Beauty {in the middle of a mess}

“As Americans and as evangelicals, the subtle idea that our relationship with God relies on our own efforts and energy is part of our DNA.” ~Tish Harrison Warren, The Liturgy of the Ordinary.

I read this today, early. In a moment of rare vision, I saw that I believe my life, the quality of it and it’s value, is dependent upon me. What arrogance! I am held together by the Spirit of God, by His will, His delight, His power, His good pleasure. Certainly, my experience of my life is informed by my thoughts and emotions and choices. Yet. I have relied too much on the power of those and not enough on His thoughts, His emotions, His choices.

As if to punctuate this understanding, I passed by this long-neglected flower bed that borders my front porch. Each time I pass it, I feel the “shoulds.” I really should remove those leaves, trim those dead plants, treat that soil, put something lovely in. But this time, I noticed something lovely already there: a stunning yellow leaf on some bright green moss. He put beauty right in the midst of that which I have neglected, put off, ignored, despised. Beauty in the middle of a mess. I didn’t do anything, ask for anything, earn or deserve anything. I didn’t cultivate it, plan for it, or even believe for it. He just put it there for me to notice and enjoy. Grace upon grace. This is a metaphor for meditation, for life. 

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. 

Poem for Hallie

Years before,

I knew:

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. *

But when you were born it came true

Along with at least a hundred other wonders.

 
You opened the sky

And all the new to see

With your newness.

 
I remember moments of you

in glimpses and flashes.

I am often unprepared

For these,

Like sun on glass

Making me squint through the mystery of it.

 
You were the glorious weight,

no more than a blue violet or a bird wing,

beating in my chest;

the baby with bare toes curled in the grass

with a dandelion hidden in her mouth;

the child who talked to trees

and built houses for fairies

and never stopped singing circles around me;

the girl of happy solitude

turning out paintings from the garden of her mind

and poems

shooting up like unexpected daffodils

I didn’t know were planted there.

 
You were and are the one

loving everything

as it was meant to be loved:

with shining eyes,

Finding

A four-leaf clover in the midst of a meadow

 And an entire kingdom in the drop of dew upon it.  
*e.e. cummings, “somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond”

The Cost of a Life

I’ve been gone from this space for a year and a half. It’s been one of the toughest seasons of my life. I stopped writing here because I had to know something to write something, and so much of what I thought I knew was shaken to its core. However, today, what has brought me out of my silent unknowing, is the same thing that caused me to begin this blog: adoption. 
I am not the same person I was before my husband and I were called to adopt our son. But there is something that has never changed. It is my unwavering belief that adoption is nothing short of gospel work. It is the work of the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Because of this, adoption is deeply opposed. 

Within the last week, I heard these arguments regarding the adoption of a child from another country:

1. Why didn’t you just adopt from America?

2. Why wouldn’t you give all that money to an organization that would use it to help more than just one person? 

3. I can’t support international adoption because it is too much like human trafficking. 

I am sure that many who read this will be as surprised as I am, but apparently this kind of thinking still exists, even within the body of Christ. 

There really has to be a mindset shift. 

People who give to adoptions are helping others to redeem children out of poverty, bondage, trauma and abandonment. It is sharing financial resources so an orphan can have a family. It isn’t helping a family get a kid. We have kids. We don’t need more kids. And even for people who don’t have children before adoption, it isn’t about getting something. It’s about welcoming strangers into our families and making them sons and daughters. We aren’t heroes. We just believe Jesus when he says, “You are my body.” He has no hands and no feet on this earth but us. God has only one plan for the orphan crisis: You and me.  In welcoming a child, we are welcoming Jesus, Himself. 

About those questions up there? They weren’t addressed to me, but I adopted a child from another country, so I’ll answer them.  

1. God spoke to me about a specific child, not a country. But what if I had just decided to choose a country and then wait to be matched with a child? (I think most international adoptions fit one of these two situations.) Is a child of a particular nationality or race or gender more deserving or more valuable than another? If I help someone, why criticize by asking why I didn’t help a different person? 

