Looking Back

 Today was Laura Tremaine’s One Day Hour by Hour social media initiative. It’s one of my favorite annual events because I love to look back on my life at different stages AND because I love to see other people’s days unfold.

This year, each day, I have been collecting my fb posts back to 2009 when I got on fb in the hope of collecting my writing to sort through what I have for a book. It’s been fun (and funny) to look back at the past 12 years, but it’s also been encouraging.

A few days ago, I saw a post in my memories from the first year the kids were home and I was doing a prompt a day for the month of November with an adoption agency. This is what it said (the prompt was I wish you understood…):

I wish you understood....

{vulnerability ahead}.... There are many approaches to this prompt, but mine is to the world outside of our family of 7.

I wish you understood that, while things are SO GOOD, I don't ever feel like I can admit when they AREN'T. I have always felt comfortable cracking jokes or making comments openly about any sort of issues in regard to Emma and Kelsey but I don't feel that same sort of grace in regard to my other three. I am afraid you will judge them. I'm afraid you will judge me. I'm afraid I carry the banner of adoption and I'm going to somehow dissuade someone from adopting if they hear from me that every moment is anything less than perfection.

I wish you understood that I am, so frequently, SO STINKING TIRED. I'm physically tired enough that my daydreams are filled with sleeping for days or a week. But more than that, I'm emotionally and mentally spent. I'm weary from having my mood tied to those of teenagers quite literally twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, at home and at school. I'm exhausted from worrying about teenagers, those in my house and my classroom, all of the time. I'm tired from being in my car running people places, I'm tired from trying to make sure each kid has every advantage he or she can have, that each of them feels loved and falls in love with Jesus, from making sure Kraig feels known and loved too. I'm so weary of keeping so many plates spinning in the air at all times, from family to my full-time job to my side job to friendships to a million other things. At any given time, I feel like I'm failing at something. I will say, I guess that's better than always feeling like I'm failing at everything.... 

What I most wish you understood, though, is that I don't ever feel like I can SAY I'm tired. I'm so afraid that you'll say, maybe even just in your mind, "You asked for this. You chose this. You brought this on yourself." I'm afraid to admit to being weary because I'm afraid you will think that somehow, I don't realize how blessed we are and that I'm not so grateful to be #touchedbyadoption . I wish you understood that sometimes the most joyous blessings also take the most out of you.

I read those words, and I could feel that bone-crushing soul-weariness from those early days, those first months home and back in school. I didn’t know the new three yet, we were feeling our way along blindly, I had never parented five kids at one time before, finances were new territory with seven people, my high alert was on with my original two kids and watching them for an adjustment issues, and I was also maintaining my other two jobs. Every night I went to bed feeling like I wasn’t sure I had another day in me and every morning I woke up already emotionally exhausted from a day that had not begun yet. I was feeling so blessed, yes, but I was also so fearful of the future. 

But when I read those words two days ago, it wasn’t that soul-crushing weariness I was feeling. It was such sweet relief that we made it. We survived those very hard and tiring days and these days are so much easier. I don’t go to bed and wake up emotionally spent (I mean, I have this year but it’s due to my career and not my family, haha) every day. We KNOW each other. We’ve weathered the adjustments, we’ve worked out the finances, we have parented 5 (and now launched 1.25). 

And will more hard days come??? YES, a thousand times yes. The seasons ahead could be harder than the ones behind. But the difference will be that I will be stronger. I’ll have more faith. I’ll have seen what I am capable of from those early days and I’ll feel more equipped to handle the rest. That’s the beauty of looking back. It girds you up for what is forward.