the bug in my bed :: real life photography

So in keeping with my resolution to capture our children living real life, I thought it appropriate to grab my camera on Valentine's Day and share about this today.

Have you all heard the expression, "cute as a bug"?

How about, "snug as a bug in a rug"?

As it turns out, we have a bug. In our bed. Often.

And this bug?

He loves life in our bed. He nestles down in our pillows and covers himself with layers of blankets and is just happy happy happy.

After a few minutes, he remembers that daddy is always there to catch him. So he's on the move...and daddy has to work hard to match his on the moveness.

Ah, just where this little bug wants to be.

Our days and nights are getting better as we continue to work out post-op effects. He slept again in our bed {partially}, 6 nights last week. But on Friday, he was able to stay comfy in his crib without waking. One night recently, I think he was having a nightmare. He screamed, I scurried to get to him and he clung to me when I lifted him up. We lay in bed, at 3am, with he on my chest whimpering for almost an hour. It was both pitiful and precious.

Of course, we're here for the long haul. And seasons like this reassure Gabe that we are. That when he cries, we pick him up. And when he wants to snuggle, we are ready to do just that. And that as he jumps out into the unknown, his daddy has it all figured out and is standing there arms open wide.

As it turns out, Gabe is both a little prince and a little bed bug. And that's just fine by us.

found :: part III

So let's finish this up this time. Shall we? I think 3 is a nice round number.

Were you guys blown away like I was at all the Lord has done for our little prince?

Goodness. My head is still spinning from it. And Friday morning, I again awoke to the realization that I could check in on him, maybe, via the newly found website/blog. I poured myself some hot tea, as is my custom, and headed upstairs to the Mac. Imagine my surprise and delight as I found a new post about him! The picture we just love, shown partially below, was there again in this new entry.

 

{Cropped in keeping with our agency's rules that we not post his face publicly via the web.}

Enter Chrome once again.

As soon as it translated, my heart sank.

Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

It read,

4.27.12 
Our local foster Village project to start a small home two baby tomorrow will return to welfare institutions, The hospital will arrange for the orphans to foster homes to care for their children; Zhou Xun {aka the little prince} and Zhou Xinwei will enter the foster family; Blessings

I know it seems so silly. He was entering an actual foster home. With a family, in a home. Not a small facility or an SWI. This is typically a very good thing. I know that. I really do. It's just that our boy was moving.

That very weekend.

To a new home.

And a new life.

The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, that beginning very soon, he would be made to forge new relationships and trust and routine. And then he would, in several months from now, be made to leave them all over again. It just hurt me to imagine the gravity of it all for my baby. How unsuspecting it may be to him.

Questions came quickly. Would this help to ensure his attachment to us? Or will it be a hindrance since he is going to now have lived in three places over the course of his brief 14 months. {I also read where he was fostered for a short time in a family and then they couldn't afford to continue so he came back to the foster facility.} I worry that he will think we are just one more stent in a certain place, one more family or set of caregivers who will take him back and leave him. I know that our God is most able to help him attach. Our Joel is a picture of that. He did so very well, with Jase especially. Still, it hurts my heart to imagine the little prince enduring so much transition in his life already.

I emailed my friend M who lives there and has visited the little prince. I shared with her my concerns and she emailed back a very reassuring message. She promised me the nurse who was in charge of his foster facility loves him and that she would make the best decisions for him. That's so good to know. The fact that she is a believer is such a comfort. Reasoning that she had spent time in prayer before choosing this family, gives us peace. Of course we are so hopeful that this new family are believers as well.

Also, it was a nice to know that his little buddy, who is pictured many times on the website/blog with him, is going to the same family. At least it seems that way. I sure hope so. M said that the nurse had been wanting to move them to a family for them to have better care.

The only post that has been written on the site about the little prince since then, was just a simple sentence saying that they indeed go to their new foster family, and that they are 'tens miles away." Hopefully Chrome is just translating it funny and it means merely "10 miles away" from the foster facility. I'm guessing the pictures and updates will be very far and few between now. While that makes me sad, I know it's okay.

I've gone back to those quotes by Spurgeon and Taylor a few times this week...for the little prince, and friends who are facing disappointment in a lack of referral, friends who are dealing with sin issues and even some who are worried about what the future holds medically for their precious son.

"...Unerring wisdom ordained your circumstances and selected for you the safest and best conditions....Remember this: if any other condition had been better for you than the one you are in, divine love would have put you there. You have been placed by God in the most suitable circumstances....Take up, your own daily cross. It is the burden best suited for your shoulder, and will prove most effective in making you perfect 'in every good word and work.' "

~Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize the Lord is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest positions He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult, His grace is sufficient."

