The Wind and Waves

One of my kids is becoming pretty obsessed with travel, with seeing the world, and specifically with Japan. (I think the Japan thing is due to some RIDICULOUS show that she watches regularly, and it’s not Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up”, I can tell you that.) Anyway, she has mentioned many times in the past few days that she wants a job where she can travel and see the world, and specifically that she might want to live in Japan. She does have some sensitivity to the fact that this might completely break my heart, even though I haven’t mentioned it, because she has said several times, “Mom, I know you’ll miss me and I’ll miss not being here for all the family stuff.” Mind you, this is the same kid who didn’t seem like she would ever attach to me, then told me a few months after arriving that she wanted to build a house in the field so that she could always live close to me and her dad. I am choosing to view this new development not as her not feeling as attached to us, but rather as the healthiest and most developed form of attachment, the kind that feels secure no matter the situation and can follow its dreams.

All of this talk about moving and seeing the world makes my heart clinch up when I realize that, in today’s society, having your adult children and their families just a few streets over or across town is truly unusual. Our family has been blessed that we all live very close to each other, attend the same church, etc, but that’s NOT the norm (and thank goodness for me, Kraig had already made the choice to live away from his family; otherwise, I would never have met him!). I know that as time goes on and your kids grow up, you come to terms with their choices for their adult lives and you happily spend whatever time with them you can get, but it’s a painful thing to think about today. It hurts a little more to think of these three with whom we haven’t even had much time with anyway. I feel like I’m making up for all the years apart as it is, thinking of a future apart makes me sick inside.

Last night I was feeling pretty ick (in addition to the fact that I don’t have a physical voice) about this and I was reminded of a night on our fall break cruise that I have mentioned here before.

Kraig had told me something one of our kids said that made us realize that the kid is still VERY attached to someone in the first country and I just felt waves after wave of fear that this child might choose to leave us and go back to the first home once the age makes it possible. With that fresh in my mind, I was praying in regard to all of my kids and the fears I have that we aren’t enough, that we haven’t done enough, that we got the new kids too late to attach the way we need to and that we may have somehow taken away from E and K in the process. I know, it’s a ridiculous spiral and it’s my natural personality but I think adoption makes all of these feelings so much more acute and the spiral so much more intense.

 

Anyway, I was actually in the tiny shower in our tiny room on a cruise ship being rocked by a hurricane when I was feeling this hurricane in my own emotions and God so clearly said to me, “You CAN’T lose any of the five of them because they aren’t YOURS to begin with. They are mine. You stood in an altar and gave each of them back to me, two of them as babies and the other three as teens. So you don’t have to worry about losing them because I have them. And I’m way better at all of this than you could ever be.”

It’s not frequently that I can say I felt like I had a very specific word from God, one that could be quoted, but this was one of those moments. I often feel things impressed on me, or I feel a sort of message in my spirit, but this was a very clear and specific word. And I couldn’t help but feel both relieved and chastened, all at the same time.

 I say it all the time, but parenting is not for the faint of heart. It’s such a weird dance of holding on and letting go. It’s a tug between them driving me crazy and thinking of the days when they are grown with great glee because it means we all survived versus the days I look around the dinner table or in the rearview mirror or around the couches in the tv room and think that I won’t survive the void when all five of them are gone from under my roof. But on both types of days, I would do well to remember the message that God gave me as our ship rocked and rolled in the hurricane waves off to the side of Cuba. No matter the sea… stormy or still, wind-tossed or peaceful, He has them in the palm of His hand. They are His, not mine. And He’s the only one who is obeyed by the winds and waves.