Changes and higher bars

These past two months have had some big changes. At the beginning of April, I walked away from the job I loved. It had my heart and soul, and it surprised everyone, even me. I deliberately stayed unemployed for a month, giving myself time to self-reflect, recover, and commit to taking the advice I gave to Camden two years ago, before he started a summer job at a scout camp. 

On the long drive to the camp to drop him off, he struggled with feelings of self-doubt. I told him, "This is the chance to reinvent yourself. The camp is far away and no one there knows who you are. You're going in as a blank slate. Take this chance to rewrite what's on that slate. If you've always been shy but want to be outgoing, be that person. No one knows any different. Make a list of who you want to be, and from now on, be that person."

The moment I knew I needed my own clean slate came when I watched a co-worker publically berate another co-worker. It was a tongue-lashing: humiliating and cringe-worthy. I watched quietly. Given the story I had been told, it was well-deserved so I did nothing. Later on, I learned the full story from someone else and I realized that there had been a huge misrepresentation of the truth. I wept from shame. I had not only stayed quiet, but I had actually enjoyed the verbal onslaught. Me. The person who values integrity and kindness above all else. The person who would rather have everything she owns be taken before she would willingly be unkind. The outer lack of loyalty that I showed from having sat silently paled in comparison to my own self-betrayal.

It wasn't only that moment. There were other changes in myself that I wasn't proud of. I was becoming judgy, jaded, and at times back-biting. These are changes I can't blame on other people. It's me. I'm responsible for what's written on my slate. But I knew I needed to walk away from a storyline, with its well-established characters, in which the ending had already been written, and a plot that would never stop repeating itself. I was not proud of the character I had become in this story, and she needed to be left behind.

I intend to rewrite what's on this new slate rather than letting others do it for me the way I have in the past. As I'm doing so, I'm seeing my life and its purpose with new eyes. A good husband; beautiful children who love me; an amazing home; a wonderful new job; the financial means to not only sustain life, but to enjoy it also. Yes, I've been blessed, but God didn't give me all of these gifts with no strings attached. With each blessing, He's raising the bar. With each blessing, I'm expected to be more, to be better than I was before. Having the luxury to wallow in the mire of poor integrity and pettiness is not what He intended when He blessed me with so much.

I'm excited for this next chapter of my life. It's been a challenge and soul-stretching in its own beautiful way. But life was never meant to stay the same. We were never meant to stop evolving. Even the chapters without the happiest endings have lead me to the one I'm on, and for that I will always be grateful.

Four years

Every year since we adopted Hengxin, I often find myself lost in thought around this time. Four years. It seems like both yesterday and a lifetime ago that we were preparing to making the biggest leap of faith any of us had ever taken, and perhaps ever will take in our life- the anticipation that made me physically ill at times, the fear of not knowing what we were getting ourselves into, and the frantic preparations we were making to embark on this journey with its unknown destination.

I've recently had a number of friends ask me about adoption- how we were led to it and what struggles we've faced along the way. Several of these conversations have spanned for hours, but if someone were to ask me to describe adoption in one word, it would be simply grief. Grief has been interlaced in every part of the journey, in some form or another, by no fault of her own. Our story is somewhat unique because we adopted her at an older age. We went into it knowing- but not really understanding- that adoption is a far cry from the child's "happily ever after." If anything, it's just the beginning of a long and difficult cobblestone road.

But I've learned a deeper lesson- that around every corner that grief sends us, there awaits its ever-patient counterpart: redemption. To grieve is one of the bitterest cups that we will ever drink from, but redemption is perhaps the sweetest antidote. It sits patiently, waiting for the chance to show us how the deepest of pains can become our greatest of blessings. I wonder how often I turned the corner and walked right past, not noticing that it was waiting there for me.

As we celebrated the Chinese New Year this year, with our menial party of a few decorations and poor excuse of overly-Americanized Chinese food, I found myself grieving again. I thought of how much better the celebration would have been if she had been in China. It seemed like a pathetic replacement for the week-long festivities she had enjoyed as a child and, once again, I found myself lamenting and feeling guilty for what was taken from her when she was adopted- what I had stolen from her.

