A Hundred Things . . . {the sin of prolonging}

I have a hundred things rolling around in my head.
Have you ever felt that way?
As in The Screwtape Letters I have a common vice that occurs when I feel God is prompting me in a number of directions, thoughts, ideas -- when I know I need to sit down a work it all out, pray deeply to hear his deep, sweet voice, and discern what it is what He's trying to stir so gently within me.  Instead of obedience, it's as though another voice whispers within me and says, "this is too important to do when you're not entirely focused.  Let's save this for LATER when you can devote all your attention to it."  And then later amazing stalls it's way into the distance.  It's a clever tactic that the Enemy has effectively used on me time and time again.  In my busyness I don't think about what's playing out before me.  Months will go by and I'm being disobedient to God.  

I want to *sigh* with exasperation at myself, but the truth is that lately, my life group has been reading The Story.  Do you know the one I'm talk about?

The Story looks at the major stories of the Bible from the beginning to the end.  And one thing that is so super clear when you go through the whole Bible instead of doing long in depth studies on small passages is that you get a clear sense of God's voice, God's holiness, and God's heart.

It breaks my heart that I fail him when he's been working since creation to be so intimately close to me.  How astonishing to me that I would put off speaking with the One with whom my heart years?

Do you do this, too?
Do you think things like -- God knows what's going on.  I don't have to tell him.  or  I really want to spend some time with God but these 5 minutes aren't enough, later I'll have REAL time to sit and pray, so I'll do it then . . .

My sweet friends, please don't be coerced into staying staying away from your heart's truest love.

Sometimes our lives feel like they are getting off track and it's because our hearts are not in line with His.  We might be going to church each week, hanging out with Christian friends, but not truly being intimate with the One with whom our heart was made to love.  If you're feeling like this is you, just stop where you are and tell Him how much you love him.

Father God, 
How amazing it is that you love me in spite of myself.
Please forgive me for not valuing our relationship lately
enough to make our time more of a priority.  Help me to 
talk to you constantly throughout the day because I know
that each moment is holy and significant when You are in it.
I love you.
Amen.

Surprised by Love: Overwhelming Support

After years of waiting, we finally brought home our little Chipmunk a few weeks ago.  Darling husband and I have been talking about her and dreaming of her since before we were married.  And now she's here and I am utterly, terribly in love.  Her cooing, and snuggles, her precious smiles that light up my heart -- well, if you've had a wee little one like this, then you know what I mean.

So many things are different this time around.  When we brought home All Star and Sugar Monkey we felt a wide array of feelings.  We loved them and wanted to play with them and pour our hearts and love into them, but there were numerous challenges as well that made us feel exhausted, overwhelmed, lost, even desperate.  I'm not sure if you can relate to those feelings.  This little girl, however, seems like a precious gift to remind us of who God is, who we are in Him, and to just bring an abundance of joy where many sore places in our heart needed a balm.

Can I tell you one surprise that I never expected?
Pause before I answer and let me tell you that Hubby and I never really fundraised.  We were busy with ministry and we didn't want to be a burden on our friends and family.  Often in our self-depreciation, we felt like we weren't sure if we had any close friends.  We do ministry, which brings us around people all the time, but we don't often really get to spend dedicated evenings with friends to just hang out -- we haven't in years.  We're a mess, I know.  So basically, we just felt like how could we really go about fundraising and asking people to support us when this was just *our* journey that we felt like we needed to go at alone.

But I was wrong.  In lieu of fundraising, we brought home Chipmunk and EVERYONE wanted to support us.  A friend set up a meal train and we had food brought in for three weeks!  People that I didn't know felt anything for us were bringing us carefully planned out meals in disposable boxes with paper plates and cups.  We had messages from people on Facebook from people whom I haven't seen in years asking if we needed anything, and what can they bring, how they can help.  We had neighbors bringing gifts of clothes and food.  I literally kept a list (for thank you card purposes, you know) of who all helped and had three pages of people.

Now, for you extroverts out there, that may not seem like a big deal -- but for introverted ole me, who practically only leaves the house for grocery runs and gas fill-ups (I may exaggerate) this was overwhelming and shocking.

And it occurred to me, as I'm slow to realizations, that our community wants to be part of adoption.  Our community -- yours and mine -- wants to share in our joy and be part of supporting this work God has placed on our hearts.  How silly of me to not trust that what God planned for us, He would support through the hearts of people in our lives.  How silly of me to have thought I was alone.  God never leaves us alone. Never.

