In Spite of My Arrogance

After several tries with different counselors, I was referred to one early this year that I've been seeing, with Jason, a couple of times a month.  When I tell you about our first experience with him, you'll wonder why I ever went back.

During our first appointment, within the first 20 minutes, as I was trying to explain all the things in our lives that weren't working- and all the things I had tried in desperation to fix those things- and all the ways none of those efforts were helping in any way- he looked at me and said, 'Laura, I'm going to say something to you that is not going to be easy to hear, but you need to hear it... you are an incredibly arrogant woman."

What?  Who says that to another human being?  Well, I guess he does.

My core immediately resonated with what he said.  I didn't know, in that moment, exactly what he was referring too- I just knew he was right.

He went on to explain that I had been talking and talking about all the things I was doing to fix our problems.  I believed that it was in me to change it all.  I just knew that if I found the right book, the right formula, the right counselor- I could fix all of it.  I could even make the other broken people in my life better.

I'm a fixer.  It's what I do.  It's my first desire when I hear a problem.  I want to right it.  It sounds good in theory.  It sounds charitable and generous and wonderful.  Except that most problems aren't any of my business.  And the problems that are my business, well, I haven't actually been able to fix most of them.  And truly, if God is God, than most things should be handed over to him, right?  If He is God and I am His dependent, than shouldn't I be looking to Him for all the answers rather than myself?  my power?  my ability and knowledge?

Several months down the road, at another appointment, I was expressing my continued frustration with one relationship in particular.  I have been so angry with this person.  I have regularly wished that I could walk away from the relationship- but I've known that that wasn't right.  It wasn't an appropriate response.    In fact, I knew that if that was the choice I made, I would live in guilt and regret and shame- not in the relief or freedom I was wishing for.

Our counselor asked me to take some time to really examine what my expectations were in the relationship.  As I started to list what first came to mind, he shook his head- no.  I was talking about how if this person was honest, if she was pleasant to be around, if she wasn't manipulative or selfish or ...  if she was just better- than I could like her and the relationship would be great.  No, he said, those things were not at the core of my expectations.  They were not what was actually making me so angry.

As I thought about it more I realized that it was still my arrogance.  I was mad at myself for not fixing our relationship.  I was furious that I wasn't being the right person, loving the right way, modeling the right things.  Instead of recognizing the grief and pain that are so much a reality in this relationship- I have just wanted to fix it, and when I couldn't, I didn't have it in me to admit defeat- I simply placed the blame on her.  Surely, if it was in 'my' power, all would be right with the world.

I'm slowly letting go of the anger and trying to be real with the grief and pain.  Its hard work, but right now, in this place, she and I are in a better place then we've ever been.  None of the circumstances have changed.  She's not doing anything different.  I haven't fixed anything.  I'm just recognizing truth and letting go of the lies.  I believe that it is God who has allowed me to see into the depths of this.  I'm so thankful that, in spite of my arrogance, He's gently, and humbly, still drawing me into Him.  I won't change her.  I won't even change myself.  But I think He might- and that is a far more hopeful place to be then I've been in for many years.

In Spite of My Doubt (Part 3)

Anger is usually a secondary emotion, right?  I was so so angry.  But really, I'm realizing, I was grieving and disappointed and afraid.

While I can look back and see that I was doubting, I don't think I had admitted that to myself.  I was just mad at God.  At the God I knew.  He wasn't fulfilling His side of the contract that I had imagined with Him.  He wasn't 'blessing' my sacrifices.  He wasn't making life easy on behalf of the risks I had taken for Him.

And so I was afraid.  I couldn't yet admit that maybe the God I had fashioned for myself didn't actually exist.  That was too scary.

A few months after the death of our precious baby girl and the death of my dreams of her in our family, I read a book that has made it possible for me to continue to journey with God even when the days came during which I questioned if He was even a reality.  The book is called Shattered Dreams by Larry Crabb.  There was so much about the book that spoke directly to my struggle- but one thing he emphasized over and over again has stuck with me for over 3 years now.  The idea is that we daily long for our comfort, our ease of life, our 'happiness' over knowing God- and God, knowing how much we sacrifice to settle for those things, sometimes uses deep pain and discomfort to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we will learn to want Him far above all those lesser things.

I admit- if I could have easy kids, no grief, lots of money, no pain... I would snatch those things up and run!  I wouldn't look back to see where God was or if He had a different path for me.  I would just run.  Why?  Because all of that sounds easier and far more comfortable than the opposites of those things.  Without God getting in my face and proving to me that no true joy can be found apart from Him, I wouldn't look further than those and other 'nice' things to just be happy.