But as I watched her laughing and playing with her siblings and friends that night, seemingly unaffected by the ineptness of the party, I realized that while so much has been taken from her, sometimes redemption isn't just waiting around the corner. Sometimes it walks into a room, hand-in-hand with grief. Both giving room for the other to stand, not competing, and just allowing each other space. Certainly she must have felt a longing for the festivities of her childhood, but didn't allow it to rob her of the joy of the moment.

I wish I could go back to the woman I was four years ago and tell her to sit back and buckle her seatbelt for the coming ride, but to rest assured that every bit of the journey would be worth it. Hengxin is a special girl with inner strength that most of us would never develop in several lifetimes. She is the embodiment of how grief becomes redemption, if we allow it to. I once told her that I never wanted her past experiences to become a stumbling block, but that I wanted them to become her stepping stool that takes her to greater heights. She has followed my instructions from that day far beyond anything I could have accomplished. I have so much to learn from her, and realize that in so many ways, we were never her rescuers. She has been ours.

Turning pages

I've missed my friend behind the keyboard- the one that helps me sort out my thoughts and line them up like little toy soldiers. It's hard to jot down life and condense its intricacies into small little words. Words are always so inadequate. The depth of what we are living can never just be bottled-up and poured onto a page. I imagine that after we die and are reviewing our life, our stories won't be told in words, but in feelings, both our own and of those whose paths we crossed. The emotions are what I'm trying to remember through these small words.

Life is changing every day right before my eyes, and I don’t know how to stop it or slow it down. It reminds me of the cartoons I used to draw in the bottom corner of my notebook pages when I was bored in class as a kid. Each drawing was identical to the one on the page behind it with only a tiny difference. That was the key: little changes. As I flipped the pages, slowly at first, the drawing would come alive as the small movements of each drawing morphed together.

The pages of the notebook are flipping, more quickly now than ever, except the image at the end looks nothing like the image at the beginning. And yet, as much as I miss the simplicity of that first image, I would never want to go back to it. That first image seems both just a heartbeat ago and a lifetime ago.

Having moved around from country to country so much as a child, the memories of my childhood aren’t split up by years or school grades, but by countries. Before Mexico. After Brazil. While in Colombia. I think the memories of my early adult years will always be split in two: before the adoption and after.

Tonight we sat around the dinner table and laughed about things the kids used to do as babies. The way Lauren’s scream could raise the dead. How Luke would make that weird frog sound in his throat when he tried to say Camden’s name. That Calista was my happy little Buddha. How Camden’s name was almost Landon but dad won out on in the delivery room. That Mila’s latina name doesn’t fit her platinum blonde hair but it fits her feisty personality. From the corner of my eye, I saw Hengxin silently staring down at her plate.

“It’s not fair,” I thought. It’s not fair that her scrapbook begins at age 11 and that these conversations will always be uncomfortable for her. It was the after-adoption version of myself that simultaneously lamented this and realized that this has become a normal part of our life. And it’s that same after-adoption version that feels heavy with guilt for having ever having allowed this to feel normalized. Before I would have never understood the irony of the paradox.

It was after the adoption that I couldn’t bring myself to say that we adopted our little dog, Effie. That’s not a verb that I can share between children and animals anymore.

It was before the adoption that my Heavenly Father was the silent man in the sky. It was after that he became my friend.

It was before that I thought that love was simple. It’s after that I realize that love is one of those things that can never just be scribbled on a page and confined to just four little letters. It’s what brought a farm boy and a city girl together when they had hardly anything in common. It’s what has me folding the eighth load of laundry in a day, knowing there are still three more to go. It’s what made us go across the ocean to bring someone home that we had never met, and it’s what kept her from going back when she wanted to. It’s what I’ve pleaded with to God to give me when I didn't understand.

Yet it’s the same little word written on a page in her handwriting that means so much to me because it’s love that has made her blossom- imperfect at best- but as small and simple as that.