So if you are thinking about adoption, consider being surprised by love.  Consider putting your heart out there and allowing the gift & blessing of others joining in your story.  You're not alone either.  Emanuel = God with us   It is His name.  It is his promise.  Don't make the same mistake I did and forget.

Perfectionism

I take a lot for granted.
That's been the lesson lately.  And I'm thankful for my life group that they've been letting me see that growing up in a Christian home, and knowing God all my life, has been an amazing blessing, really.

Background:  I met a family through the ministry recently who through familial circumstances took in children that were not theirs.  Their home has been put out by this brave and difficult undertaking.  It has been financially, emotionally taxing on the parents and their children.  So now they are ready for someone to adopt these children they have protected lately so that they can get back to their life, to the life they had prior to the disruption.  And they love these kids that they are looking for homes for; they just want to return to the comfort they had before.

And my feelings are not judgment and I hope I didn't write this background info in such a way as to cause you to feel moved towards judgement.  But what has dawned quite heavily on me is that I, as a Christian, know WHY I am moved and prodded to act as I do.  God in heaven loved me, and I am deeply, deeply trying to learn to love like Him.

And sometimes I'm so surrounded by others who are on a like path, a similar chosen journey and we speak the same jargon and our hearts beat with same love and grace that God has reached down and touched our lives with.  I forget, dear friends.  I forget that for those who don't know that deep love of Christ it's not about that.  It's only about the here and now, about doing for "my own" and for trying to enjoy my fleeting time -- certainly not taking on the responsibility of others.

And I'm so grateful that I know Jesus.  For a thousand ways, to be sure.  But today, I just feel so grateful that I know WHY I move daily.  Any heartache I struggle with is because I want the lesson to be over and I want to have things perfect now, but deep down I know that God is chipping away at all of the rough patches of our little family members -- molding us for purposes only He fathoms.

I told you in my last post (sometimes I dread posting and vulnerability that comes with it, so I'm sorry for the gaps) that I would tell you of our progress.  I am still journaling away.  Ray and I are debriefing daily.  Our sensory experiences and lessons from The Whole-Brain Child are working for connecting purposes with the kiddos and providing fun sensory opportunities for our sensory craver, Sugar-Monkey.  All-Star only participates if the activities are neat and not messy.  :)  He's a tactile avoider.  But here's where the progress is happening: in Ray and I.  Last night, for example, Ray started making a soap-box car with Sugar-Monkey, and little man's attention was focused happily for two hours.  A year ago, we would have wanted and expected All-Star and Sugar-Monkey to play together, or watch TV come 6pm, and let us get some work down now that dinner was over and it had been a long day.  But we're focused on spending all our daytime hours connecting.  Keep you posted.

Identifying the Meltdown

So I mentioned the other day that we are doing a little "lesson" with the kids each afternoon.  It's a bit of a misnomer.  The "lesson" is at most 5 minutes of talking.  After a long day at school + homework + deep desire for independent play, our boys' desire for metacognition is super low.  I know you're shocked because your kids would be ALL OVER a lesson!  :)  I won't lie to you; we use some bribery.  If our kids can listen to my small little spiel and participate kindly in whatever sensory play we do that day, then they get free TV time before bed.  It's a pretty awesome motivator.  

Yesterday, the "lesson" was on identifying the meltdown.  This is vaguely important for our kids, and exceedingly important for us as parents.  I don't want to mislead you to believe in thinking that I am under any impression that my kids are going to suddenly have a deep understanding of their innermost feelings, but I do feel like there's value in planting seeds.  And I think the more they are slowly aware, the more they will be able to being to articulate their needs as they get older and be more aware of how to regulate themselves.  

It is important for US to recognize what type of meltdown our kid is having, so that WE know how to respond, so here's my novice understanding of the types of meltdowns and if you have better knowledge from your research, I'm definitely not too proud to snub your input, so share away in the comments!

Making silly putty in today's family activity was a ton of fun.  Sugar Monkey chose purple for his color.  He squished on it later during TV time for some lovely sensory input that made my heart happy.  

Don't you love that little handprint?

The Three Types of Meltdowns

1)  The Temper-Tantrum

For my adopted kids, I have to say that this doesn't happen as often as you would THINK it's happening.  The temper-tantrum is what is seems.  It's when a kid wants something, was told no, and will pitch a fit to get his/her way.  The trick here is that the child is in full control, feels fully-connected to his parent, and yet is still attempting to use kicking and pouting as a way to get his way. I would say in our how this almost never happens, because of the fragility of our little guys.  

