I have sat here at this computer a million times trying to think of how to share with you the journey I have been on as I parent a child that is not of my flesh, but of my heart instead.  The journey has not been what I expected in a lot of ways, but yet there is incredible blessing in the learning from the Lord along the way.  I wouldn’t trade this road, but it has been a tough one to trudge.  My desire is to write it out so that people will not think it’s all happy and roses, but instead get a real look at adoption.  Not the scary kind of story that people always tell to scare the crap out of you and make you vow to never risk yourself to adoption, but instead the kind of story that is real, but full of redemption and joy.  Oh yes, we redeemed our daughter from her life as an orphan, but it wasn’t she who really needed redeeming.  It was me.

December 15, 2005 is the date that changed my life.  That date sticks in my mind because it is the day I agreed to go with my husband to a purely informational class about adoption.  We had 4 biological children–four under four, mind you, so I was humoring him.  In reality it was God who was humoring me as He waited patiently for me to be ready to go deeper with Him than I ever had before.  He purposed to use our Daughter of Purpose to take me from a leanness of soul to a fatness of soul.  Though painful to get there, I’d rather be fat than skinny in my soul.

You see, I am a black and white person so when this child came into my home and shook it up, I didn’t really quite know what to do.  Before she arrived, I knew I’d have to parent her differently, but I’d talked to lots of adoptive parents and read the books.  I was ready for whatever came my way.  Right?  She’s been nothing like the books.  The books got thrown out the window along time ago.  Instead it’s been replaced by The Book and a daily dependence on the Lord to see her through His eyes.  Every single day I must get up and ask the Lord to enable me to do what does not come naturally to me.  He must give me patience, grace, mercy and an unnatural ability to see past what I see with my eyes–straight into the heart of my daughter so that I can help her.  Let me confess, I do not write this from a place of “arrival.”  I write you from the trenches.  This is my daily existence because I have been given the gift of helping my daughter learn what real love is and to bring her to Him who will heal her history.

Let me clarify, my Daughter of Purpose is not a child that screams and kicks, tears out her hair, steals food and hides it under her bed.  She does not treat me horribly and then kiss up to Daddy.  She does not avoid our gaze or our touch.  The thing about her is that she is charming and cute beyond measure externally, but she is torn up inside because she doesn’t know what it’s like to live in a place of feeling safe and loved.  Let me see if  can explain it to you in this way, my biological children have a threshold of feeling safe and loved that is so wide–super wide.  Their floodgates are wide open because feeling safe and loved is all they’ve ever known.  Daughter of Purpose, on the other hand, has a threshold of safety, love and acceptance almost immeasureable because it is so small.

Let me give you a real life example. Just last night I caught Daughter of Purpose licking the counters.  Why?  I don’t know.  Honestly, I really don’t know.  Sometimes she does the strangest things, but over time I’ve just learned that it comes down to a very basic principal.  No one has ever taught her what is appropriate and inappropriate.  Even the craziest things you think don’t need to be taught…I have had to teach.  More on that later.  Back to the counter licking.  When DOP was caught in the act, I didn’t bark at her.  I didn’t berate her and ask her what in the world she was doing.  I didn’t even raise my voice.  I just simply asked her to please stop licking the counters.  I said that licking the counters was not a good idea.  She instantly dropped her eyes, her body language and her voice into what I call “the unsafe zone.”  She replied with her pouty face and monotone voice, “Okay.”  From that point on, I could guarantee that anything I said would be tuned out.  She had internally pulled into herself for protection.

Let’s flip the story to one of my biological children.  In the exact same scenario, I could ask them what in the world they were doing, banter with them and end up laughing over the obsurdity of it all.  Let’s pretend that if I wasn’t even in a good mood and snapped at them about licking the counters.  They would recover quickly and move on.  It would not plague them as to how they had messed up again.  Yet, the counter licking was still haunting DOP this morning.

God has allowed me to see into her world and respond to her differently than what comes naturally to me.  My daughter lives in a world that despite our constant assurances to the contrary, she lives in fear that she can lose our love–that some naughty behavior will make us change our mind.  She lives believing that since she came from somewhere tangible and her value is measurable by dollars, she can be returned to Russia with a full refund if she doesn’t measure up.  Of course we’ve never said such things to her and she probably couldn’t put her responses into those exact words, that is the insight God has given me.  It is painful to even think about being her–to live in such a way that I constantly felt I needed to be good enough or I would be sent back to a place I don’t even want to think about.

What DOP needs more than anything is for me to love her in a way that I’ve never had to love before.  She needs me to parent her with grace instead of my natural black and whiteness.  She needs me to be patient as I teach her over and over again until she gets it right.  She needs me to be patient as she learns the most basic things because no one ever taught her before.  She needs me to be merciful and gracious at every turn as she heals from the inside out.  What she needs most of all is for me, her Mommy, to show her my love unconditionally regardless of whether she measures up or makes any sense to me.  She needs me to wrap my arms around her and show her what Mommy’s do–they hold you when you’re hurting and they’ll hold you as long as you need.

Just this morning, God placed me on my knees with her at eye-level and I listened as she shared randomly that the reason she was upset was because she didn’t want our cat to die.  Random.  Our cat is not sick or in anyway close to death.  He just happened to be around, rubbing at our legs while I asked her what was wrong.  I knew this was not really the reason for her emotionalness, but instead it was all her 5-year-old mind could come up with.  I held her close and probed a little deeper.  That’s when I learned that she was still very upset about letting us down by licking the counters last night.  I assured her of my love and allowed her to cry a very deep cry.

Daughter of Purpose was almost 4-years-old when we brought her home. It’s taken awhile, but slowly, yet surely her need for healing is bubbling up.  It’s random, but it’s becoming more frequent.  She has yet to really talk about her life before joining us and I’m not sure that she really knows how, but if there’s one thing I am determined that she will learn in her journey toward healing is that Mommies love you no matter what, no matter how hard it gets.  The reason I can say that with confidence is that I have a Heavenly Father that has shown me unconditional love, grace, mercy and acceptance.  He is the One who has held me as I have worked toward healing in my life.  He is the One who has been patient as the things I need healed have bubbled up randomly, making no sense as to why here, why now.  It is He, as my example, and through His Spirit that will give me the strength that I need to be the Mommy that my Daughter of Purpose needs me to be.

“Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” – Hebrews 12:12-13

Make me strong, Lord, so that I may hold my daughter up to you that she might be healed by Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that Heals.

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