My son ran his last cross country meet (ever) last week. It’s taken me a full week to sort through my thoughts and feelings about the fact that my third child is experiencing all of the senior highlights, that my third child is nearly at the end of the at-home years. For 12 years, I only had two kids. I have now almost launched more kids than I ever even imagined myself being privileged to parent. It’s a shock to my gut.
And this kid…. this boy…. Every child in my nest is special. Every single one of them has their own unique story and place in our home and the fabric of our family.
So let me tell you about this one.
This guy, from the very first time I laid eyes on him, captured my heart. He has a twinkle in his eye, a mischievous smile, and a wit that cannot be matched. My adoption hope was always that God would allow for us to adopt a son (little did we know that we would be blessed with TWO sons and a daughter too!) and I think that when I saw Roman, my heart immediately recognized the son it had always dreamed about.
When we started to skype, that little scampish personality shined through instantly. I saw in him the male students I had always loved to teach, the ones who were smart and witty and fun but also just a little bit of work, the ones I had to keep a close eye on because the risk was there for them to outsmart me, even as 15 year olds. Roman was “that kid”.
There is a certain picture of him I will never forgot, one I saw online in the days leading up to our trip to the Philippines to get them, and I just remember thinking that my insides melted when I saw it. I didn’t know what parenting him was going to be like, but I was pretty sure it was going to be an adventure and a joy and a lot of hard work.
And I was correct. On all levels.
Roman was the first of our new three to get in any sort of serious trouble (as serious as trouble can be for an 8th grader). The early years of disciplining him were not fun for anyone. He completely shut down when you tried to discuss issues or discipline with him. As I told someone today, the potential was there for some really, really major challenges and at times I wasn’t sure what parenting these difficulties would like like in an older teenager.
But the changes, the growth, the beauty from ashes, the softening of his heart, the spiritual maturity that happened in him over the next few years… it was incredible to see.
The Roman that we know today has come so far from that little boy who stood with his head down, refusing to look at us as we talked to him about his indiscretions, shutting down for days at a time after being disciplined.
Today, Roman reflects his Father. When he prays, the depth of his communion with the Lord stuns me. The profound nature of his thoughts in his prayers is astounding to me. He talks to Jesus like He is a best friend. Roman is, without a doubt, called to children’s ministry as a layperson. Several years ago, he started helping with the children’s service during our church’s recovery program (mostly drug and alcohol) every Thursday night. When I say that not only do we NEVER need to remind him to go, nor does he ever dread going, what I mean is that often I forget that he has that on Thursdays and he reminds me. He has arranged his work schedule around it. He gets very frustrated when he has to miss for a trip or cross country meet. He comes home glowing and alive and full of stories from the night. He routinely requests prayer in our family meetings for the kids whose stories he holds from Recovery Alive. It’s his heart, and his heart reflects His.
Seeing Roman grow into a man, 18 years old tomorrow, from that little 13 year old boy we brought home from the Philippines has been one of the greatest joys of my life. Seeing all of the parts of him that I loved and adored from the first moment I met him that are still inside to watching the amazing growth and maturity in the parts that needed to grow and mature to the joy of the new aspects of who he is that have come as he has aged… it’s been such a privilege to witness. I love this boy with every fiber of my being, every beat of my heart. I can’t imagine, sometimes, that I lived without him for the first 12 years of his life.
And even though I knew, I really did KNOW or I wouldn’t have even considered adoption, that you can love a child who wasn’t knit together inside you and who you didn’t even meet until he had lived a good portion of his life just as much as the ones you birthed… I am still amazed by it sometimes. I look at him and I see what God sees in him. I see his past and his present and his future and I know the Lord saved his life and set his feet on a firm foundation and redeemed his losses and cut a road through the ocean for us to become his parents and provided him with every bit of his intellect and his charm and his faithfulness and his servant’s heart to equip him for the good work He has ahead for him.
And I’m just so thankful that, even though I wish his life had not been so hard and that he had not suffered losses I can’t even imagine, that God chose me to be his second mom.
No comments:
Post a Comment