2)  A Sensory Meltdown

This happens to my kids far more than I ever realized until I was super attuned to it.  Whether we're in a room with lots of people, we're around people mowing outside and it's very loud, we've been at someone's home where there's too much TV and it's been too much visual stimulation, or someone's covers don't feel right, it causes a meltdown.  Unfortunately, my kids are horribly inarticulate at identifying the said problem.  Covers at night = I can't sleep and I feel MAD.  Too much TV time = everyone's annoying and I feel MAD.  You get the drift.  If you're little one is adopted, I highly recommend readying The Out of Sync Child by Carol Kranowitz to really identify if this could be your kiddo and what to do about it.  :)

3.  A Fear-based Meltdown

This is when our kid steps out of control into his lower-brain and into fight, flight or freeze.  Just sharing wide-open, it has been just recently that I really understood those three states and how often my kids are in ALL of them.  You imagine "fight" with fists, but it can be words.  It's funny how what we assume about those three states are not exactly what they are until we learn fully.  What I'm slowly getting is that we have to wait for our real kiddo to emerge again (for my real All-Star or real Sugar Monkey to come out from his angry face).  Education is your best friend and I'd start with The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis.  If you aren't a reader, go for her DVDs and watch them in clips.  She has great stuff on Vimeo, too.  Go HERE.

If you can educate yourself.  Then you know how to deal.  :)  

By the way, today was a good day.  Ray and I think we see signs of progress, but it's early to share too much.  The journal is lengthy already and more is coming.  

Starting Again

So I haven't posted in this blog for a while, a long while actually.  Long story short: I started a new job, and then left that job, as we realized a few things, one of which was that our little guys needed a lot more attention and care than I had energy to give them after an emotionally-wrought day at work.  They needed 100% and I wasn't able to give them that.

This past summer was rocky and then we headed to the Empowered to Connect Conference.  It had been 4-5 years since I went to my first and last one.  But this year, it changed my world.  I had heard (almost) everything they had to say before, seen (almost) all the videos before -- but this year somehow the organization was different or *I* was different and it all fell into place.  I got it.  I felt like the light bulb had come on and the Holy Spirit had breathed new life into me.

I'll be honest with you.  The first day I had to grieve a bit.
It's hard to take in that despite ALL MY BEST INTENTIONS I was not reaching my child's deepest needs.  I had been trying to do everything right but the core of it all was still traditional parenting with logic and consequences, and it was driving my children deeper into despair, masked with a LOT of anger.

But the second day folks were saying things like, "Hey! We can start NOW!  We can't get hung up on guilt for acting a certain way when we didn't know before.  We are just responsible to change now that we know the better way."

Sooooo . . .  the big question:  how's it going?
The political answer is: GREAT!
The truthful answer is:  I'm EXHAUSTED.
The longer answer is:  I think my kids are working though some of their issues and finally feeling like they have a voice in our family for the first time ever.  It's unearthing deep fears that we talk through, but I don't think we've ever been in a more honest place.  It's definitely all-hands-on-deck.  I couldn't do this alone.

And this is what I want to tell YOU.
If you had asked me two weeks ago how All-Star was doing, I would have told you: Awesome.  He's got fantastic grades in school (straight As for 5 years now), has a ton of friends, is well rounded, is articulate, etc.

But now that I went to the training and now that we've started these strategies, I can see that he's not had it all together.  He just likes everyone to think he has it all together.  He's a stuffer.  He likes to stuff his disappointment and fears and anger.  He believes he can't change the outcome of his life and the problems that he faces.  He believes that he doesn't have a voice to make any difference.

All these strategies are causing him to process and to deal with things as they come along.  It's good, but it's hard.  And I wonder how many of us have adopted kids and think mistakenly, our kid is fine. 

All that trauma they once experienced was profound; the scars are often still oozing because we aren't looking close enough to notice.

My prayer for my kids and for yours is that 

we are not just attentive, but attuned.  

That we put aside our assumptions about 

what good parenting looks like and delve 

deeper to what our kids truly need.  

They're worth it.  God loves us this much.  

Aren't we willing to do the same?

