Just Be Easy!

My husband and I were talking about parenting the other day. There are times when we feel so successful, and then there are the other times. 

As we shared different stories where we failed to respond well, we saw a pattern. We took turns sharing stories, and they all seemed to go like this. 

A child misbehaves and we handle it with patience, humor, redirection, and calmness. 

That child misbehaves again--repeating the previous action or inventing a new way to be disruptive, disrespectful, or dangerous. And we handle it calmly, the child recovers, and we move on. 

Then that child is downright mean to a sibling, and we facilitate her making it right. 

After two minutes, the child makes eye contact and directly disobeys, "don't-touch-THIS?" style. We take a deep breath and respond like a pro, employing curiosity and remembering that behavior is communication of a need. We discover and meet that need with gentle questions and innovative solutions. 

Then she either does something she can't help, like burps or trips; OR she goes in for a pound and escalates to 11 with no apparent trigger.  Either way, we lose it and blow it. Inside (and sometimes outside) we wail, OH MY WORD, JUST BE EASY!

We keep on keeping on. I think we are improving--every one of us. But we still fall flat on our faces more often than we want. 

Anniversary

We just celebrated our 28th anniversary!

By the way, if you want good babysitters, I know the trick. First, have a couple of great kids who are terrific with kids. Wait 'til they grow up. Then get more kids and have the first kids babysit the second kids.  It's brilliant! That is my cheeky way of thanking our two adult kids for watching our three growing kids.

We went to a hotel two miles from our home and it was magnificent! We napped! We slept 'til we woke up. We talked about kid things and not-kid things. I decided I will start writing my own homeschool curriculum for the girls! (I'm kind of excited about that one!) We remembered the details of our wedding day and the days just before and after. We played games and watched TV. 'Twas marvelous!

I had a vision ages ago that continues to be true today.  We had just gone through some broken friendships that also broke my heart. Then I saw us as if we were on a boat. We had been knocked around, soaked and battered by ferocious winds. As things died down, we managed to stand and look back. There was a maze of whirlpools, monsters, icebergs, and jagged rocks.  I had thought the danger had been from all the weaving the ship had done.  But it was weaving to avoid all those life-threatening dangers. We were being kept safe!

I am so thankful to my hero, living all the stages of life with me. I think there are things that are so far removed from the two people who made vows that it boggles my mind a bit. Being married for life is not a guarantee for anyone these days, but Brian early on decided we would banish the notion of divorce. I think that saved us.

His commitment to our marriage meant that even when things were hard, I knew I had that stability. I could be weak, wrong, and wrecked. But my husband stood strong.  He could screw up, but I wouldn't give up. Knowing we are in this unconditionally means we know it's worth the work that is necessary for any relationship. Not working on it was self-defeating. So, we work, we pivot, we talk, we apologize, and we forgive.

This stability is the biggest gift to our kids. They can do all the things, big and small, good and bad, but this family will always be here for them. 

Please don't mistake this for bragging. I don't deserve the blessings I enjoy. I tell you about this all with big-eyed wonder. I look back and see the dangers we avoided and shake off the goosebumps. We've made it this far. By God's grace, we will keep going.

March: 2024

Last year, in March 2024, the chaos of fostering was replaced by the chaos of adopted life. My husband picked up a part-time job working on the weekends.  He had to stop attending church. We were on our fifth! I really liked this one, and hoped we would belong for reals soon. My personal prayer life and Bible study were steady.  Perhaps the only steady thing. I knew God was faithful. I knew God wasn't surprised or overwhelmed. I knew He saw, He cared, He supplied.

We had one daughter in a slightly better daycare. I have NEVER had a child in daycare; it was a cocktail of ego-bruising and learning-curve that I did not enjoy.  I have been the daycare provider countless times. Now I was the working mom, exhausted and spread too thin.  What did I care if it was crazy socks day? I was trying to survive.

We had one daughter with me, enrolled in my AM Kindergarten class and my PM PreK class.  It was wonderful spending the whole day with her. She learned how to read, about Jesus, how to play with other kids, and gained some emotional intelligence. We had her in therapy and got some clear diagnoses for a few special needs. Her growth and development that school year was astonishing.

Our middlest child was attending second grade at the public school down the street. Thank God for her first- and second-grade teachers! Both invested in her, rooted for her, and did their best to provide a safe place for her. I also have NEVER had a child in public school. Another blow to my pride and confrontation with inadequacy.  

