Side by side
Every so often I like to do a little reality check here on the blog. Recently I have come across multiple instances in a variety of setting where a mom expresses how the disconnect between what is posted by someone online either makes that mom feel exceedingly depressed because she doesn't measure up, or exceedingly irate because she knows the reality is not matching the persona. Fakebooking was a term used more than once. There is also an adoption disruption that is causing some concern in the adoption world, and once again, adoptive parents are wondering how to prepare prospective adoptive parents for the reality of adoption. If people really understood what they were getting into, would it make a difference?
As an adoptive mom who shares about her family, I find it a tricky tightrope to walk sometimes, this need for honesty while at the same time protecting my children and seeing life from different angles. I may not write about the hard all the time. Does that mean it is not there or that we have not experienced it? Hardly. Because of their hard past, our adopted children face challenges that are sometimes unimaginable. Trying to navigate life while healing from past hurts is hard. It is hard for the family; it is hard for the child. It is just the way it is.
I will sometimes be more specific about some of those challenges, mainly if I feel the information will help other parents. But there is so much more that I do not share or write about. Those stories, while they certainly impact my life, are not my stories to share. Just because I do not share them, does not mean they don't exist. If I focus on the lovelier aspects of our family's life, it is not because of wanting to hide the hard, but because I don't want to focus on it to the exclusion of all else.
What I really want to share is possibly one of the biggest lessons I've learned from parenting a lot of children: Things can be both hard and good all at the same time. When I was a younger mother, I had it in my head that for things to be good, fun, wonderful, that every aspect of them had to be just as I imagined it to be. There could be nothing to mar the moment, or that moment ceased to be good. I put untold stress on myself trying to make things perfect, or as close as I could get them. There was always a lingering fear, though, that something would come along and ruin it.
I have come a long, long way from there. It was a difficult path, filled with a lot of imperfection, not the least of which was my own. There has been a lot of hurt, a lot of fear, a lot of anger, and in some seasons not a whole lot of joy. When you have the perspective that everything needs to be just right in order for it to have any value, then in extremely difficult seasons, you will not see the good.
Yet is was there all along. Things in this world we live in are neither all bad or all good. People are just too complicated for that. It's actually how the entire world is. A world created by a loving God and called good, yet fallen and sinful. Everything is there all at once, all the time while we are on this earth.
This is what I come back to time and again in this season of my life. There is hard, some of it very, very hard. Hard to a degree which you will never be able to read about because it is not something that I can share. Yet at the same time, there has been great joy. Amazing joy and hope to the degree that I hardly dared to dream possible. It has all existed all at the same time, side by side, so obviously that even I couldn't miss it. And as I look back, this has been true all along. Joy and sorrow are not two different emotions to be experienced separately, at the exclusion of one another, but they exist concurrently. In hurt and pain, somewhere there is also something good to be enjoyed, and at the same time, there is also a tinge of sorrow and pain even at the most joyful moments of life.
Life is bittersweet.
No one ends up with anything more. No one ends ups with anything less. Assume that what people choose to show you is just a fraction of their existence. They do not have a perfect life, even if that is all they are willing to show you. Outside the frame of the camera lens are piles of laundry, cranky children, bad days, and great fear and sorrow. Just like you. Just like me.
The more children you add, the more people in your life whom you care about, the messier life is. The less you are able to control. They each bring their own pain and fear and complications. They might be difficult to love sometimes. By accepting them into your life, you open yourself up to the possibilities of more pain, but you also open yourself up for the possibilities of greater joy.
As an adoptive mom who shares about her family, I find it a tricky tightrope to walk sometimes, this need for honesty while at the same time protecting my children and seeing life from different angles. I may not write about the hard all the time. Does that mean it is not there or that we have not experienced it? Hardly. Because of their hard past, our adopted children face challenges that are sometimes unimaginable. Trying to navigate life while healing from past hurts is hard. It is hard for the family; it is hard for the child. It is just the way it is.
I will sometimes be more specific about some of those challenges, mainly if I feel the information will help other parents. But there is so much more that I do not share or write about. Those stories, while they certainly impact my life, are not my stories to share. Just because I do not share them, does not mean they don't exist. If I focus on the lovelier aspects of our family's life, it is not because of wanting to hide the hard, but because I don't want to focus on it to the exclusion of all else.
What I really want to share is possibly one of the biggest lessons I've learned from parenting a lot of children: Things can be both hard and good all at the same time. When I was a younger mother, I had it in my head that for things to be good, fun, wonderful, that every aspect of them had to be just as I imagined it to be. There could be nothing to mar the moment, or that moment ceased to be good. I put untold stress on myself trying to make things perfect, or as close as I could get them. There was always a lingering fear, though, that something would come along and ruin it.
I have come a long, long way from there. It was a difficult path, filled with a lot of imperfection, not the least of which was my own. There has been a lot of hurt, a lot of fear, a lot of anger, and in some seasons not a whole lot of joy. When you have the perspective that everything needs to be just right in order for it to have any value, then in extremely difficult seasons, you will not see the good.
Yet is was there all along. Things in this world we live in are neither all bad or all good. People are just too complicated for that. It's actually how the entire world is. A world created by a loving God and called good, yet fallen and sinful. Everything is there all at once, all the time while we are on this earth.
This is what I come back to time and again in this season of my life. There is hard, some of it very, very hard. Hard to a degree which you will never be able to read about because it is not something that I can share. Yet at the same time, there has been great joy. Amazing joy and hope to the degree that I hardly dared to dream possible. It has all existed all at the same time, side by side, so obviously that even I couldn't miss it. And as I look back, this has been true all along. Joy and sorrow are not two different emotions to be experienced separately, at the exclusion of one another, but they exist concurrently. In hurt and pain, somewhere there is also something good to be enjoyed, and at the same time, there is also a tinge of sorrow and pain even at the most joyful moments of life.
Life is bittersweet.
No one ends up with anything more. No one ends ups with anything less. Assume that what people choose to show you is just a fraction of their existence. They do not have a perfect life, even if that is all they are willing to show you. Outside the frame of the camera lens are piles of laundry, cranky children, bad days, and great fear and sorrow. Just like you. Just like me.
The more children you add, the more people in your life whom you care about, the messier life is. The less you are able to control. They each bring their own pain and fear and complications. They might be difficult to love sometimes. By accepting them into your life, you open yourself up to the possibilities of more pain, but you also open yourself up for the possibilities of greater joy.
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