This is not the end (even though it feels like it)

I've been struggling for days now whether or not to write a post about our last couple weeks. It's never easy to open up to the world, even more so when you barely want to open up to yourself or rehash things that hurt your heart. It's easier just to push them away, filed in a box, ready to move on and forget.

But I can't - and won't - do that.

I always promised myself my blog would be a place of Truth and would proclaim what is Real. If my words are to matter, they must be willing to go through darkness into tough places. Life is full enough of polished over-hyped photo-shopped mirage-perfection. We've lost our ability to fully enter into and even embrace the hard-not-so-pretty things. It's too uncomfortable, no warm-fuzzies here. I'm learning more and more its in these darker seasons of life that His light shines brightest. Glint of beauty shines brightest from muck and mire.

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Almost two weeks ago we opened our home to two precious adventurous oh-so beautiful boys.
Six days ago we said tearful goodbyes.
The seven days in between were easily some of the darkest, hardest and most searingly painful of my entire life...To fully explain why I feel I need to back up a bit.

My emotions have always been the horse pulling the cart. As a child I would get chastised by my analytical father for making decisions based on my heart and not my head. This character trait is both weakness and strength.

I am, and have always been, "all or nothing." Ask my husband - who will wincingly tell you how every time I set my heart on a new hobby or task I quickly buy multiple books on the subject. Spend hours planning and researching. I've never had much of a problem with the whole "wherever you are, be there with all your heart" scenario. I love deeply, fight passionately, cheer fanatically and grieve fiercely.

So when two sweet little boys entered through our front door, my heart fell head-over heels, love-at-first-sight, passionately-in-love. As usual, my mind jumped from "A" (welcoming them across the threshold) to "Z" (visions of holding sweet grand babies with their beautiful hazel eyes). I was all in.

Which made the next week the most beautiful heart-wrenching I've ever been through.

This was our first time fostering, and it doesn't matter how many books you read on the subject, or how many people you talk to - nothing prepares you for the real deal. As I sit and think about last week, my heart still feels like its in a bit of a coma, still suffering a little PTSD.

The boys came with 7 large bags, 3 bikes, 1 pogo-stick, 1 skateboard, 3 boxes, 2 large tubs and 2 backpacks full of physical and emotional baggage. It was unceremoniously dropped on my living room floor and my heart was completely blindsided by the amount of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy that would be required to deal with it. Compound that with 2 adults and 5 children - two of whom have more energy than a small nuclear power plant - crammed into less than a thousand square feet, and my (slightly) obsessive compulsive personality...it was a recipe for a meltdown of nuclear proportions. I spent more hours flat on my face sobbing and seeking God's face than I had in multiple years. For me each day grew darker and scarier than the last.

For years in our early marriage I struggled with panic attacks. Once I discovered they were due to anxiety and not a hereditary heart condition, they lessoned considerably and have not been an issue since. Within hours of the boys moving in, they returned and in greater severity than ever before. Where they once only attacked at night, I now lived in a constant state of deep underlying tension and fear. I could barely breathe.

What really worried me was I knew my fears logically seemed unfounded. They kids actually got along really well! Haven and Irvin were two peas in a pod. He followed her around like a lost puppy and she willingly gave him all the snuggles and giggles he could hold. Jessey and James played energetically from after school until bedtime. We all were falling quickly in love.

But so many things piled up like pieces of proverbial straw, threatening to bend and break me...

Small house shrunk by noise, belongings and chaos to the size of prison cell.
Constant clamoring for time and attention I didn't have to give.
Zero time to spend on homeschool with James.
Jessey's constant fits over the smallest things.
Brothers feeding off negative energy and quickly escalating into small tornadoes of emotional destruction.
Breaking up exponentially compounding little arguments.
Watching my children getting hurt emotionally and at times physically by the brother's lack of self-control.
James beginning to weigh heavy with the roll of big-brother and overseer to two littles who just wouldn't listen and could be bipolar with their affection.

I quickly realized that while we thought we were waltzing merrily down the somewhat difficult long road of adoption - we had actually been thrown into the foxholes of the Reactive Attachment Disorder war...and it was one for which we had not trained, nor had the skills to deal with.

Reactive Attachment Disorder is ugly and very abusive. The swings from "I love you" to "I hate you" are quick, constant and come from nowhere. The child cannot help this behavior. It comes from the dark places of neglect and abandonment in their past...and only lots of time, lots of therapy and a tenacious love on the part of a caregiver can help break through the cycle.

Maybe the outcome would have been different if the panic attacks hadn't played a role, but I had seen first-hand in family members how quickly they can escalate, becoming mind controlling, something only medication can begin to handle. I desperately didn't want to go there.

And so, after much prayer and discussion with their social-worker - who is also a believer - we made the agonizingly difficult decision to let the boys go. We talked about possible solutions to lesson my load - putting Irvin in daycare, taking it week by week. But in the end their worker felt removal was the best option. She informed us that RAD always gets much worse before it gets better - and that it can take months to see results. Since we didn't know if my attacks were going to go away, we didn't want to be faced with a situation where we were completely fed up and calling her to "come get them now." Wanting to preserve the good relationship we already had with the boys, she felt removing them to the children's shelter would give them a shot at a long-term loving relationship with us that could help buffer them through transitions to come. The children's shelter is usually full, especially around the holidays. They had an opening for both boys to stay together, which would not be a guarantee in the months to come and the last thing anyone wanted was for the boys to be split up.

Seven days after they arrived, we loaded up their bags and dropped them off at the shelter. The 48 hours that followed were filled with lots of tears, grief and wondering if we had done the right thing. Any of it.

This is the conclusion I've come to:

I would do it all over again, in a heartbeat.

Where I went wrong was in jumping from A to Z and not just taking each day at a time. Should I have loved them? Absolutely. But I shouldn't have let my love for them allow my feelings to makes decisions the Lord hadn't guided us into yet. The outcome would have been the same, but my heart would have been better guarded.

We were never called to fix them. We were never called to keep them forever. When we got that phone call a month ago, it was for a family to house and love two little boys whose only other alternative was to be dropped at a shelter. And we did that. We loved and hugged and kissed and read-to and prayed with and snuggled the stuffing out of those little guys. For a week they knew family. They knew safety. They knew Love modeled and preached.

I've been realizing they gained a whole lot more than they lost. We all did.

They now have a family who is praying daily for them. Who sends them pictures and calls them twice a week and visits whenever they get the chance. Our journey with them didn't stop when they left our home. Just because we aren't adopting them with paperwork does not mean we have not adopted them in our hearts...and even though they aren't in our home, they are ours. Our boys. They got to learn about the God who made them and left with a book of bible stories that were read to them every night. They learned what prayer is and wouldn't let us leave the room at night without it. Our prayer is that over time they will learn that there are all types of love and that even though they don't wear our name, they still belong.

We learned so much from them. We thought we knew what patience, grace and forgiveness looked like...until they came and taught us the nitty-gritty of those words. We were introduced firsthand to the product of neglect and abandonment and it has lit a fire in our hearts to spread awareness and support those brave soldiers who face this battle day in and day out.

I don't know what the future holds for us in the realm of adoption and foster care - I'm not even going to hazard a guess. I've learned my lesson. I know we need some time to heal and reassess where we stand. But I do know we are still called to love. We are still called to obedience. We are still called to the dark hard places because that's where Grace is found and His light shines brightest. I am so very thankful for the last few weeks and look to our future with great expectancy - for HE is there.

All is still Grace,
Carie