2. As for spending all that money on just one child: how much is a child worth? It doesn’t matter how much it costs. That child, every child is priceless. Redeeming lives is costly. What about financial corruption in the adoption process? It certainly isn’t the fault of the children, and they should not be abandoned once again because of poor choices on the part of adults. In other words, adopt anyway. 

3. As for any similarities with human trafficking, I shudder to think that anyone could have that opinion. How can one compare taking a child OUT of a dangerous situation and putting him into a loving family with capturing or buying children for abuse? We did not BUY a child. We paid the cost to have the assistance we needed from lawyers, judges, consultants, notaries, translators, pilots, restaurants, hotels and other services to bring a child out of an unprotected life into a family. 

My husband and I spent tens of thousands to bring our son out of trauma, hunger, mental illness, sexual abuse, abandonment, ignorance, and so many other horrific conditions. Around half of that was “our” money and the rest of it was given by others. Every penny belonged to Jesus, and he made sure we had it so we could bring this child into our home. Is he worth it? Absolutely. And that’s not because he fits into our life beautifully, and we now have a snuggly, loving relationship. After two and a half years, he still makes it very clear that he’d rather have someone else for a mother, that he doesn’t trust me any further than he can throw me. But when I think about what he lived through, what he was still living through when we brought him home, I would have paid a lot more to get him out. I do pay a lot more, everyday. I pay with my life. 

Whoever tries to save his own life will lose it and whoever lays down his life will find it. 

As a culture, we, the body of Christ, have to get over the idea that this is about money.

This is about who or what HAS YOUR HEART. 

This is about real life and real love and the meaning of family and the gospel. It’s about how much we will let Christ live out HIS life IN us. 

Home

We’ve moved. We packed up our belongings and took them to a new place. It’s a place we’ve wanted to be in for a long time, a little town we really love. It feels good and right, but as I walked through the empty house last night the tears came, and I felt the bitter with the sweet.

We are leaving behind a home that was full of our life, a place that we outgrew. It’s been bursting at the seams and pinching our toes for awhile now. In fact, some parts of it got to be down right irritating, chafing. But now that we have really left, taken all our necessities and comforts and swept the place clean, I’m feeling a little sad. Well, it’s more than a little.

It feels like I’ve lost an old friend. I wish I could take it, like some of my children’s baby clothes, and fold it up and lay it aside to keep close and take out now and then just to hold up and remember. Because sometimes memories fade more than you mean for them to and sometimes you can’t quite see in your mind’s eye what it was you remembered.

And I know we women get attached to our spaces, and this is all normal. And I’ve even felt it before, but it’s never been quite so strong. I have lived in this house longer than any other house in my lifetime. Seven and a half years. Our children were 8, 4, & 3 when we moved in. Now they are 16, 12 & 10, and our family has grown with another child through adoption. We’ve done a lot of growing in this place.

  

There are so many things to love and remember: The summer time bible club under the birch tree and the June morning  coming down through the leaves to dapple the ground.

The time I got really brave and painted a couple of walls orange and liked it so much I just kept going on through the dining and kitchen and entry way.

The year my husband rearranged our bedroom and bought a few new things to give it a face-lift and turn it into a special place, just for us.

The robin’s nest in the crook of the crabapple tree, so low we could see the baby birds up close.  And the wild kittens born under our shed, with the tears and joy and lessons they taught.

The laughing games on the trampoline with all of us flying through the air and bouncing right back. A tire swing, an arbor covered with wisteria. The wintertime indoor obstacle courses a daddy set up for his rambunctious crew.

  
    
    

All the read-alouds we loved near the fire or on the porch swing and the singing by the fire pit as we roasted s’mores and the dancing together like crazy in the living room and the praying together at night in the little bedrooms full of children.

And that spot on the door jamb of the pantry where we marked the heights of our babies as they grew. And the way we felt when we came home from a long journey, so happy to be there because it was home.

