Category Archives: adoption

Out of body 

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the car crash in slow motion

The snake coiled to strike the child

The mother seeing bad news

In the doctor’s eyes

Some moments are so unforgettably awful 

The spirit rises out

Of the body, off to one side

Hovers over the disaster

Snapping shots of all the carnage

A heart just beginning to break

Operates differently than

One far gone into the cave of grief

the last evening you were mine

Was the first time you met

Your new mommy, new daddy

Strangers then

You were delivered back to me

Sleeping I sat with you in my arms

Time folded around us

Everything paused

For our unlikely pieta

I had just enough sense 

to stop everything

just to be with you

A little longer

The hole in the center 

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forgive me for that day in September when I wrapped you in a Mao-green papoose

Indescribable light 

I understand we are only metaphors

Allegories

Parables

For feral mother love 

Howl at the moon

Stalk the night forest

Accost the brothers Grimm

With the spindle-pierced grief 

Through sinew and heart

I held on as long as I could

Then looked for you on each horizon

She-wolf helpless

Caught in the trap

Of human law

Look for you in every crowd

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Words betray only the barest threads of love

“A mother for a child”

You must know I always

Wanted to keep the possessive

Pronoun “mine”

In our relationship

They took that from us

Let me see how

These tiny seeds of faith

Could move mountains 

Losing sight of light to find it

Time makes

Trees from seeds/

Holes in the arms of love

I look for your face in every crowd

And the pictures you post to the world

Of a baby I once held 

So dear, beautiful girl

So always, always dear

The Duggar Fiasco

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A story of a 14 or 15 year old brother deliberately, repeatedly, invasively preying sexually on his very young and helpless little sisters is a nauseating, nightmarish scenario, not a frickin’ altar call.

Yet the Duggars claim it led them all closer to God.

Perhaps the god of celebrity, self-deception, and pride, but categorically not Jesus.

I know this because I too was once horrified to find that my teenage son (adopted from foster care) had preyed on his younger siblings and their friends.

Devastating.

I wept and I sought God.

My husband reported him to CPS.

I took my babies to forensic interviews, their doctor, and a licensed therapist.

And we fought to have him incarcerated for his monstrous crimes.

I sought out every parent whose minor children had been exposed to Charles. I treated his behavior as a public health hazard.

Because it is.

I asked Jesus–how do I get through this?

His answer was calm and incisive–the Truth will set you free.

It has. No one tells you how excruciating that kind of truth and freedom can be.

I look at the Duggars’ response to their son’s crimes and marvel at the damage they have caused to their children and their own souls.

Mrs. Duggar profoundly abused the content and intention of a portion of Matthew 18 in her interview on Fox. Tragic, offensive, and ironic….because Matthew 18:6 is the verse she should be quoting–

Matthew 18:6 NIV
[6] “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

That Sinking Feeling

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For years, and categorically for the first nine months, I awoke each morning and lay in my bed wracked with dread.

Because the children were so punishing.

Trips to parks, grocery stores, the pool, church were all fraught with the certainty of sturm and drang. Sometimes interchangeably.

I remember waiting in Philadelphia for my husband to return after a medical conference. We had to check out of the hotel so for several hours I walked in downtown Philadelphia with the children.

One would begin to wail and would do so for blocks, eventually losing interest. Then the other would commence. Their verbal displeasure was noted by all who passed us.

Normal people.

I found a square and planted us there. The wailing planted itself with us.

The only pictures I have of them as babies–before foster care, before I met them–survived a fire.

All that remains of before.

The Day I Met You

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It was a beautiful fall day in western Pennsylvania when the caseworker called and asked if I could go down to Allegheny General with the other foster mothers to pick you and your sisters up.

You were all tiny, perfect, beautiful, wrapped in the quiet of the NICU.

They trained us in infant CPR and your apnea monitors then we bundled you up to “take you home.”

I put that in quotes because I believe your home is with your mom. Because I believe she never got a chance.

But I have to focus on the light.

My year with you was full of light. You were a wonderful baby and we loved you dearly. You are a wonderful young woman now, and we still love you.

We miss the years and pray the light always travels with you. And that you know, always know, you are loved.

Beautiful Gifts

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Your life changed mine utterly. I can look back at who I was before you and know that I had good intentions and walked the road not as many walk.

I knew I needed to feed His sheep.

But the twin agonies of losing you and worrying about your loss were so harrowing. To lose a baby is a nearly insurmountable grief. To know that you had to question where did mama go? drove me wild with pain.

I clung to prayer, and learned these two things–

You need to stay close to Jesus and prayer must have feet.

I had to push all my maternal love toward these things–you close to Jesus and doing the kindness to others that I asked for you, because someone somewhere was praying for them the way I have prayed for you.

Always.

I would love to send you a real gift–a thing you could hold to know I am there and I love you. But until I am free to send the real to you, I will send you this and this.

Love you, dear heart