Open Letter: to adoptive parents struggling with anger, guilt & shame

Dear Dads and Moms: 
Parenting and loving my adopted child is the most difficult thing I’ve ever tried to do. I am writing this letter to those of you who are right there with me. You are not alone. There are many of us, many partnering with Christ in loving children not born to us, children who needed a family, many of whom are so wounded they cannot receive our love. I am one of them, and I share my story because I know I am not alone, and I want you to know that this is true. We are not alone.

I’ve never struggled to love children of all ages. As an eleven year old, I remember crying because I thought I’d never be old enough to babysit. And when I finally got to, I thought I was in heaven. I kept the children of friends even after I had my own. I truly loved the kids I taught in public school and those I later mothered as a houseparent at a residential school. Many of these kids were from hard places and struggled deeply; some even hurt me, but somehow, my compassion and forgiveness for them never ran out. And I’ve loved my own three babies deeply. When my husband and I decided to adopt a 9 year old boy with big brown eyes and a sweet smile, I never dreamed I would find it difficult to love him.
 
Fast forward three years. He’s twelve now. Sometime after the first year and a bit into the second, a door in my heart shut. I’m not sure how it happened. I no longer feel affection for him; my primary emotions related to him are anger and fear and guilt. There are reasons. And if I shared them here–his difficult behaviors, the neurological issues we discovered, his maddening emotional and relational dysfunction, my own history with trauma–some of you would say, “You’re a saint; how do you do it?” And others of you would say, “Honey, that’s nothing! You should see what I deal with!” Or maybe you’d say, “Sounds just like my kid and just like me.” But comparison isn’t the point. The point is what is happening in my heart.
 
My heart is being laid bare. God is using the ways I respond to this child to teach me something, to change me, to send me packing from self-sufficiency and into dependency on Him. Frankly, I can barely stand my son or myself when I am with him. It’s a big problem. I know love is an action not a feeling, but this goes way beyond that into something else entirely. I’ve lost my sense of home because I am on the defense all the time. I constantly look over my shoulder, protecting, second-guessing, hedging my bets. I’m backed into a corner. I’ve tried everything. I’ve read the experts: Karen Purvis, Deborah Grey, Nancy Thomas, Greg Keck, Forrest Lein, Bessel Van der Kolk and Dan Seigel to name a few (and each has given me something of value). I’m part of parent support groups for RAD and ADHD and borderline intellectual function and grey matter heterotopia. I have a community of friends with adopted children who suffered trauma similar to my son’s. I see a therapist, and my son goes to play therapy. We’ve homeschooled and public schooled and had no school at all. We’ve prayed, declared truth, bound dark spirits, read scripture over him, helped him memorize scripture, taught him to pray for himself.
 
I can’t fix this. Not at all. I have not one answer about how to change the pain between us, the disconnect between us, or the unhealthy place he goes when I do try to connect. And it makes me sad and very, very angry….at him and at myself. And at God.
 
I knew a lot about adoption and what early trauma and neglect do to a child. I knew about attachment problems and indiscriminate friendliness and that you never know what you are really getting into when you adopt. But I didn’t care. I trusted God. I believed he invited us on this journey and that he would give us what we needed to walk it out, that he would never leave or forsake us. And that is still true. But what I thought that meant is not what it means. And for awhile, I felt like God abandoned me. I didn’t know I would encounter utter failure. I thought “grace” would show up, and I’d be supermom with super-patience when he peed (on purpose) on the carpet and super-peace when he tortured our dog and super-kindness in the face of his smirking revenge for perceived rejections. But instead I had anger and yelling and fretting and meltdowns, because the fruits of the spirit aren’t given by magic wand. They are grown. They are grown in plowed-up, composted, worked-over soil. I had to face the reality that I had less fruit than I thought. And it is taking a whole lot of plowing and digging up rocks to make a garden.
 
I confess, I used to judge families who disrupted or dissolved adoptions. There are those who do it out of selfishness or wrong motives, but oh, there are those who do it to survive. A wounded child can have coping mechanisms that wreak havoc on a home and a marriage and a soul so that it feels like nothing less than hell being unleashed. So I understand now. I understand the despair and how it could be like that man who cut off his own crushed leg with a pocket knife, so he could escape the fallen tree and salvage what little of his life was left.
 
But I am not there yet. I am not cutting off my leg with a pocket knife. I’m still holding onto hope that help is on its way. But I also don’t have a garden growing yet. It’s hard for me to admit that. I believe that–in Jesus–there is love enough to heal this child. He is not a lost cause. But right now, I don’t have it. I am still plowing and hoping to put some seed in the ground before it gets too late in the season. I’m behind. But I am still believing that the valley of trouble will open up into a doorway of hope as it is written in Hosea 4. I can’t actually see that door; I’m taking it on faith. This is the middle of my story, and I don’t know the particulars of the ending yet. I still struggle to spend time with my son and not get visibly angry when, for the 400th time, he plays the same manipulative head games. And I am still working on not beating myself up for being angry and then numbing out because it’s so painful. I am working on being present to God so I can know that He is present for me. I am working on learning to lament instead of shutting the pain down. I am working on listening to what He will say instead of looking for another therapy or book or technique. I am taking my failings as an invitation to go deeper into God’s heart to find what I need. I am working on seeing the doorway of hope because He is the One who is standing in it.
 
I invite you to do the same. I invite you to acknowledge that there is something broken and lacking in your heart, too. I invite you not to run away from the pain but to listen to it and let it guide you to Jesus. I invite you to be compassionate with yourself so you can be compassionate with your child. We can’t give to them what we don’t already own. It’s a crazy-hard journey, but if we go together, it will be better.