I really like this new place we are living for now. It’s bigger so we are sighing with relief like loosening a too tight belt strap. It isn’t ours, and I know we won’t be here long so I am reluctant to put too much of our “stamp” on it. And maybe that’s a good thing. I’m one of those people who always wanted to live in one house for 30 years, raise all our children there, never leave. Yet in our 21 year marriage, we’ve had 8 moves. And there will be another one in a year or so, and I am inwardly lamenting that it will be only a year or two at most before my big girl flies our nest to venture out into the world. And then I remembered something else:

This world is not my home. And these people that I call mine, are not mine, but His. And I like to hold on tight, but I need to open up these hands to be able to hold all that I love. There is so much to love.

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking on Water

This journey I am on is wrapped up in writing, in learning to be a mother and a child at the same time, in trusting and in not fearing, in releasing myself to pain, in dropping down my walls of self-protection.

While chatting with a favorite friend of mine, I was reminded of one of my favorite books, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art by Madeleine L’Engle. I realized I have read this book each summer for the past 3 years. I started reading it again today since I hate to break tradition!

When I read this book, my holy imagination ignites; my heart burns within me. Stories spring up like tender new blades of grass in my mind, and I suddenly feel braver than usual. Each time I find things that are new to me although I’ve read them before. I am reading through the newest version of myself, the me who’s had a few more layers peeled back since the last time I read, the me who has grown a few more inches and understands differently.

This time, I am reading through the lens of a woman who has been a mother 16 years, but has only recently been convinced she never really learned to be a child. I hardly know how to play, and I have trouble resting. These are hallmarks of childhood: play and rest.

And then there is the issue of trust. Children trust. If only we had the “faith of a child.” And I am now parenting a child whose faith and trust have so been violated that he cannot trust even trustworthy people. But I am finding that I am like him in this. I have difficulty trusting. I need to learn to trust before I can teach him to do it.

I have never connected this to my creativity and my writing. I have longed to create. I love to dance, sew, draw, paint, play and sing music, knit….but most of all, write. And deeper than that, write STORIES. I have written articles, reviews, blog posts, research papers, even poems. I have filled journals, but I freeze when I come to write the stories that fill my mind.

And then, today, I read this from Madeleine:

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort toward wholeness.

There is much that the artist must trust. He must trust himself. He must trust his work. He must open himself to revelation, and that is an act of trust. The artist must never lose the trust of the child for the parent….Jesus told us to call the Lord and Creator of us all Abba….the small child’s name for Father.

But how can we trust an Abba who has let the world come to all the grief of the past centuries? Who has given us the terrible gift of free willl with which we seem to be determined to destroy oursellves?

We trust the one we call Abba as a child does, knowing that what seems unreasonable now will be seen to have reason later. We trust as Lady Julian of Norwich trusted, knowing that despite all the pain and horror of the world, ultimately God’s loving purpose will be fulfilled and ‘all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’

And this all-wellness underlies true art (Christian art) in all disciplines, an all-wellness that does not come to us because we are clever or virtuous, but which is a gift of grace.

It is all so ironic, so poetically just. I’ve put up walls to protect myself and those very walls are the ones keeping me from what I really want. I really want to write. I really want to stop being anxious and afraid. I really want to parent in freedom without resentment or control. I really want to walk on water.

The answer to it all: Abba.

Brennan Manning advocates a simple but life-changing solution.  He says to sit quietly and breathe in the word “Abba” and breathe out the words “I belong to you.” He says to do it for a month of mornings and see if it doesn’t change everything. I heard him say this in chapel at JBU over 20 years ago. I don’t know why I didn’t do it, except maybe it has taken me all this time to believe I really needed it.

I’m starting today.

And if you think this is something you need, too, this prayer, here’s a great little something to get us started.

Sea of Galilee…the original walking on water spot!

 

 

Surrealism, Self-Care & Cray-Cray

The longer our beautiful, diamond-in-the-rough is home with us, the more the wreckage of his soul is apparent. I shudder at it. I can’t imagine how he has endured. The torture he’s lived through is unthinkable. And I am not pointing any fingers because I know that every person that hurt him with the sins of things done or the things that went undone, were people with their own pain and their own doing-the-best-I-can stories. Or they were just children, too.