So I clung to the things I learned in that book.

And, I started to recognize my doubt.  I started realizing that who I thought God to be- He wasn't.  The fear that that created in me was sometimes almost crushing.  I couldn't imagine a world without God- but I knew He wasn't who I had always thought He was.  And, the more I tried to figure out who He was, exactly, the less clear He seemed.  There were many times that I would weep as I tried to express my fear and doubt to Jason.  I would feel a life-threatening fear that grabbed me at my core.  I was so afraid of a life without God- but no one had ever told me how to believe in a God I couldn't define.

I won't tell you that there has been a resolution to this.  I'm still seeking.  But God has given me a sense in my soul that He is and He's always been exactly who He is- even when I thought He was someone else.  Even when I can't understand.  Even when I find out things about Him I never would have believed before.  God is God.

This shift in thinking has opened my heart to accepting others in a way I never have before- because one thing I'm still sure of is that God loves me.  He loves.  He is Love.  And if He is in me- than I will love too.  The people I have met and the stories I have heard over the past couple of years have convinced me of His love and of His desire for me to love as He does.  His love is my desire and what I cling to- even when I am sure of nothing else about Him.

In spite of my doubt, His love overwhelms.

In Spite of My Doubt (Part 2)

Ironically, even after our children did finally come home from Haiti- even after I got what I'd been begging God for- my faith did not 'go back to the way it was.'  I continued to struggle.  I continued to feel disillusioned and hurt.

We were blessed with a honeymoon period with our new children.  Adopting older children means bringing home kids whose hearts have been shattered by the losses in their lives.  They don't have the emotional maturity or the language to talk about their massive grief, nor do they trust that anyone in their lives is safe to share with, so their pain comes out in their behavior.  We didn't start to see how broken their hearts were until about 4 or 5 months in.  And then- as they say- all hell broke loose.

Because things had gone so well at first, I had decided to believe that our kids had withstood the trauma in their lives with more strength and maybe even more of God's protection than many other kids.  I thought that maybe, since the waiting had been so hard on me, God was giving me a pass on parenting kids with difficult behavior.  So when their behavior took a nose dive I was thrown off guard and once again surprised that God would allow so much pain and difficulty along a path He had called us to walk down.  And I felt even more disillusioned and wounded by God.

At the 6 month mark we received a phone call letting us know that our Haitian children's biological sister had been relinquished to the orphanage.  She was available for adoption.  Would we bring her home to her siblings?  I was emotionally exhausted.  It seemed like too much to ask.  And yet, I had held that sweet girl on my trip to Haiti to bring our children home.  I had pictures of her with her brother and sister.  How could we not say yes?  We prayed about it and sought council and wrestled with the decision for days.  And then we said yes.  Yes, we would allow that sweet baby to grow up with her flesh and blood.  And in spite of my weary heart and massive fears, I immediately loved that girl with everything in me.

We are a helplessly hopeless people, aren't we?  And so I hoped.  I hoped that this adoption would go more quickly.  And that this girl, since she was coming to us so much younger, would have fewer hurts. I hoped that God would use this process so show me how He was redeeming all of my pain.  I just knew that He had led us to our first 2 children because ultimately He wanted to use our family to bring these 3 siblings together and that we were going to see the miracle of that take place.

I was completely leveled then, less than 2 months later, when we received a phone call letting us know that our baby girl had died very suddenly in a hospital in Haiti.  I could not have possibly known that I would feel so much grief.  I desperately wanted her.  But on top of that, I grieved the hopes and the dreams I had.  I grieved the unmet expectations that I had for all I believed she promised for me and for our family.  I grieved the added wound that her brother and sister had piled onto their already shattered hearts.

Ulitmately, as so often happens, my grief rolled into anger.  I was furious with God.  Isn't He all knowing?  Isn't He over all?  Doesn't He ultimately control all things?  He knew this was coming, right?  He knew.  And yet He still asked me to say yes to her.  He still allowed her to die.  He didn't intervene.  He didn't save her.  He didn't save me- from the pain, the disillusionment, the gut-wrenching grief.

Before deep pain happened to me- when I was ignorant and had fashioned a safe God for myself to believe in- I would have had trite answers for others whose lives were falling apart.  I would have been confident in explaining it all to them- how God had a plan and that He works all things together for good and all that stuff.  I wish I could remember and apologize to each and every one of those people.  I have no doubt that, in spite of my well-intentioned ideas, my words were completely shallow and inexperienced and they poured salt into already festering wounds.

The kids' behavior continued to deteriorate. And my behavior, fueled by hurt and anger, created an incredibly unhealthy mix.  In fact, at some times, it might have been a miracle that I didn't physically hurt them.

