Letters to Million: 3

Dear Million:
I'm not going to lie.
The past three months have been the most challenging for me, in my parenting journey.
Your little heart has so much hurt in it.
And the hurt spills over into our little family.
But I will pursue you.
I will recklessly abandon a normal life in search for healing for you.
I will love you no matter what.
Today's your third birthday.
Three is a significant number.
I'm praying for this to be a significant year for you.
That many new things will be learned.
That many cracks in your armor will be chiseled down and reshaped.
That your heart would soften.
That your mind would heal.
That your spirit would be tender.
I love you no matter what.
Mama

(Repost from Two Years Ago) Lessons In Anti-Panic No. 31,245: Trusting In the Goodness of God

Many of you reading this will remember a time in my life two years ago, when Million was stuck in the international adoption system...before getting stuck in the system again. I was tired of hearing "not today" nearly every week day, repeatedly, for months.

Million had had many health struggles, and it was tough to see many of my adoption friends bringing their children home with seemingly few snags in the process.

I went back today and read through some of my old adoption blog posts from that time in my life, and felt this one from two years ago on April 25th, to be appropriate today...for other reasons in my life.  Please don't mind my repost.

I wore some very impractical heels today.
Just thought I'd let you all know.
They, along with a pair of pearls, will help keep everyone at a work conference I attended from realizing that my pants do not conform to the dress code regulations. I have buttons on my pockets. Heavens. To. Betsy.

Open and honest moment for Christians here: This week, my struggle is to choose to quietly trust. To trust that God's timing in this whole ordeal is good. His word says that He is good and all His actions are good. If I disbelieve God and allow myself to run amuck into a panic (which could very easily happen), I'm making God out to be a liar. And willfully choosing not to trust in Him or His word.

And if I'm being even more open and honest, I can understand that God's timing is good towards me. But I have a harder time seeing His timing toward our son as being good. How can remaining in (even "high quality") institutionalized care be "good"? What I need to remember is that because I serve a sovereign God, the one whom I worshiped this past Sunday, my sovereign God does not need to work His plan around what I think would be best for my son. Yes, He loves my son even more than I ever will or could. But that does not mean that He will arrange the events of our lives to coincide perfectly with what human minds believe is "good." Because human minds cannot grasp "good." I think of when the man came up to Jesus and said "good teacher, la di dah di dah…" (paraphrasing completely), and Jesus said "Why do you call me good? Only God is good."

My favorite Disney Movie is Sleeping Beauty. I love the attention to detail in the artwork. I love Tchaikovsky. I love the waltzes, the nature scenes. But what's more I always loved the phrase "quietly reposed" that described how Sleeping Beauty fell into her spell.

I must be quietly reposed in my trust of God. So there it is. The blatant and honest choice that I have to make. I have to choose to defy panic. I have to choose to trust that God is who He says He is and that He can do what He says that He can do. I have to trust that His actions are not only good towards me, but good towards my son. I must surrender all of my will to control the situation.

And it's tough. Oh so tough.

About Camping

I like to think that in two weeks I'll be a sane, rational, and organized person.
I've had activities planned every weekend since sometime in February.
And beginning on May 5th, I have few activities planned (and very little desire to add any to my calendar.)
Except for camping.
We're going to start camping---actual, real-life tent camping with the boys---this year.

We'll start small.  Probably only a few weekends.  Maybe culminating in a four-day trip up to Duluth to see some lighthouses. Michael has grand ambitions of taking Million fishing a few times.
Good for him.
I'll be with Creedence...eating grilled chicken.  Or bacon. 

Camping is something that we weren't able to rationalize when we had BonAmi.  Why would we pay money for someone to watch a dog so we could go somewhere else and pay to sleep on the hard ground for one night?

We want to start the kids out young in order that traveling becomes a way of life for our family--so by the time we have several kids in school and we want to take an educational family adventure, we'll have a proven guaranteed-or-your-money-back system on how our family travels.

So we're looking for the best tent for our family. 
And only the most necessary accoutrements.

It has been seven years since I've slept outside in a tent.  This could prove interesting.
(I am NOT looking forward to any middle-of-the-night bathroom trips with Million.  That will be Michael's job.)

What's in a Blog Title?

As a mother, I knew that I was the conductor of beauty, light, color and creativity in our home. Reflecting the shadows of His love in the ways we lived, the rhythms we kept. This task became a challenge to me and a source of joy in my own life.  I sought every day to make our home a place that was a small reflection of the Garden that He had originally crafted for His own first children, Adam and Eve. God put such beauty, design, variety in the place he prepared for his own children and He became for me a model of what I wanted to recreate in my home.
Artistry of life is one of the most winsome ways a mom can display in each moment so that children’s hearts will be softened to the heart of God and the messages of God, as they sense His reality in their own home.
Sally Clarkson, in this blog post

This.  This is so hard.  But so worth every effort.