Part 1 -- Dr. Karyn Purvis: My Notes

The session was actually called -- Nurturing the Whole Child: Trust-Based Relational Intervention.  You gain a lot from the title, really.  Essentially, I just want to unashamedly pour out my notes from the breakout session out Summit 9.  Dr. Karyn Purvis lead the session and it's one that she does routinely at Summit.  She's a forefront leader in behavioral psychology among children from "hard places."  If you want to follow some of her posts for parents, you can do that HERE.  But I'm going to go ahead and begin with my scribbles.

**I'm going to go ahead and offer my disclaimer:  I'm NOT Dr. Karyn Purvis, and what I'm going to share is what I got out of her session.  They may not be verbatim quotations, or a full-account of everything she said.  Merely, the following is a recounting from me through the chicken-scratch notes that I took during active listening and fervent writing.

All of this can be found in The Connected Child.  You should read this book.

Hard Places -- this is a term that Dr. Karyn Purvis uses frequently. I may be incorrect in assuming she coined it.  But she uses it to describe our children and defines it as: a difficult pregnancy or birth, a medical emergency after birth, abuse, neglect, or trauma to children during these early formative years.

She talked about how we begin by meeting the physical needs -- the way that Jesus raises a man's daughter from the Bible and immediately says that she needs to be given food.  But we don't stop at just the physical.  We have to be careful not to view a child as on a spiritual being, or an emotional being, or a physical being -- but view the WHOLE child, addressing all his/her needs.

There are 3 sets of principles that we need to focus on in order to help heal our children:  Empowering, Connecting and Correcting.

1.  Correcting -- should only be done about 10% of the time we have with our children.  If correcting is the primary aspect of our relationship, then the relationship is unstable.  If you do have to correct, talk SLOW.  Our kids, when they feel shame, fear, frustration -- they can go into flight, fight or freeze mode.  We need to talk slow and then encourage the kids to use words in order to give them voice, and help give them control and power.

2.  Empowering -- meeting physical needs.  This should be done 20% of the time.
67% of all your communication with any individual is tone of voice.  You can change brain chemistry through: eye contact, smiling, tone of voice, touch.

Kids need water every two hours.  Glutamate can get low in the body and cause aggression.  Hydration is key.

Insulin receptive sensors can be damaged in the brain -- giving kids food every two hours helps regulate the body.  Some physical activity should be done every two hours as well.

3.  Connecting -- should be done 70% of the time.  This is about their spirit, and their emotional connection to us.

She showed clips from, A Sensory World, which is a DVD that TCU produced.  I love all the things she does in the video to model connecting.  She has the kids hold hands with her when they talk together.  And she tells them to give her 'good eyes.'  Our kids need help connecting, and helping to encourage good eye contact is one way to do that.

If you watch the video, you really see her in action using the connecting and empowering to help the kids work through so many significant issues.  It's pretty remarkable.

I have more to post . . .

Reading, Reading, Reading

So I just returned from Summit 9 in Nashville, TN.  My head is spinning.  It doesn't help that my life has been flipped upside down by a new job that keeps me hopping, and hours that are making my husband feel like he's a stay-at-home-dad.  Life utterly feels crazy, and we're beginning a new normal.  But change is hard.  And it's harder on little ones from "hard places." 

I want to sit down and just share with you all my notes from some of the key sessions for parents of foster children or adopted children.  I have pages to sift through and that's the plan for the next post -- just to share what I gleaned from listening to experts in the field. Copyrights thrown out the window.  I scribbled away during the sessions, and I'm ready to share what I learned.

Meanwhile, I just want to pass along two new books that I picked up.  At some point, I just need to give you a whole book list of great books to read, because I have a ton that have helped me tremendously in the past. 

And not that these two books are recently published books, they're just new to me.  But I'm excited about reading them, despite the unappealing cover of the first one (sorry, Jayne Schooler, whom I adore). 

So if you're a reader and you have kids that confuse you, go ahead and pick up these two books and we'll read them together.  Both are highly acclaimed from all the experts that I know, so I already have full confidence in whatever strategies they offer.  If you're not a reader, maybe grab the second book anyway.  You can't see it well from the picture, but the title is ACTUALLY:  The whole brain child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child's developing mind.   So you might be able to read just a strategy at a time, if reading long chapters about brain trauma sound boring.  :) 

If you're interested, my reading list is actually a bit longer than just these two, but branches outside of just dealing with our hurt kids.  Here are some other books I've picked up to read and are a sitting beside my bed:

Unfinished
Richard Stearns
















Upended:  How Following Jesus Remakes Your Words & World
Jedd Medefind

Orphan Justice: How to Care for Orphans Beyond Adopting
Johnny Carr