Our adult daughter was settling into a new job as a vet tech after returning from Sierra Leone on a teaching trip with my mom. It was a lot, but she has enough stubborn in her that when things get hard, she fights. Our son hit a roadblock in December and was recovering from a mental health crisis.  When the kids hit 18, you are not finished parenting. It gets more nuanced. You're backburnered when things are good. When things get rough, you can only persuade and pray your butt off.

God bless all the working moms. It is so much to juggle. And what on earth are you supposed to do when someone gets sick, huh? The life feels impossible.  But, as I mentioned, I had the Best Job Ever, so my boss and coworkers helped me way beyond the call of duty.  

In March, I was still recovering from a concussion I received one morning when the back hatch of our car fell on my head.  I still struggled with fatigue and word salad.  Life was good, but also really, really hard. 

There was always at least one girl going through something that required all of our attention. I felt continually inadequate like I was drowning.  And ungrateful, because I knew my life was good. I was complaining about my blessings.  But my blessings were smothering me.

What a March!

March: 2022

We are scooting along through the years. Between 2021 and 2022, we fostered twins, quit all our jobs, and moved 2,000 miles away. I got a job working at a terrible day care with wonderful people. My students were precious, their families generous, and my co-workers exceedingly special. But the system stunk and the center eventually went under.

I had the wonderful pleasure of partnering with my son in the classroom for a while there. By March, we were actively job-hunting. My daughter was doing brave things working in service to people with special needs. My husband was enjoying retirement. We were learning how to ballroom dance!

We were on our third church by then. I was having a hard time finding my place. That was a new challenge for me. I've had struggles in many churches but never had a problem with just finding a church. I felt stiff-armed and unwelcome. I couldn't find an inroad as a working woman. On the other hand, my husband was veritably collecting men's Bible studies. He joined and continued in each group as we church-hopped.

It was difficult and wholly unfamiliar to not have a church family. It stood in stark contrast to the one we had just left. The members of our small group are people my new daughters know and pray for.  They are phenomenal and I am staggered by the lavish love of our Father to let us be in that group that is now scattered across the states. I love them all so much. And their love has sustained me through this weird church-drought we are experiencing.

During this March, we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary by taking a sleeper train to see Niagara Falls. It was dreamy. Life was dreamy. We were living our happily ever after. What a March!

March: 2019

Continuing our retrospective into Marches past, we zoom from 2018 to 2019. We lost our precious girl to a Native American family thanks to ICWA laws. It was devastating and our family was still in the deep throes of shock and grief. 

To be honest, the four of us still have wounds from losing our little girl that merely gape a little less. We miss her and pray for her daily.

At this point (in 2019), we were licensed with an agency and hoping to be a safe place for kids in need.  We'd given ourselves a month to make zero decisions after our girl left. Then we discussed whether we would continue as a foster family.  We unanimously decided that if kids didn't get to choose to be foster kids, we WOULD choose to meet them there.  We knew it would be hard, but we could trust Jesus to sustain us.

On a more celebratory note, my first daughter graduated high school! In March, I was writing her transcripts, and she was wrapping up final projects to complete her high school education on the fifth of April. Pretty exciting stuff. She did not enjoy school, and her graduation marked an accomplishment that I hope she still loves.  

Our son was in college, and I decided to join him. In March, we were preparing to begin at WGU on the first of April. I was finally going to get my BA! I spent March hunting down transcripts from my lifetime before raising two kids.

What a March!

Wednesdays and "Blended" Families

I changed up my homeschooling schedule to find a routine that is less taxing on all of us.  Today is Wednesday, and that means a Sonlight day in the morning and AWANA at night.  Also, my adult daughter comes for dinner on Wednesdays, which shoots Wednesdays as one of our favorites of the week. 

We often have a more substantial meal (read: I actually plan and execute one). The girls go to AWANA and either my grown kids head downstairs to hang out together, or they join my husband and me for some visiting time.  After the girls get home and go to bed, we might watch a movie or play a game.

Blending families is something our culture is practicing these days to do well for the sake of the kids. That phrase usually refers to families on a second (or more) marriage.  Ours feels like a blended family for different reasons, but we still make a special effort to honor the myriad relationships in this group of seven. One of those ways is to have some four-adult time after the girls go to sleep.