I remember as a child flipping through the blank pages of my journal, wondering what stories would someday fill the empty pages. Both the good and the bad have. Now I see that in those blank pages was written the story of a lost little girl, who after 11 years, found a family and was very loved. There's a story of an angry and hurt little boy who grew into a giant with wisdom beyond his years. There's a little jester who kept the kingdom laughing with his wicked sense of humor. There are three little girls, each as different from eachother as can be, with their own unique gifts to the world- the gifts wrapped so beautifully and ready to be opened. The love story from the first few pages between the farm boy and the the city girl told of how while love is fostered during the easy times, it is grown during the hard. They learned that it's their lack of commonality that made their marriage stronger than ever after 18 years. Their story is my favorite.

Life has unfolded in ways I never imagined it would and brought us to places I never thought I'd be. If there's anything I've learned about blank pages, it's that I'm not meant to be the story-writer. I never was. And what fills the pages is more beautiful than anything than I could have ever imagined.

"What is a family?"

The car was quiet as we drove home. I turned up the radio to try to ease the tension of the silence. The past two days we had been going around in circles, working through the hard and the gritty- the unseen challenges that only adoptive families know far too well.

“I have a question for you,” she asked quietly. “What is a family to you?”

I was confused. “What do you mean? It’s what we are.”

“You tell me, ‘In a family we don’t say those things to each other,’ or ‘In a family we don’t treat each other that way.’ I’m not sure if your meaning of family and my meaning of family are the same.”

Huh…. I was stumped. Wasn’t it obvious? It’s what we had put everything on the line for. It's what we've been trying tirelessly to give her since before we had even met her two and a half years ago. 

Carefully I asked, “Let me ask you this first. What is family to you?”

She told me of each of the families she’s been in throughout her life: biological, orphanage, foster, and now adoptive. She had been given “a family” so many different times. Each a world apart in their differences. Some good, some bad- each leaving its own mark, its own scars. I finally understood another little piece of why adjusting to living in our family had been a challenge at times. 

What is a family? I asked myself that for the first time. I prayed silently as I gathered my thoughts, knowing my answer would be pivotal in our relationship. 

After a few moments, I asked her, “Have you ever seen a baby learn to walk?”

“Yes.”

“A baby starts out crawling. It’s all she knows how to do. It's all she can do, but the day will come when she wants to learn how to walk. Learning isn’t easy but her parents are there and so are her siblings, helping her to stand and steady her balance. They walk beside her, holding her hands for support and catching her when she falls. The baby is learning to do something difficult but she knows she is safe because her family is there to catch her. As the baby gets older and stronger she begins to take steps on her own. Her parents have to stand back sometimes and let her do it on her own, knowing that sometimes she will fall and sometimes it will hurt. But they're there, sometimes holding her up, sometimes just standing by. They will never be far away, even when she’s walking completely on her own.

“I guess I see a family kind of like this. A family is a training ground for life. It’s where we learn to navigate through what the future will bring. It’s a safe place to make mistakes, a safe place to fall. It’s a group of people who, no matter how badly we mess up, will always be there, will always love us. It’s the people with whom we learn how to work through disagreements. It’s the people with whom we learn how to love. Some day you’ll have to know how to navigate the world without us always by your side, but we’ll never be far.”

In her short time with us, even within the realm of traditional, she has seen so many different types of families. Each unique in their own way, and at times creating confusion as to what she should expect from her own. Sometimes even I don’t know what to expect from an adoptive family. What’s normal? What’s not? I’m still learning how to walk too.

We talked about the million different ways to be a family. Ours isn’t necessarily the right way. It’s certainly not the only way. There will undoubtedly be things she wants to do differently with her own future family, and that’s not only okay, but to be expected. 

She had that bounce in her step as she walked through the door when we got home, that bounce she has when we’ve broken through another glass wall- one of the countless walls we’ve shattered over the past two years. I felt lighter, my heart fuller. Grateful yet again for one more lesson I’ve learned along this path we blindly set out on not too long ago. Grateful for the realization of something I had taken for granted until then- of what family is to me. Grateful for my own parents and the family that taught me how to walk.