Every time I take the extra effort to make a homemade, nutritious treat when I really feel like getting a fried chicken wrap and mashed potatoes for takeout.
Every time I light a candle for our nightly reading time together as a family.
Every time I have a tea party with my son (his, heavy on the milk---mine, no cream or sugar.)
Every time I sit and read the same six poems over and over again.
Every time I make up stories about "Once upon a time there were two charming and neighborly brothers who were traveling along a dusty path...What were their names?"
Every time I relinquish attachment to the earthly possessions that don't matter and free our home of clutter (both visual and emotional.)
Each time I clean the spots that will be dirty two seconds later.
Every time I try to teach Million to paint or draw.
Each time I teach a new song to him or explain the colors in the sunset or the shades of the grass in our yard (now, again, covered with snow...)

I aspire to be a small reflection of God's creativity.

I don't know if I ever explained the title of this blog.
It's loosely based on a Francis Schaeffer quote from his book Art and the Bible.

"The arts and sciences do have a place in the Christian life – they are not peripheral.  For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under that leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts.  A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God.  An art work can be a doxology in itself."

Michael and my interests have always woven art and science into our everyday life.  It's been our earnest desire to have our interest and passion for arts and sciences to be praise of God and to God. 

Everyday doxologies in our everyday lives.

La Berceau (The Cradle) by Berthe Morisot, 1872

It is not enough for parents to have a lofty ideal for their children, and to instruct and train those children in the direction of that ideal.  They must see to it that the atmosphere of their home is such as to foster and develop in their children those traits of character which their loftiest ideal embodies.  That atmosphere must be full of the pure oxygen of love to God and love to man.  It must be neither too hot in its intensity of social activities, nor too cold in its expressions of family affection, but balmy and refreshing in its uniform temperature of household living and being.  It must be gentle and peaceful in its manner and movement of sympathetic discourse.  All this it may be.  All this it ought to be.
H. Clay Trumbull, Hints on Child Training, 1890

to remind myself...

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits, who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory or defeat.” 
T. Roosevelt


Michael and I dream big.  We do big.
We also fail in big ways.
We experience a lot of defeat.
But our victories...when we experience them...are huge.  Momentous.  Glorious. 
It seems this season of our lives is Designed to teach us humility.
I can think of a list of at least eight things in the last four months that were "working" for a while... working rather well, actually.  And then they started to malfunction.
And God humbled us.
So we went back to the basics and started afresh.
We are persistent little buggers, we are.
Because it's better to dare mighty things.  

"He's Going To Be Loved"

Tomorrow BonAmi leaves our family.
We decided to tell Million last night, because he was in the middle of an "I love BonAmi sooooo much. He is my best dog.  He loves me too," speech. 
I think we took it harder than Million did.
The gist that we tried to convey to him was that BonAmi was going to a family that would love him very very much.  And that he would not be coming back forever.

His face fell.

And after he was safe in bed, with his "happy" on*, I cried.

When he woke up this morning, I broached the topic again and just reminded him.

We re-thought our stance about just telling Million that BonAmi "isn't here."  He is a boy that needs preparation in advance.  Flexibility is NOT in his game right now.  If we are going to a new place, we verbally go through things that might happen at the new place or things he might see...or he freezes up (usually still in situations where there are large groups of people or many children involved.)  If we're going on a trip, we start talking about it weeks in advance.  So even two days might not be enough preparation for him to deal with the loss of his beloved pet, but I figured that any preparation would be better than not explaining it to him.  Since he is almost completely a verbal processor, I expect many many many conversations for weeks, months, and years to come.

We've had a lot of sad to deal with lately as a family.
But also, in a lot of ways, I feel like our family (the fab four) is a lot healthier as a family unit.
The gardener pruning away the weeds and whatnot.  

And I'm healthier as a person.
I'm starting to "create" again.  (One of those words, like "redemption," that is overused and often used with only a fragment of the word's original meaning...) 

Here's a bit of an afghan I'm starting for Creedence with old scraps I had around the house.

Here's the beginning of some brainstorming about some throw pillows.

I'm thinking of repainting our living room.  Part of my birthday present will be a new coat closet door that requires some construction/dry walling.  I'll be painting anyway, and I think it might be time for some new colors in my life.  It's been 5-1/2 years of "Enchanting Ginger."  Funny how much you can change as a person in that amount of time.  I still love the color, but I need something more neutral and less...I guess "confrontational" would be a good word(?)  Here's a picture of it, so you can see what I'm talking about.

So things around here are different.  Some sad things.  Some fresh things.  Some exciting things around the corner.  And through it all, our little family keeps trying to find peace---the way God intended it.  Shalom...

*Lemon essential oil on his wrist that he is instructed to smell when he feels sad or scared.  It's harmless---more of a placebo effect than anything.  But it gives him a small measure of control over his emotions.

I Just Don't Know How to Hug Them

My spiffy dude in his Easter clothes.

This morning at breakfast, Million turned to me and said "Sweetie Mama*, tell me a story."
And I answered, "Shall I tell you a story about Ethiopia?"
His response was enthusiastic, even though he knows exactly which story I'm going to tell, and nearly has it memorized.

We made it through the circumstances that led to his being in an orphanage, and he referred back to his birth family.

"I just don't know how to hug them, Mama.  I just don't know how."

And my eyes leaked out some love for him and for his family that he doesn't know how to hug.
Just another day in a post-adoption household.



*He's started occasionally calling me that, out of the blue.  Neither Michael nor I know where he picked it up....but I don't mind.