I should have known when God gave me the word SHINE for this year that a period of darkness had to be on the way. I mean, everyone knows that things don't shine in the light--they shine in the dark.
This last semester held harder and deeper challenges than I ever expected that left me quite fragile and broken. Defeated. I kept putting one foot in front of the other in order to just survive what seemed to be a series of heavy heartaches and keep myself moving forward. But Satan was after me full force and attacked me from many angles.
As a mom. As a wife. As a sister. As a daughter. As a teacher. No matter what I did, I always felt like it wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop the heartache from hitting or keep it away.
We started out the 2018-19 school year so hopeful, happy, and thankful. God miraculously opened the door for Juan to try a third semester at DBU, provided funding for him in abundance, our financial status was better than it's ever been, and Mike and I were both very happy and confident in our careers. Our 20th anniversary was coming, and we found ourselves in the perfect financial position that actually let us dream of and pursue a grand celebration. This was going to be our year.
But right before Christmas, the first of many surprising challenges started to hit us. First, we had to move Juan back home from DBU. Not only did we have to deal with a very angry, depressed boy who knew he'd let everyone down, including himself, but he also sat for almost three months without a job. Thankfully, God opened the door for him to start working as an aide in a special needs classroom at David's high school. At least he has something that makes him feel professional for the time being, but he's still pretty lost as to what to do with himself in order to start pursuing a career for the future. And conversations with him make it pretty obvious that he's not going anywhere fast.
My children seemed to have traded ages. My seventeen-year-old acts like he is going on twenty-one, and my twenty-one-year-old acts like he's going on seventeen. My seventeen-year-old's broadened world experiences gave him wisdom beyond his peers that really makes him stand out, even as quiet as he is in a crowd. I gave him wings, and now he's learning to fly. My young mini-me is always telling me to leave him alone because he's got this. My baby boy has grown up and is turning into a fine young man, one who needs a bit more space from Mom. I supppose that was the goal, right?
On the other hand, my twenty-one-year-old's gaps in normal child development put him at a disadvantage when looking at life side by side with his peers. I see the effects of childhood trauma so much more now than I did before, and it significantly impacts his ability to move forward into adulthood. Even he will readily admit that the thought of embracing adulthood fills him with great fear and anxiety. He definitely can't say he's got this, and when he thinks he does, he asks for help shortly after. When you're dealing with a blend of immaturity mixed with Colombian/Latin culture that puts a high priority on taking time to rest and knowing that there's always tomorrow to start something new, that just compounds the problem. He's got big dreams but very little self-motivation to start working toward them. A "learned helplessness" that is sadly very common in kids like him.
It's definitely an awkward thing trying to parent these boys who need very different types of parenting. I'm thankful for online groups filled with other adoptive/foster parents dealing with the same thing. The younger biological one ready to fly away and the older one digging his feet in the ground, stuck. Parenting kids from trauma (even trauma in the womb) doesn't look anything like parenting a biological child, especially at the age that they're supposed to be ready to launch from the nest.
Mike and I knew that our marriage really needed something big after all we've dealt with adoption-related over the last ten years, so we booked our very first cruise together. We'd wanted to go on a cruise for our tenth anniversary, but the adoption expenses held us back. So we finally booked it. now ten years later. just a few weeks before our 20th anniversary during spring break and literally counted down the days. Little did we know how fiercely Satan planned to attack our marriage just a few days before we were set to leave. An attack so fierce that it left me battling demons from the past that tempted me to throw in the towel completely, despite all that we've overcome in the last 20 years. The morning before the cruise, I didn't even want to go.
We did leave together the next morning to "celebrate" the last 20 years, but those demons packed themselves in our bags and followed us on our ocean tour of Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan. We made some good memories, ate a lot of food, won a snorkeling excursion, took great sunrise/sunset pictures, and experienced new things, and I'm grateful, but I still struggle to look back and know it wasn't the celebration we intended it to be. Our financial stability had crashed overnight, so we didn't even get to take advantage of the opportunity to see and experience all that each port had to offer. Nothing turned out the way I'd envisioned it as a dark cloud hung over our heads and hearts.
School was my safe place. Just like any other time I've gone through hard things, my classroom is my safe haven where I can leave everything else at the door and focus all my energy on my kids. Mike and I worked on rebuilding the broken parts of our marriage and family at home, but I spoke nothing of it to anyone at school except briefly to two teammates. Besides that, no one had a clue that I was struggling through so much at home.
I'd started the year on cloud nine, so incredibly thankful to be teaching second graders again rather than four-year-olds. I made it clear to the whole school how happy I was about the change. I had a challenging year with a few more special needs in my classroom than I bargained for and much less support than I needed, but I kept pushing forward, tucking away ideas to make next year better and more efficient. I jumped in to lead my team, though I felt pretty lost myself, trying to understand all that changed in the five years I'd been out of second grade, but we all made it to the end as a strong team. We envisioned a promising year ahead for the 2019-20 school year. So you can imagine my shock and disappointment when my principal made some last minute changes and asked me to move to kindergarten temporarily to be able to move some other teachers around. I was heartbroken, to say the least. So much for my safe place--or for all the ideas I'd tucked away for next year.
I knew God had my back, and I tried to focus on anything positive I could think of regarding the change, but I just couldn't understand why God was pulling out the rug from beneath me. He knew how much I loved teaching second grade and how thankful I was to NOT be teaching little ones anymore. I'd worked so hard all year to step up and lead my team, and I felt like no one even noticed the extra time and energy I'd put into doing so. There was nothing I could have done to avoid this last minute change, I guess. By the time I processed all that happened and spoke up for myself, it was too late. So I spent the last three weeks of school tearfully packing everything up rather than organizing and getting ready for a strong year ahead.
Other challenges surfaced, as well, over the last semester, challenges that knocked us face to the ground and felt like someone smashed our faces deep into the sand below us. I ended the school year on a very low note and really didn't have much enthusiasm for the summer ahead or to return next school year. One challenge would have been enough, but these just seemed to come out of nowhere from every possible angle. They had to be a strategic attack of the enemy.
Defeated.
The rug beneath me gone.
All I'd worked for, planned for, dreamed of.
Hopes dashed.
Dreams crashed.
Only disappointments lingered.
Broken.
I'm so thankful things didn't end here.
Stay tuned for Part 2 ...
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