Change

The longer Dennis and I are married, the more I realize how truly different we are in so many ways. He finds comfort in permanency, in consistency, and knowing that tomorrow will look like today. I find comfort in new beginnings, and feel exhilarated by change and risks. I'm always turning things over, looking for something new.

The last six months I had began feeling the dreaded feelings of stagnancy settling in again. Every year or two, inevitably it comes knocking, and it can be suffocating- I imagine from my upbringing. Change was the one thing we knew would always come when I was a kid- a complete overhaul of everything we knew, and the one thing that will help a third culture kid survive is to learn to embrace change.

Over the years I've learned that I have to give those feelings a space and at least some voice, instead of always trying to suppress them. Living in the same small town for thirteen years now and with no foreseeable plans of moving, has provided lots of practice.

One of the least disruptive ways to quench my thirst for change was to enroll in a BSN program, to finally finish my nursing degree. After 14 years, I'm back in school again remembering why I never liked math. That was the easy part of the decision, but in order to make time for school, came an unwanted change.

For the past two and a half years, I've worked as a school nurse at a local high school. I loved my job- the students, my schedule, the amazing on-site daycare for Mila, the teen moms, the staff, and only 7 minutes from my house... in so many ways it felt like the perfect job. But to open time for school, I needed to condense my hours, which meant leaving the school. It was an emotional and difficult decision to make. I shed many private tears in the days leading up to leaving. Not a day has gone by that I haven't questioned whether or not that was the right decision to make.

I took a new job at a long-term care facility, which in many ways has proved to also be a blessing, but has also been disheartening to once again get back into what feels like very mechanical, assembly line-type nursing. Non-stop running for 13 hours, crabby patients, and constantly keeping in mind the CYB (cover your butt) mantra that nurses have to live by in our sue-happy society. I had forgotten the steep learning curve that comes with clinical floor nursing. I have to remind myself that in order to get away from this type of nursing, I need to continue on with my schooling.

Unfortunately, my first night off orientation and the first week of school also coincided with the week that one of my children had surgery, and Dennis was out of town. To say that it was overwhelming would be a vast understatement.

People often ask how things are going with the changes that have come from the adoption. Most days are good, some are quite hard. I've come to the conclusion that there will be some things that will always be a challenge just due to the nature of adopting an older child, and that learning to adapt to a new normal will be my lifelong undertaking. I love change, thrive on it- but somethings simply may never change, and that is a pill I'm learning to swallow.

Many car drives alone to the pharmacy have provided private space for tears and prayers, hoping to understand the things God wanted me to learn and become when he first sent us down this path. But I'll never regret the decision to walk it because of what it has given me- a renewed relationship with God, a family that has grown stronger through adversity, and a bond with my husband that can never be broken. I never want to go back to who I was before this all. I thank God every day for the companion he gave me to walk this road that sometimes feels so very lonely. Dennis has been my saving grace, my rock, and my dearest friend in this world. While I seek change in the other areas of my life, this is change that I pray will never come.

The unwanted companion

I've sat on this post for weeks. It's been several months in the making as I've debated a hundred times whether or not it's something to be shared. I never thought this would be a part of my life story, but here we are. I suppose all that's left to do is to accept it for what it is- a personal Gethsemane of sorts- and to perhaps someday learn to embrace it.

I wonder what my children will say someday about the journey this has been over the past few years. Not only bringing Hengxin into our family, but so much more. Older parents tell me these years are both the most challenging of raising a family, as well as the ones they miss the most. It's been a long road and there are miles yet ahead of us. As my children get older, what will be the story they tell of these days? What will be their story? I suppose all I really know is my story, or how life appears through my lenses.

