Tag: parenting
Wait For Me
One of the first things we discovered about S, even before we brought him home to the U.S., was that he loved to run.
“Najababayo!,”* he’d shriek as he’d tear off, fully expecting someone to come chasing after him. We chased him around the house multiple times a day, slowing our pace to match his in order to support the delusion in his 3-year-old mind that he’s the fastest human on the planet, never to be caught. He would cackle in delight.
The love of being pursued. While I can’t be sure why this child who is my son but not from my womb loved it so much, I can take a decent guess.
I remember a time when we took him to a park near our neighborhood, not too long after bringing him home. After playing several rounds of Najababayo in an open field, J and I started to head towards a big shady tree for some relief from the sun. S was oblivious to this and was happily running around until he looked back to see he was alone on the field. “Wait for me!” he cried in his broken English, his high-pitched plea carrying in the air as his little legs scurried beneath him towards the safety of our presence.
He’s 10 now, and while 3 is now a distant memory, I’m surprised at how often I still here him say these words. In the grocery store, from the back yard, on the playground or hiking trail. “Wait for me!” – still loud and high-pitched, followed by the same scurry to catch up as he leaves behind the creeping caterpillar he was examining in the dirt.
The fear of abandonment; of being left behind. I recognize a degree of this lingering in S’s heart. I know how it feels.
Throughout my life, I have experienced varying degrees of being “left behind.” Cancer and its aftermath have particularly sharpened this experience for me.
Some of it is passive, like watching people in our chronological life stage from the sidelines, healthily progressing through the stages in natural order – pregnancy and family building, corporate ladders, financial planning and savings.
Other experiences are more active. Employers, passing on me for opportunities because my health can limit my abilities and availability. Friends, omitting me from conversations and plans, assuming I wouldn’t be able to relate or join in. Family, keeping distance for reasons that are probably too complex to put in words and feels like a slow, painful fading of our names from their hearts.
I don’t blame anyone for these things – after all, the only human who has promised never to leave me behind is my husband – but in my heart, I ache in secret.
Wait for me. I often cry this from a deep pit in my heart, to no one in particular.
Wait for me to be healthy again. I will work harder, try better, give more. Please don’t leave me behind. If I could just freeze time for everyone else, to give me some extra credit time to catch up.
I watch my brothers and sisters in Christ pouring out their time, energy and talents into kingdom-building work within our church, communities and throughout the world, and I rejoice yet weep.
Wait for me to be healthy again. I will work harder, try better, give more. Please don’t leave me behind.
I lay in bed, immobilized by pain or sickness or weakness or medication side effects – or a combination of them all. All I can do is stare out the window, watching the world and seasons pass me by, and I wonder if God has passed me by, as well.
Wait for me.
Have you left me behind, God?
In our darkest, loneliest moments, it can feel like God has left us behind. After all, Satan is the most skillful deceiver. But God’s word tells us that this is impossible.
“You have encircled me….” That’s what David says of God in Psalm 139:5 (CSB). I like that visual. He is all around me, a circle with no end or beginning in time or space. I am Enveloped. Hemmed in. Encircled. So snug and secure. I cannot slip away of his presence or stumble out of his protection.
Some days, in these strange valleys as I watch the seasons change and the world pass me by, I still cry silently to myself. Wait for me.
And God looks down on me with fatherly love.
You never have to ask me to wait for you, he says to me. Remember: I have encircled you.
—————–
*Najababayo – “Catch me if you can.”
10 is where
10 is where we stand at the precipice of some big unknown.
I expected this while traversing through the land of nine, through which I marched alert and ready – noting every time he reached for my hand before crossing a street, the teetering ratio of “mom” to “mommy;” tracking the fading interest in trains and fast cars and the growing intrigue for computers and mechanics.
10 is where cancer came back to meet mommy for the fourth time. 10 is where he starts wondering out loud what it means that it keeps coming back, and when, if ever, it will stay away for good.
10 is where we began to discuss death, the frailty of humanity. All living things will one day die – nothing on this earth, including us, will live on forever.
10 is where we learned about the birds and the bees, sitting on the couch one Tuesday afternoon when he couldn’t understand how an unwed woman could possibly become pregnant.
10 is also where he began asking big questions about his birth and adoption stories and wondering – out loud – what his birth mom might have looked like.
10 is where a sweet ignorance gives way to a little more reality.
10 is where innocence gives way to a deeper understanding of this fallen world.
The Great #COVID19LockInOf2020
Son: Ughhhhhh! I don’t geeeeeeet iiiiiiiiiiit!
Me: Really? Because I literally just explained it to you three times in a row. Just now. Literally, three times in the past minute.
Of course, it would take something like a pandemic to force me into the role of homeschooling mom. I never thought either thing possible.
We are on Day 4 of our lock-in/homeschooling. We cover math, reading, handwriting, grammar, foreign language, and some music theory. It’s not easy; S hates making mistakes and can be a volatile little dude. You can imagine the choppy waters we sail on every day, from 10-11 and 2-3:30, when I’m trying to teach him something new. Or even just simply having him erase and re-write his “a” because it looks like a “q.”
Son: (erasing his mistake violently) This is the WORST thing EVER!
Me: (to myself, thinking about the next 24 days) With you 100%, buddy.
God bless the souls of all his teachers, past, present and future.
There have been some sweeter moments, though. We start our day with a morning walk around the neighborhood, and spring is in bloom. S and I bundle up and head out, hand in hand, and take it all in.
S: It’s just so amazing how God made all the animals and insects to know how to survive! Like, no one taught them how to fly, or collect food, or build their homes. They just know!
Me: Isn’t it awesome?
S: Yeah…I love nature!
And in moments like these, I’m thankful. Despite the hard things we’re walking through, we have eyes to see beauty and marvel at God’s hand in it all.
Real
Tonight, his four-year-old self said the words I’ve been dreading to hear, the words I had not braced myself for and certainly had not expected to hear until, at least, puberty.
“You’re not my real parents. I miss my real parents.”
I can feel the blood draining from my face as I sit next to him, in the dark, as we drive home from dinner. I can’t breathe. It feels as if time suddenly froze as headlights graze over our faces and I scramble to find words, enough of the right ones to string into an appropriate sentence, a sentence that wouldn’t give away the hurt that has its bony fingers wrapped tight around my neck.
What do I say?
Headlights continue to cut in and out of our back row seat and I see tears stream down his cheeks as his face twists and contorts in his four-year-old effort to hide his pain. His restrained whimpers as he cries for his “real parents” in Korea churn a pain in my gut that I fear will explode. I’m thankful for the dark that covers us and in this moment, it is just the two of us, in a world of heart pain that we are desperately trying to hide from the other.
I lay my hand on his and tell him it’s okay to miss them and that I understand he is sad. I remind him that we are his real parents and always will be, but he rejects this truth.
We cry together in the dark as the headlights flash by, our tears the realest things we have to give to the night.
From the archives, 10/21/16
What I deserve
S: Do I deserve my bike, Mommy?
Me: Well, actually, none of us really deserve anything good.
S: Why?
Me: Because we are all sinners who can do no good apart from God.
…
S: Well, do you deserve one thing, Mommy.
M: What’s that?
S: A special kind of love from me. (Hug)
glorious ruins 