~ Hudson Taylor

This is just another piece of the puzzle, as Tara said. A chapter in his story. And our God is in the midst of it all. And even though some pieces were hard to read...it's good to have them. What a week it has been. We found the website, that told us how our baby boy was found in a park in China, and we found out this week that he has been placed in a new family until we can come for him.

Please keep our little prince and his buddy in your prayers. And for this mama, who has trouble letting go of the worry that comes with an adoption. The worry of knowing that our son may be struggling on the other side of the world and there is little I can do about it in my own power. But this is a perfect opportunity to surrender to the Lord, to glory in this wait as we look to Him and to trust that His plan is not only very, very good...but also firmly in place. For His fame alone~

cries in the night

This post was written for my monthly contribution to No Hands But Ours. 

Our Joel never mourned his losses in the same way a lot of children do. He came to us the day we met him, having just turned three years old, all smiles and hopped right into his daddy’s lap. When we left with him, he had a quite serious look on his face. Fear, I’m sure. But no tears at all. The one and only time he cried with us in country was during an orphanage visit that we were required to make.

His most beloved caregiver, Mai Lek, told him in simple words that he could understand, and ones that we certainly could not, that this was it.

He was leaving forever.

And he sobbed.

And he fell into her arms.

And with his head buried in her chest, our little Tornado shook with grief.

And we right along with him.

How he loved Mai Lek. On her days off, Joel would many times bang his head on the floor in tantrum. He would be unruly and obstinate without her. It was clear watching the two of them that day in the orphanage, he adored her. The feeling was mutual. The director had told us the during our visit, that Mai Lek had come to her a few weeks prior and voiced her gratitude that he had a family as well as her sorrow that he was leaving her. She was struggling with the weight of it all.

Lord, how blessed we are because of this woman. It is no small thing to receive a child who is so ready to be loved and comforted and touched and held. She gave us that gift.

And while that episode was the only time grief was manifested for him through tears, upon coming home, anger quickly took it’s place. Joel was so very angry. Oh, he laughed and played and smiled when we said that we loved him.

But more times than not, he yelled, he kicked, he bit and he fought.

There was blood, sweat and tears aplenty. Literally.

And slowly, with the help of the wonderful social worker who wrote our home study, our agency {WACAP} as well as our pediatrician who had five internationally adopted kids of her own...we began to see him come to life.

People comment often about how very happy Joel is. He is rarely without a smile. He seems completely molded and gelled into our family. It’s been two and a half years. He is grafted in, one of us in every sense.

But sometimes, from somewhere, the grief comes to him. Usually in the middle of the night. Where he cannot be consoled. He cannot be awoken. He moans through tears in a seemingly unending nightmare.

We hold him and rock him and kiss him and rub him and whisper to him over and over and over.

We are here baby.

We love you, Joel.

You’re okay sweet boy.

You are safe. You are staying. You are ours.

And we are yours.

In thinking on this in recent days, it has occurred to me that many times these cries in the night happen when my husband isn’t home at bedtime. He is a staff pastor at our church and  sometimes I tease him that he is the “Minister of Meetings.” He is often pulled away from our home in the evenings for meetings at church. There is really nothing he can do to change this. It’s just part of our life and it has gotten much better in recent years. It ebbs and it flows. And for every one time that Joel struggles when Jase isn’t there, there are twenty times he doesn’t bat and eye at it.

But Sunday night, Jase again had a meeting and I told Joel that he could stay up for fifteen extra minutes to see if dad made it home in time to tuck him in. Only he didn’t. And Joel began to sob. Of course I comforted him and played with him in bed long enough to calm him and bring a few laughs to take the place of his tears. Yet, when I went to close the door, he made me promise that his daddy would come pray with him and kiss him once he got home. Which, he promptly did about a half hour later when he came in. But Joel was already long gone and Jase’s prayers nor his kisses served to bring him out of  his sleep.

A few hours later, he awoke like he normally does when this happens. Inconsolable and pitiful. It hit me, while he was clinging to me and I was feeling the uneven breaths of his crying, that he still grieves. Sure, sometimes cries in the night are due to a tummy ache {he has gastro problems from premature birth and past surgeries}. Other times, it’s a simple night mare.

However many times, it’s when his daddy has not been the last person he sees at night. And it hurts my heart. I will never grasp the loss our little boy has suffered. Given my life history and childhood, I can never fully relate to his abandonment and deprivation. I cannot fathom the resilience of a little boy who has endured so very much in his five short years.

But I will tell you what I can do. I can hold him and rub him and whisper to him every single time he cries in the night. I can pray for his peace and do my best to ensure he rests in that peace as much as possible. I can provide him with unwavering support and understanding when he grieves. In whatever way he grieves.

I can be his mama.

And that makes me the luckiest lady in the world.