One of the hardest parts of all of this is the way that everything is so unclear, so surreal sometimes. His words say one thing; his behaviors say another. He tells us about something from his past that doesn’t fit with other things he’s told us or what we “know” of his history. He finds a way to upset the happy moments everytime we get there because chaos and drama feel safer somehow. He tells ridiculous, bold-faced lies for next to nothing. He is kind and endearing one moment, only to turn into a manipulative con-artist the next. He charms acquaintances and proudly declares he would prefer these people as his parents because he “loves” them. He loudly proclaims his entitlement to be treated as a king in our home, all the while, obviously believing he is nothing more than dirt on the floor. He provokes in order to look like the victim, yet he hates his powerlessness with a passion. I can’t say who or what he is. I know there must be a treasure of a boy in there….the one God dreamed up and created….but I have barely caught a glimpse of him and I am not even sure I have yet. What is real and what is not? So much of what he lets me see is smoke and mirrors. What I see is, sadly, mostly mental illness.

In the midst of caring for this child, I also care for one good man and three other children. I’ve never been great at caring for myself. I’ve grown in it, over the years, learning to take time to be alone, to be with friends, to do something just for myself, to say no to things not aligned with my highest priorities, to eat well, to exercise (sometimes). But this one little boy has launched me into a whole new level of self-care. Previously, I learned to step away from busy life for awhile. I learned to say “no” to some of busy life. But I had never learned the kind of self-soul-care I am going to describe next.

Many of the dysfunctional, unhealthy behavior patterns that he exhibits just piss me off. There. I said it. I struck through the words so you would know it isn’t really acceptable to me either. Do what you want with it. If you’ve never lived with narcissistic personality disorder or ODD or RAD, don’t judge! (And no, he doesn’t actually have those diagnoses, but his behaviors line up with them some of the time.) So here I am. I love Jesus. I am trying to love this little boy who is not just being a sassy kid with an attitude. It goes so far beyond that. And I know I’m supposed to be connecting first, hearing the fear behind his behaviors, just understanding where he’s been and what he’s been through. But he just pushed a big, red button. And I want to scream. And punish. And leave. Because I am scared, too.

Enter Christine Moers’ phrase, “Out crazy the crazy.” Some of my other adoptive mom friends have told me about humor and the roll it plays in their lives of living with kids from hard places. But I never gave it much weight for myself, because I am not funny. I don’t laugh a whole lot. Especially not when I am mad. Or when I am dealing with really heavy, sad, frustrating issues. Obviously.

But one day I saw Christine Moers (an adoptive mom and therapeutic parenting coach) had posted this video (when your kids are stuck) of how she “out-crazies the crazy,” which translated by me means this: when your child is engaging in surreal-dysfunctional-upside-down-crazy behavior, just be crazier. It throws them off, breaks the tension, and creates a protective coating for the soul of the person who is trying to love this child through the craziness. It’s like an inoculation so I can love on my child and not get sucked into the black hole of the craziness he is in. It is self-care at a level I have not really tried before.

So, I tried it. That very day after I  had watched the video. We were in the grocery store, and he started in on the whining, reproaching, and accusing. This time it was because I do not buy Fruit Loops. And I knew that nothing I had tried was going to work. Ignoring? Nope. Coaching? Nope. Empathy? Nope. Threats? Nope. I could feel the irritation rising so I just did it. Crazy. I began to cackle like an old witch rubbing my palms together in wretched glee, “I love to make my children eat nothing but broccoli! I am the worst mother in the world! Ahhhaaaahahhahaha (evil laugh)” And it worked. He smiled and moved on. No more about the Fruit Loops.

And since then, I’ve tried it multiple times, and IT IS GOOD. It is a marvelous self-care technique! I have lovingly dubbed him “the cray-cray kid.” It is silly, and he has no idea what I am talking about. It’s so much nicer and less morose than many of the other labels I’ve tacked onto him in my mind. It is a light-hearted way of being with him when he is difficult to be with. So sometimes when it all starts, I become the boxing announcer, “And in the blue corner, we have the one, the only, the faaaaaaantastic Cray-Cray Kiiiiiiiid! And in the other corner, wearing a big grin, is Suuuuuuper Mom, the cray-crrrrrrray champion of the world!” And I start shadow boxing and out-crazying the crazy.