A few weeks ago I walked the dogs through the subdivision where we used to live, to unwind after a long day. It was dark, the street lamps illuminating the sidewalk in sporadic spotlights; like a silent, empty stage. I had memorized the way the roads looked in the dark, having trained for many races throughout the years in the early hours of the morning or late into the night after the kids were in bed. Walking the darkened streets felt like visiting an old, familiar friend. I paused as I stopped in front of our old house. We had lived there for almost 9 years. It felt like a family member, long forgotten. An unfamiliar car sat in the driveway. The trees bigger than I remembered them. The glow of the interior lights shone softly onto the street, the quiet movement of shadows behind the curtains. I stood now as a stranger in front of what was once so familiar to me- transfixed- every inch of the house holding a thousand memories. It was a hallowed space that had once cradled us through the earliest days of our family. Those years had been hard too. Simpler, but still hard. Unbid, the tears began to fall- feelings of despair welling up, like they wanted nothing more than to swallow me whole. How was I going to survive this time in my life, and cross all of the mountains that stood before me? It was insurmountable. It was sometime before I was able to continue walking. I was taken back by what was stirred in me that night. I thought I had been doing better. I thought that the worst had past.

It took me months, even years, to see it for what was. I had dismissed it as normalcy- or at least my normal- for so long that it never occurred to me that perhaps it was something more. It ran deeper than the grief of what I had lost over the years, or of what I'll lose in years to come. It was more than the stress and fatigue that come from being the mother of a large adoptive family. It had become a canker, feasting away at any hope I had for the future. It had planted seeds of resentment and harvested bounteous crops of anger. It stole away my optimism, leaving feelings of despair and darkness in its wake. It had companioned me for so long that I scarcely knew it was there anymore. It was just the way things were.

I soon realized that my dark companion had a trusty side-kick: guilt, its loyal friend. I had no right to feel this way. I had seen God's hand in the past two years in ways that few people do throughout their lifetime. I had felt His love for me more than I ever had before. What more did I want? I have a good husband. Healthy children. Beautiful home. Good education. I was ungrateful, I told myself, and ungrateful people are bad. I confided in a friend that some days I just wanted to disappear- to be forgotten.

I received a call one afternoon, asking if I'd give a presentation to a church youth group about anxiety and depression. As a nurse, a day rarely goes by on the job when I don't address some form of anxiety and depression, but still I was confused as to why I'd be ask to give the presentation, of all people. However, I accepted and began to study. For weeks I researched and read anything I could on the topic. I interviewed people who suffered from them. I prayed and fasted, pondered and studied more than I ever had for any class. It was during one of the interviews that a question began to form in my mind. Could this be me? I rejected the thought but it never left me, quietly tugging on my pride, like a persistent child tugging on his mother's shirt.

With reluctance I asked to assessed by a physician. I wasn't surprised when he said, yes, I most likely was depressed. But still, it didn't feel the way I thought it would.

How long had I been this way? I couldn't say for sure, but likely it had been simmering for years, with the last two years helping to rear its head in full force.

Within a few short weeks of beginning medication coupled with counseling, my lenses began to clear. The way I had felt for so long was not normal. I saw people differently. I saw myself differently. Anger towards the hard things of life, lessened. Resentment towards those who I had felt hurt by, softened. The grip on difficult things from the past, that for so long I had clung to, began to loosen. And with that loosening started coming the first rays of forgiveness. The heavy shroud of darkness began to lift.

But with the clearer lens came a deeper understanding. Medication was simply a tool, not the cure for my depression. The rest depended on me. There were boundaries that needed to be put in place. Physical health that needed to become a constant, rather than an occasional sprint. Spiritual self-care needed to take priority. The people dearest to me in my life needed to be drawn in, rather than pushed away. And others, perhaps, needed a little more distance.

Relapses still come- more than I wish they would. I imagine to some extent they perhaps always will, but this is a journey, and I might likely have this travel companion for quite sometime.

I once heard it said that to feel joy in our life, we didn't have to change the context of our lives- our family, our job, our home- but that it could be found even in the hardest of days and the darkest of nights.

