It’s 12:18am and you cry out in your sleep.
I stand by your bedside, rubbing your arm. Whispering, “It’s ok,” as you roll around, unawake.

A nightmare is disturbing your calm, child-like slumber. Something in your dreams is unsettling you, scaring you. I watch you wrestle with a hard thing somewhere beneath your consciousness, in a place I can’t reach.

And I think I know what it is.

Death.

Your new awakening to death is ravaging your rest.

Hours earlier, we all sat around the dinner table, and among the banter and spills and “just three more bites,” you asked The Question. The one that must be asked. The one that must be answered.

The one I dreaded.

“Mommy, Daddy, what does ‘died’ mean?”

Gulp.

How does one put death into words? How do I explain to a four-year-old that someone can be here and then suddenly they are somewhere else? How can that be?

“Honey, when people die, their body stops working. They stop breathing and their heart stop beating. It’s like they are sleeping, but they never wake up again. They stop being alive.”

I see the struggle to comprehend, the flash of fear in those probing eyes of yours.

And I realise how many times I said stop. Your whole world until now has known start: start life, startwalking, start talking, start doing chores. You ask when you can start school, start sitting in the front, startballet.

But to stop?

How foreign it is to you. How foreign it is to me still.

We try to explain how a person’s soul leaves his body and goes to live in Heaven or Hell. That our only hope to survive death is to enter God’s family.

“But Mommy, how long does it take?”

Another question. Oh sweet girl, what a question. How long does it take? The transition from life to death? From earth to eternity?

And so we struggle to answer as best we can.

Because being sure of something doesn’t make us comfortable with it.

And the truth that has sunk to the pit of my stomach is that I can’t shrink the vast mystery of death into something that will fit into your child-sized world.

And so your world must grow to make room for it instead. And I watch those growing pains as you dream restlessly.

I’m sorry, my sweet, innocent girl. I’m sorry that such a deep, dark, scary thing as death exists. I’m sorry that your eyes must open to it and your mind must expand with it and your heart must wrestle with it.

You lost something tonight.

A little piece of blissful unawareness exchanged for this frightening knowledge of ending.

And I hate it. Because I know that this is only the first. As your childhood merges into this thing called growing up, there are many more hard truths that you will have to uncover.

That people hate and are scared of other people just because they look different.

That so many tiny babies die because their mommies went to a doctor and asked for it.

That mommy’s just like me must watch helplessly as their precious little ones just like you waste away because they are hungry and thirsty and sick.

That some mommies and daddies break up and live in separate houses.

That lots of little boys and little girls go to bed each night wishing, praying, hoping for a mommy and daddy, because they are all alone in the world.

That grown ups do really, really, really bad things to one another because of greed and hate and lust and the love of power.

If these unspeakable realities lie heavy in my grown-up heart, how can your little heart possibly bear their weight?

And yet bear their weight it must. And that’s what I am here for. I will teach you…

To carry the heavy things carefully without being crushed.

To guard the sacred things closely without being broken.

To handle the hard things directly without becoming callous.

To question life’s injustices fiercely without doubting God’s goodness.

To deal with the unfathomable things thoughtfully so that you are spurred to God-motivated, Christ-centred, Holy Spirit-empowered actions.

Sweet little one, this is where your childhood begins its end.

And Baby Girl, mama’s here, ok?

The post Dear Baby Girl, I’m Sorry About the Hard Things appeared first on Proverbs 31.

I’m sorry.

That monumental exchange when your son became my son was more than two years ago. I have not written once. In all honesty, I don’t give you much thought at all. I promised myself that I would. In fact, before yours became mine, in a sentimental-yet-sincere letter to you, I promised that I would remember you, that I would hold you high in my (our?) son’s life. I know that you never read the letter, but still. I promised you. I promised me.

How is it fair or just or decent that I rarely give you a thought? The woman who conceived and carried and birthed my child; the woman somewhere out there in the vast unknown who surely wonders about me more than I wonder about her.

I have broken my word. And I guess this letter is a confession of sorts. A confession of wrong-doing, with no clear idea of what right-doing looks like.

Because I don’t know how to do this. Any of it.

How do I nurture this unnatural relationship I find myself in with a woman who is both an utter stranger and yet whose life and choices are linked to mine in a way that can never be unclasped?

How do I hold you up in my son’s remembrance when I have nothing to raise?

In that pre-adoption letter that you have never received, I thanked you for your gift to my family. I commended your courage. Were those words a platitude? Would you, the woman who gave up so much, take comfort in those words written by me, the woman who understood the magnitude of the giving so little?

Birth mothers are brave. That’s what we all say. It gives us mothers-by-adoption consolation, I think. It gives us a detour from the uncomfortable sense of unfairness that I have him. That he is mine.

Birth mothers are brave, I tell myself so that I can escape the suspicion that you carry an unimaginable load of grief. The uncomfortable sense that I perhaps somehow inflicted your grief by taking him when you gave him.

But are you brave? I wonder. Without a doubt, that moment, that huge moment when everything changed for you, for him, for me…that was brave. But every moment since? When changing your mind was not possible? When the course of The Choice was set and there could be no reverse, no U-turn…were you brave then? Has your bravery endured?

I don’t know how you get through the days, or, God help you, the nights. Maybe you don’t. Maybe your life is hell as you grieve the loss of your child. Do you mourn? Do you regret? Do you keen silently where no one sees as you go on with your days, forever marked by That Day?

Forgive me for not grieving over your grief. For not wearing my knees raw in prayer for the woman who knew my son before I even knew of him. For not carrying you in my heart, as you carried him in your womb.

We are inextricably linked, you and I. By a tender little daydreamer. To know him is to love him. You knew him first, so I can only conclude that you must love him too.

There are many things I know about him that you have no idea of. His sleepy wake-up face. The sweet way he says “Sissie.” How he tells me every day “Me miss Daddy” while Daddy is at work. His hilarious stride as he runs. The way that it took him 7 months to master riding his training bike.

But, you see, there are things that you know about him that I don’t. The feel of his movements in your womb. The time of his birth. What he looked like as he slipped out from you into the world. His biological father’s name.

[eltdf_blockquote text=”And I’m realising that without your son there can be no my son. As he grows, he will want to know more of you. And I wish I could give him more. Because you and I…together we complete him.” title_tag=”h2″ width=””]

He is doing well, our son. Just fine. He loves and he is loved. He is bookended by a big sister and a baby brother. His precious life is surrounded by so many people who adore him. He is precocious and funny and sweet and tender. And he is fine.

With each new revelation of his budding sweet personality that surely could not have come from me, I wonder about you. I think of you. And maybe that can be my gift to you; my hopelessly inadequate show of gratitude to the woman who gave him to me.

The post Dear X appeared first on Proverbs 31.

Foster Mama, I See You

My parents and sisters’ home has been a place of safety for the past 5 years, and they have loved on and launched twelve the children into the arms of their forever families. This piece was written late one night, as I grieved with them over the difficult goodbyes they were saying to “their” little boy, whom they had loved for over a year.

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