5.8.2013 BUTTERFIELD 8

TRUE LOVE

..there is another experience..of ital learning, from which our family is still recovering.

his name was J and he was a foster child placed in our home after thanksgiving.

we first heard about J and his four other siblings on nov. 19, 2010,
tow weeks after matt's (their son) adoption was finalized.
the call came from child protective services about a sibling group of five,
all special needs, all found homeless in DC
social services wanted us to take three boys:
W (13, autistic and mute, also described as 'primitve')
J (8, mentally retarded and mute) and
K (7, autistic, and mute)
we learned that all of the children had been neglected, abused,
and had witnessed the murder of one of their siblings by their mother's hand.

these stories are so gruesome and unfathomable.
..how could any survive this?

our home is not big enough for three additional children,
so we declined and prayed.
providentially, we also had an elder's visit that night.
(in the RPCNA (their denomination), elders visit the homes of each church member
yearly, to better understand how to shepherd the congregation.)
that night, pastor steve and elder T prayed for these children.
all throughout the thanksgiving holiday,
my heart was heavy.
i kept thinking about how sometimes the surplus of our lives
prevents us from saying yes to those in need.
you know, holidays are such busy time.
WHEN YOU CALENDAR IS TOO FULL,
IT SQUEEZES OUT MERCY MINISTRY.
it is hard to fit in the stranger and the outcast.
by friday, kent and i both said to each other:
'if social services calls again, let's try to say yes to one child.

the second call from social services came on monday at 4:30 pm.
mary had pink eye and knox (their two foster children)
had snot coming out of his nose in every color but clear.
the social worker was tense.
the children were at the agency already.
the foster home that had said yes to the three boys
decided that they could not handle them.
the agency would close in 30 minutes.
the question was simple:
could we take just one?
i immediately told knox and mary what was happening
and sent them in to the dining room to pray.
i was able to reach kent on the cell phone and he sid
'yes, pick one.'
i joined knox and mary in prayer. punctuated through daily, mundane prayers,
for birthday parties and sick pets,
was a request that God would bring this boy whose name we did not know
to our home,
help him to feel safe enough to talk,
and help him to come to know Jesus.
listening to children pray is therapeutic.
they made it sound so simple:
bring the child home, love him and feed him and pray for him,
and do all with the faith that God loves orphans
and He never gets the address wrong.
i told my children that i was scared.
the boy that God would send could not talk.
how in the world could we communicate with him?
knox gave me THAT look and said,
'mam, kids talk with their eyes. we will understand him.

it all starts with the biggest hurdle, learning to say 'yes'.

as soon as kent got home, we piled in the van to pick up J.
the office was closed by now.
we met the social worker at the elevator and signed some papers.
J came to us with eyes dilated and heart pounding,
visibly through his shirt.
he also had beautiful black eyes and
a smile that could melt a knondike bar.
knox immediately had J laughing over something.
in the van, the boys snacked on cereal bars
and giggled over the book capyboppy.
but as soon as we got home, it became clear that J was terrified
of dogs, cats, bathtubs, vacuum cleaners, doorways, darkness,
and loud noises.
he had no idea what to do with our back yard:
the swing set, the dump truck, and the pile of dirt..was inscrutable.

my beloved neighbor jane took our dogs sally and bella for a week
while we introduced J to the myriad of other mysteries
in the butterfield home.

J did talk with his eyes, as knox had said.
but he also leaned to talk with words.
kent predicted this would happen,
perhaps out of self defense in our house,
where silence is a long gone memory
and where children even talk in their sleep!

J joined us for homeschool the first morning in our home.
he was a diligent and able student.
he proudly showed me that he knew all of his letters,
that he knew how to spell his name
(and that social services had misspelled his name on all his documents!)
that he loved to draw and color
and that he loved to have books read to him.
when kent called at lunch time, i said,
'if j is mentally retarded, then i am too.

all of the children were sick and i was starting to get sick as well.
knox took over the bulwark of the reading.
J spoke his first audible word to knox,
as knox started to read the book my truck is stuck.
J looked at knox in amazement and exclaimed:
'you read!'
from that moment on, J would find books around the house
and bring them to any able reader.
he loved books and especially loved knox reading to him.

