life
The day he told me he was terribly sick and was afraid that he had eaten something bad
My overwhelming fear that he really would die, irrational though it was
Speaking to my new boys on the phone for the very first time, hearing their precious voices.
Missing Jonny so terribly.
Getting the phone call from him that he had been stopped by immigration and wasn’t allowed to leave the country with our boys.
Falling to floor with the most powerful wail of my life.
Sitting in a hotel with my parents watching my children swim, wondering if Jonny would be returning alone.
Sitting in the E.R. with a very sick baby just days later, and getting the phone call that he had received clearance from the Liberian government to bring our boys home, against all odds.
Thanking God over and over
Praying they would arrive safely
Watching Jonny walk towards me in that airport looking so grateful and relieved having just lived through the hardest ten days of his life
Gabriel walking towards me and throwing his skinny little arms around my neck
Samuel, afraid, clinging to Jonny for dear life, finally allowing me to pick him up and hold him

The incredible rush, realizing that they were finally home and safe after almost a year and a half of waiting

I could go on and on and on, but for some reason I have been so floored by the contrast between those first powerful moments with our boys and these recent ones when we let Samuel go. I was so full of hope that day in the airport; but it was my hope, my dream. I have to let that go now. I have to move on from this place of holding on, of replaying everything I could have done differently. I have to forgive myself for where I failed. I have to stop asking “why?” I have to find a way to accept what is, and what I never had any control over. I have to find a way to look on all of this with joy. The joy in having played a powerful role in Samuel’s life. The joy of knowing that he is safe, happy, and secure and that we did our part in getting him to that place.

To adopt a child is a beautiful experience; a privilege like no other.

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I was up with Beatrix late last night and then up early with Larkspur, so Jonny let me get back in bed and sleep late this morning. Funny how staying in bed for that extra time resulted in me having a very out of whack day. I should have just gotten up and gotten into my routine and had an extra cup of coffee. We aren’t schedule people at all, but I guess we really do have a routine and getting up so much later than usual made it hard for me to have a mentally peaceful day.

When I am feeling scattered, if I find a project that I can do start to finish, sometimes that will pull me back together. So, this afternoon while Beatrix was taking her little power nap (her naps are so short!) I decided to sew a pair of long bloomers for Larkspur to wear under dresses. I have been thinking about how I would make them for awhile now and knew they would be a quick project. So, I was pretty dismayed when I realized I had made two of the same leg (I was using white muslin so the right side wasn’t obvious), and didn’t have enough ric rac to sew another leg and finish the bloomers (I am not about to rip out those seams.) I will have to make a trip to JoAnn (it’s nearly half an hour from my house, so I seldom go) and I guess Larkspur will get two pairs of bloomers rather than one. That’s okay, I was planning on making two pairs, just not two identical ones. So anyway, I guess this is one of those days that I just need to be grateful that schooling was finished, children were fed three healthy meals, and soon I will be able to sit down with my knitting needles and hopefully soothe my scattered brain a bit.
On a different topic, lately I have been struggling with justifying spending time online, whether that time being spent on my own blog or reading others. It is hard to find times when my children don’t need me and I can sit here without ignoring them. So, these past two weeks I have gone to a system of composing my blog posts on the weekends (today being an exception), so that all I have to do during the week is hit publish. I try to keep my posts in line with my goal of having a record of childhood for my family, and my own journey through motherhood including the little things that bring me joy along the way. I am not sure if I will keep doing things this way, but it’s kind of nice. I suspect I will do sort of a mix of daily blogging and doing a bit ahead of time when I have a lot of pictures to share.
Composing posts all on the same day means that many of my thoughts during the week don’t get recorded. Nor do all the struggles that occur in the day to day life of being a young mother, an adoptive mother, raising a relatively large family, homeschooling children with special needs, living a relatively green lifestyle, my own struggles with my past (you know I was once a punk rock wild child right?) and I could go on and on.
I have in the past really really layed myself out there getting pretty raw with certain aspects of my life, especially regarding the son we adopted and gave up a year later. Sometimes I wonder why I did that. Those posts are very painful to revisit. Lately I have felt very introverted, but have wanted to continue to keep my little record even if I am not sharing much of what’s in my head. I do love taking photos, hence the fact that my blog has become less wordy and more of a photo blog.
It certainly is hard to write about the less joyful things. Week before last there was the pain of searching for the perfect birthday card to send to Ezra (he is now called Samuel) and the perfect book to go with it. And then, trying to figure out what the hell to write in that card. I didn’t want to talk about it here, but now it seems worth mentioning. I wanted to write something inside his book (the first of many he will receive from me as he grows up), but just couldn’t figure out what to write there either, so I simply wrote his name inside.
Next week we go to court to relinquish our parental rights to Samuel. I don’t know how that is going to feel, but I have been dreading it, even though we know it’s the right thing to do, and it is the next step in the disruption process. Sometimes it feels like such a nightmare and I just want to wake up. But maybe after this last painful step I will be able to do a better job of moving on. Maybe I can stop wishing things were different and accept what is.

We received these pictures of Samuel yesterday. He looks good doesn’t he? He has been with his new family for three months and he is like a transformed child. I don’t take that personally, I thank God for taking care of him and for using us to get him to where he is meant to be. This will probably be the last picture I share of Samuel, as I won’t feel that I have the right to after we relinquish him, but I know that there are still some of you reading here who prayed for him and I just wanted you to see him one last time and to know that he is doing very well. We did the right thing, but I miss him. I guess I always will.

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