Before the girls joined us, we were a tight family with a unique personality.  It is this quality that I thought made us a good candidate to welcome littles into our family.  I think it is imperative to preserve something of that quality so that we still have that special thing to offer the girls.  

Of course, just as important, we have to shift and adjust to being a unified family of seven, where each person contributes their own tweaks and quirks to become a blended... beast? that represents all of us.

Anyhow, these Wednesday nights are a blessing for us to be four.  My kids giggle and jab at each other.  We watch shows that aren't wholly appropriate for kids. We allow for our relationships to evolve--since our kids aren't kids any more. We remember. We share. We plan. We be. 

Is It Luck?

Sometimes people don’t know what to say when they learn we adopted three girls.  Other times people genuinely mean to say that the girls are lucky we adopted them.  And I cringe every time. 

My oldest daughter has surging feelings whenever she hears it.  Who would call a child born positive for drugs lucky? Or one raised in an abusive or neglectful home?  What is lucky about living in an apartment with an empty fridge or maggots in the corners? And most universal to adoption stories, what child is lucky to lose his or her first family? It’s best not to suggest to our firstborns that their younger siblings are lucky.

My thoughts on it are a little different.  First, I rarely use the term lucky for any situation.  I don’t believe in luck.  Setting it aside and dealing with the actual intent of the statement, I am equally uncomfortable with my littles being called lucky.  While my oldest girl focuses on the circumstances that allowed us to adopt, I am acutely aware of my failings.  I am not a perfect mom.  I am not a perfect anything.  That might seem trite or inspire an eyeroll, but I am being very serious.  These girls have been through enough; they don’t need a lousy mom.  I’m aware of how frequently I mess up and can make myself crazy thinking about the ways I may be messing up without knowing about it!  What’s lucky about being raised by someone like that?

My sister has another perspective.  Her mouth is too colorful to quote, so I will paraphrase. She says we retired and could have followed the American Dream scheme and lived a lifestyle that didn’t include scraping money together or doing without some luxuries we ‘earned.’  Our daily life could have been my pursuing a career in my interests and my husband enjoying well-deserved rest.  We could travel and dance and play.  We could have a disposable income!

Instead, we decided to jump back into the thick of child-rearing at the cusp of empty nesting.  These girls have been through trauma—and so have countless others.  Some of those others won’t be adopted.  They won’t land in a permanent place with people they can call their own.  In her more aggressively-phrased way, my sister says we’re freaking amazing (but she didn’t say freaking).

That makes me so uncomfortable!  I was uncomfortable enough to end the conversation, and very uncomfortable writing it here. The good that comes from it is a determination to make my life agree with her assessment.  I pray, “Let it be, Lord!”  Let me be freaking amazing! Let the girls be blessed with a healthy permanent family to change their statistical trajectory.  And, Lord—Lord—please save those masses of other kids who need the same!

Parenting in our 50s

This could easily be a series on its own.  Parenting littles in your fifties is not the same as parenting littles in your twenties or thirties.  The obvious differences come with the changes we often go through as we age.

Being older, it’s harder to go without sleep.  We are tired!  I say this with some restraint. A lot of that is personality and how we are made.  I naturally function better without sleep than my husband.  For most of our parenting years, I got to be a stay-at-home mom while my husband worked out of the house, so I always took night duty.  (It was a less happy situation when I was working full time and still did night duty!) Even in the gap when we did not have little sleep-thieves, there were occasions I pulled all-nighters and kept on ticking.  I plowed through my BA and MS this way.  I loved people who spent too many nights in an ER or nursing home.  I can sit in a chair with the best of them.

Even so, we are tired!

On that old-body bandwagon is that we are jointy and creeky.  Raising littles after back surgery looks different from when you could throw the kids in the air without a care.  I broke my feet and have plantar fasciitis.  I’m not the runner I once was.

A benefit of age is that we are wiser and have perspective.  We know what will last and what needs attention.  We can laugh. This is a huge boon.  Things that seemed dire once are merely blips that we can ride out with grace.  Our vision is longer.  The concept of raising adults is not new, we have actual tangible evidence that they do grow up.  The first time around, it was theory, a hope.  This time, we have more assurance. 😊

A real zinger about raising kids in your fifties is that your kids talk about and pretend to have hot flashes way more than is normal!