Fast forward to last Thursday. I desperately wanted to go to an art exhibit at Crystal Bridges, and there were just days before it moved on. I was nervous about taking this child to an art museum; anything could happen. But the pull of Pollack and Kahlo, Matisse and Van Gogh were stronger. I knew I might feel resentful if he “ruined” our time there. But I decided that I would not let fear take this chance from me. Self-care is sometimes risky.

And so we went. And mostly, we had a wonderful time. Oh, there were a few hiccups. But there was also an audio-tour device and headphones which kept him busy and happy punching buttons. He had no idea what he was doing or listening to, but it looked and acted like an iphone, so he didn’t care. And it had a strap for his neck so I wasn’t worried about him dropping and breaking it. And he heeded my warning about losing the privilege if I saw the headphone cord in his mouth. He did not chew through the headphone wire! WIN! And my other three were mesmerized and actually studied the pieces and did not get bored. And I soaked it up and felt so rich.

Our last stop was the museum store. That’s a fun place, too. We were browsing the novelties, kids mostly following my instructions to not. touch. anything. They wanted me to snap photos of things they liked. We got tickled about some stuffed dolls made to look like famous artists. There was a Vincent and a Frieda and, of course a Salvidor Dali dolly! So while I was focusing in on the Dali dolly, Elijah stepped into the photo. A funny thought slipped into my mind…The Kings of Surrealism: Salvidor Dali Dolly and The Cray-Cray Kid! And I started laughing and couldn’t stop. And it’s so good because instead of crying, instead of getting mad that this is the life we have now, I just laughed.

As we left, I asked for one more photo, proof that we had been here and had prevailed! I said, “Okay, everybody, look at the camera!” I didn’t even ask for smiles which would be just too much. This is what I got:

And yes, the look away was intentional….we tried it multiple times with the same result…because it was my idea (looking at the camera) and not his. But did I get mad? Or let it touch my emotions at all? Heck, no! I am the Cray-Cray Queen!

Hebrew for my heart

 

I don’t speak or read Hebrew, but I do use a concordance.

yada (Strongs #3045): to know, to understand, to have intimate relationship with

yadah (Strong’s #3034): to express praise, to give thanks

My very simple understanding (and I know there may be more to it than this) of the relationship between these words is this:

To know a person or an experience or even a moment in time, should bring forth praise and thanks for that which we have known. Even the dark places have the capacity to reveal or point us toward the all-satisfying glory of God.

 

I Thessalonians 5:18…give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Silence and Accusation

Every single day, Elijah Isus Johnson wants to eat the following for breakfast:

One banana with peanut butter

2 eggs

a bowl of buckwheat grits or rice

an 8-oz glass of warm milk (after he has finished his 8-oz glass of water because otherwise he won’t drink the water which he REALLY needs for various health reasons I won’t list here).

99% of the time this is what he gets for breakfast. There have been a few occasions when I was out of something. Today was one of them.

After handing him his banana, I opened the peanut butter jar to find it empty. The pantry did not contain a new jar waiting in the wings. I braced myself for the onslaught of his accusing words, hate-filled glare and demand that I get some peanut butter. It didn’t come. He just looked surprised. I instantly began to pour milk: my good-faith offering to say that I knew he needed a little extra care to get over the peanut butter.

He took the banana and sat down. I started doing something else in the kitchen, and when the microwave stopped, I didn’t immediately remove the warmed milk and take it to him. A few seconds went by. He came into the kitchen and said, “Can I have my milk, please?” What in the world could be wrong with that?

Ah, but tone is everything. His words dripped with coded meaning. His tone was condescending and demanding. He was saying “What is wrong with you? You are not taking care of me. Why was my milk not served to me immediately?” His eyes and expression matched the tone. Accusing. I encounter this tone daily.