In Spite of My Grief

I didn't really know grief until Nandinie died. I had experienced losing my grandparents and that was hard- but not devastating.

My life has been pretty and easy. It has been happy and blessed. It has been sheltered.

And then grief happened to me.

It was a complete surprise. I didn't even know that Nandinie was sick until she was already gone. And she hadn't ever been here with us. She was still in Haiti. So even the depth of my grief was a surprise, as we didn't really know her or have a relationship with her. We only had our hopes and dreams of her and the love we felt for her because she had been born in our hearts the moment we said yes to adopting her.

People who have not experienced devastating losses in their lives can sympathize with someone who is grieving, but not empathize. There is a difference and I learned that after she died. I have been forever changed. I am now a momma who has lost a child. I am part of that group. And so is her birth momma.

I realize now that this culture doesn't know what to do with grieving people. We are uncomfortable with them. We want them to STOP grieving so that we can stop being uncomfortable. How do you stop something that overtakes you in spite of you? God told us to expect both. Both are NORMAL. Neither is wrong or out of place in this lifetime.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven;
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance...
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-4 NIV

There are other cultures that do a better job of joining someone on a journey thru grief. And, I believe that we used to do a better job too. There were periods in history when people who were in mourning wore clothing that announced to the world that they had lost someone close to them. People didn't try to hide that life was hard or ignore that someone was hurting. It was known at a glance. And they might have worn their mourning clothes for several months or maybe even a year or longer. It must have been a comforting reminder to a hurting person that it was still okay and even expected that he or she put on those clothes and remember their grief and the life of the person they lost as they also took time to heal.

I'm not saying that is the answer- or that there aren't down sides to that idea. I just think we don't know how to let ourselves grieve for as long as it takes or to let someone else grieve as they need to.

As I cried out to God and sought for answers in the Bible in those first few weeks after her death, I came to understand a passage of scripture that hadn't ever made sense to me before. In the book of John, chapter 11, Jesus learns that His very dear friend, Lazerus is ill and even dying. But He doesn't go to him. He then learns that he has died, and so He goes to see Lazerus' sisters. His sisters are so confused and angry in their grief that Jesus didn't come before it was too late to heal their brother.

As Jesus sees Mary weeping, He experiences, as a human man, the anger of grief and the sorrow and He, too, weeps. He then asks to be taken to the grave where Lazerus was buried. As He saw the grim reality of a tomb and thought of His own friend lying in there He wept again. And after He had wept, He raised Lazerus from the dead.

I never understood why He grieved, why He wept, when He knew that He was going to raise Lazerus from the dead. And, what I have come to believe is born out of my own experience and not necessarily the why. (I may ask Him when I get to heaven if I'm even close.) But I believe that in that moment, as He saw someone who He loved grieving that gut-wrenching grief that feels unbearable, that Jesus, the Son of God, felt as a human, but also as God- the overwhelming grief of every person on this earth who has or ever will grieve the loss of a loved one. He wasn't grieving the loss of Lazerus. He knew Lazerus was going to come back to life. He was empathizing with each one of us who knows that pain. He felt the pain, He understood it as a man and as a God who sees all our pain, and He grieved in empathy for Mary and for me and for you.

I experienced my God and my Savior in a new way on the day that that story made more sense to me. I experienced my God as empathetic in a tangible way for me.

There will never be an explanation that feels okay to my human mind for why sweet Nandinie died in October. Please don't tell me a reason why. It won't help. However, my God has proved Himself to me over and over and I can trust that He knows best and He knows why. I am at peace knowing that He knows. I can also see how He is using her death to bring glory to His name and to continue to grow me into a child who looks more like her Father. That doesn't answer why, but it does bring some beauty out of the ashes.

In spite of my grief, His love, His empathy, His comfort and peace, overwhelm my soul.

Starting Again

The day after I began this blog I recieved a phone call telling me that my sweet precious baby girl in Haiti, who we were in process to adopt, had died very suddenly from an allergic reaction to some medication. I was devastated and felt completely derailed from life.

Nandinie is the biological sister to our 2 Haitian children that we adopted and brought home on February 9, 2008. You can read much more of our story about adopting Monika and John and our short story with Nandinie on my mommy blog.

Needless to say, I have been a bit distracted from posting here. But I'm ready to get started again. And, due to the journey I'm on in life right now, I think that my next post will be about grief and what I've been learning and thinking about as we have said goodbye to Nandinie and our dream to add her to our family.

God has been so good to love us and carry us during this time. I would do anything to have her back, but know that He can use even this, especially this, to mold me and shape me into someone who looks much more like Him.