I felt that joy as I observed the happy chaos at the dinner table the other night. The constant interrupting of excited little voices to tell us about their day at school. The creative and (sometimes) subtle ways my children come up with to tell me that my cooking leaves much to be desired. The caveman-esque table manners of the youngest child that makes us laugh. The sneaking of unwanted food to the dog waiting eagerly underneath the table. The sticky little arms around my neck to thank me for the dinner that remained mostly untouched. The incredible mess of food an dishes left to be cleaned up- the remains of an abundance. Happy, beautiful chaos.

These are the days- the hardest and the happiest of life- that surely I'll miss the most. I thank God for the journey, even with its less-than-desirable travel companion, because it's after the darkest nights that the dawn of all that's good and beautiful seems brighter.

The visitor

Just seeing her made my heart ache- Rosalbita Frias, my maternal grandmother. "This can't be a dream... she seems so real," I kept thinking. And yet still I knew I was only dreaming.

I sat in the galeria, sunlight streaming through the huge windows that looked out to the garden. She sat next to me at the round table next to the TV- the same table where I've spent so many hours talking and laughing. It was covered with a flowered table cloth, just like it always has been, with a dainty crystal vase and colorful floral arrangement. I could see the wood paneling with our pictures on the wall behind her- the greenery that so abundantly filled the room.

The lines on her face, the way her silver hair swept across her forehead, the pearl earrings, and those eyes- so beautiful and brown and vacant. I saw her as I last remembered her, tiny and frail with her mind a million miles away- tucked several decades ago in the past. Stolen by the grip of Alzheimer's.

I looked down at her hands and realized how deeply I had missed seeing them. Her hands... they told the story of her life- thick and calloused, laced in the lovely wrinkles that one only earns after several decades of life. They told of the sacrifices she had made for her small family, of the triumphs and of the heartaches. How many times I had seen those hands expertly craft hundreds of empanadas. How many times they had cradled the animals she so tenderly cared for. She rubbed my arms as I talked, the way she always had, her eyes staring off in the distance.

I wept as I talked to her, knowing by the vacancy in her eyes that she didn't understand what I was saying. I didn't care. I just needed to talk to her. 

"Ritita," she called out to no one in particular. During the years after she lost her memory, I had always wished she was calling for me when she said that, but I knew it was for her sister whom I was named after. I pretended she was calling for me.

I told her about everything that had been hard for me lately, about how inadequate I felt to face the challenges that lay before me, about how much I had missed her. I wept as I talked, just needing to free myself of the weight. She responded in confused and jumbled words. I didn't expect anything else.

But slowly a change began to come across her face. It started with the crease between her eyebrows softening- the same worried crease that had deepened as her memory was taken from her. Her hair began to darken and the hollowness in her face began to fill out. Her jaws regained their natural teeth and within moments I was looking at the face of the grandmother I remembered when we had moved to Chile when I was 7 years old.

She looked at me differently now. Her eyes finally seeing me. She was radiant and healthy, the way she looked in the years before my grandfather passed away. She spoke clearly, fully in the moment. She talked to me for sometime. She had always been a talker. I just listened, and listened... and listened, the way I had done so many times as a child as I watched her work. I don't remember anything she said, and somehow it didn't matter. Just knowing she was talking to me was enough.

After sometime, she hugged me in the firm embrace I had always remembered and my heart felt like it was going to burst. Her wonderful grandmotherly scent, so familiar and sweet, filling me up. All too soon, the dream was over and I awoke, aching for her to stay near.

My grandmother had come to visit me, of that I have no doubt. It had been too vivid of a dream for it to have been simply a reorganization of thoughts, the way our minds do when we are asleep.

I've thought of her a lot lately and I'm not sure why. Perhaps she experienced some of the same challenges I've been experiencing, though I've never been told if she had. Perhaps our thoughts are drawn to those deceased family members who experienced the same things we're going through as they quietly help us along. 

Our time together that night, though brief and fleeting, was precious to me. She had come to remind me that despite the veil of mortality that lies between us, she is there for me, rooting for me and helping me along the way, as are my other grandparents and loved ones who've gone before me.