When Elijah began to reproach me with his, you-are-not-loving-me-enough attitude, I didn’t open my mouth because this is a silent day, and I am not speaking. Normally, I would have defended myself and instructed him in the way to communicate his feelings appropriately. But today I was silent. I chose the easy way and simply got him the milk. I walked outside to take care of the trash bins. I was fuming inside. I heard these words:

Like a lamb before the shearer, he was silent before his accusers. (Isaiah 53:7)

What is HE teaching me through this maddening child? This eye-rolling, sassy boy who has mistaken me for his slave. He is teaching me that I do not need to defend myself. That He will vindicate me. I am bearing reproach for the abandonment this child experienced for 10 years. I am giving him more than any mother or mother-figure has ever given him, yet I am accused for all of their shortcomings. I am condemned for not doing everything he wants, how he wants, when he wants.

 I am forced to repay what I did not steal. (Psalm 69:4)

Not forced, really, but hemmed in. I do have a choice, but the choice not to do this is no choice I want. It’s the lesser of two evils: Reject this wounded child (NO!) or bear his wounds. I don’t really want to bear those wounds, because sometimes I feel as empty as that peanut butter jar. But, well, if those are the two options, I guess I will pick the latter one.

And as for teaching him how to treat me? Yes, this I must do. Yet, I cannot do it rightly when I am offended, angry, defensive. I must be willing to simply give the milk. Or I must be willing to be un-offended as I withhold the milk and invite him to ask in a way that allows me to give what he’s asked for. It sounds simple to my mind, but in the rage of being treated as nothing more than a means to an end, it is very, very complex. And hard. Don’t forget just plain hard.

The silence is a tool to move me further along this road of humility. It is a check to my reaction that allows me to choose a better response. Hearing is happening.

The Silent Experiment

Yesterday was the second time I’ve put words away for a day. I’ve taken some notes, knowing I would write about this, but none of them seem to fit together to mean much. It’s still kind of sketchy, but for those of you wondering, here goes:

All of our kids were on-board, thinking it was a novel idea…sign language, using a white board, pantomime…what could be more fun? My oldest son even joined in and used a white board to tell me a joke! My youngest son wasn’t opposed; he just didn’t get it. He was completely bewildered.

For starters, I noticed that my silence made everything calmer. (Ugh. Hard to admit.) I felt calmer, and it translated to the rest of the house.

While my healthy-adult-self is a responder, one who sees needs and meets them,

my unhealthy-not-so-adult-self is a reactor, one who feels the need to control anything that looks out of control (a kid making a mess, an argument between siblings, a child not on-task with school work during school hours).

Silence “forced” or allowed me to slow down to the place of responding instead of reacting. I felt much more powerful and in control of MYSELF, and my older kids sensed the difference.

The effect on Elijah is not clear yet. He was just as argumentative, disrespectful, and uncooperative as usual. However, I am often drawn into some sort of argument with him. Those don’t start out looking like arguments, but more like a verbal defending of a boundary. Yet, at the end of them, I am usually chiding myself for letting him draw me into his drama. But on my day of silence, there was no conversation. I just kept the boundary without discussion, and that was helpful. I am learning, slowly, how to give his “craziness” less and less room in my life as I try to give him healthy love.

Already, I am seeing that I actually LOVE the silent days. It is refreshing to find myself “unable” to try to fix, prompt, intervene, discuss, lecture (sigh), reason with or explain. And the truth is, I can still do this if necessary. I just have to condense, streamline, and share responsibility much more since I communicate in writing. I think it is healthier than the way I normally function.

So, while I love it, if I had to do it for days on end, I am sure I would not feel this way. My friend who is on doctor-ordered complete vocal rest for 6 weeks, has written that one of the negative effects of not speaking is feeling disengaged from those around her. I can attest to the truth of this. Even in one day, I can feel the disengagement. I am trying to take moments throughout the silent days to really look each child in the eyes and smile, give an extra kiss, hug or sign language “I love you.” Yet, when you have a tendency to be over-engaged, even enmeshed, with your children, a little disengagement can be healthy.

So far, I think the experiment is beneficial. I can’t say, yet, that it has allowed me to hear God more, but that may still be coming. I don’t know all of the results yet, of course, but I think a day of silence each week is going to become a more permanent part of my life.