J came to us with shoes that were two sizes too small
and clothes with broken zippers.
my mom went to target for toothbrushes and pajamas and
chicken nuggets for the week.
my neighbor michelle showed up at my door with BAGS of clothes
and shoes and a winter jacket!
J was thrilled!
each morning, he picked out dressy clothes: khaki pants and collared shirts.
matt gave J a watch, which J put on every morning.
we witnessed how much J wanted to be clean and wear
clothes that made a good appearance.
matt's watch on J's wrist was an interesting touch.
time and place meant something to J.
i don't know how i would have dressed J without
my mom and michelle's contributions.
i don't know how i would have gotten him to relax
without jane taking the dogs for a week;
and i don't know how J would have learned to talk without all the children
surrounding him with stimulation, love and acceptance.

soon, we fell into a routine.
morning bible lessons and math and phonics,
followed by lunch and exploration of the back yard.
the backyard held many mysteries for J:
dirt to dig, big wheels to peddle and crash
and swings and slides all brought new weightless sensations
and new things to learn.
i have never seen my backyard as a place of mystery and intrigue
in quite this way before.
next, we would come inside for art:
finger painting, making letters and numbers with play dough,
stamping a scene and then writing or dictating a story about it.
during art lessons, J told us that he was scared of dogs
because he was bitten by one
and had witnessed a ghetto dog fight,
where one dog had killed the other,
leaving it a bloody, dismembered carcass.

after art and when matt got home from school,
our driveway became a basketball court.
what a beautiful sight!
J, knox and a gaggle of neighborhood boys,
with matt acting as referee or coach
(even picking up a child and running him to the basket for a dunk),
playing driveway basketball until it was too dark to see.
after dinner, kent played charades and battleship with the children
while i got the bathrooms ready for bath time.
the whole time, j was relaxing and learning.
i was mesmerized to behold the children in our neighborhood
playing together as pieces of a puzzle assembled by God's grace
and the feeble prayers of their parents.

my friend martha came by often to give support and insight.
martha has been my mentor in many things,
but mostly in my understanding of using compassion
as a bridge to our hurt children.
compassion means 'with suffering'
and involves entering into the suffering of another in order to
lead the way out.
martha had recommended a book to me that i was reading during
the week with J.
the book is called the connected child.
it was the guide that i needed.
parenting the hurt child means always knowing
that you are parenting your emotional better,
a human being who survived against all odds.
in the connected child,
the author uses this harrowing example:
imagine that the biological child you nurtured since birth
as abducted at the age of 4,
abused, neglected, starved and tormented
and then miraculously, returned to you at 7.
the author reminds the reader that you would
do everything in your power to meet him at his place of hurt
and bring him back to you.
you would not go to an amusement park on his first day home
or trundle him up for daycare and school during the first week.
COMPASSION. WITH SUFFERING.

both J and i got sicker as everyone else got better.
our routine became a little quieter.
when i lose my voice (as i did this week),
things get very quiet!
the dogs came back on saturday
and by then J was talking well enough to tell us what had happened
and to listen as we told him that our dogs would not hurt him.
matt spent a lot of time showing J different features of the dogs.
'look at her paw pads! sally's smell like popcorn, here, smell.'
soon, j was carrying bella (our 9 pound shih tzu)
around the house, stroking her and saying, 'you are so beautiful'.

J loved his time with kent.
he was very accomplished at puzzles and even helped kent
by doing the hardest part of a 500 piece puzzle with very little help.
he loved learning to play charades and battleship.
kent was the parent who helped J with bath time and bathroom issues...

J's social worker was working to find a home that would take J
with his 7 year old autistic brother.
we started praying for god to raise up a christian family for this dear boy.
we hated to think of what might happen to a child like J in the welfare system
and seriously considered whether we could be J's family.
we knew, though, that we could not take two children.
and we knew that if J was separated now from his sibling,
it would be a tremendous loss for him and for the others.
we worry about older children in foster care.
for many people, an 8 year old child of color with special needs
is not the child of their mind's eye.
there are no baby shower or moms clubs for the adoptive parents
of hurt and rejected children.
too often, children over the age of four
just get bounced around from foster home to foster home
or from foster home to birth families
until the parents rights are terminated by the courts
and the child is considered in the eyes of potential families
'too old to adopt.

we know that saying 'no' to a child who needs a home is a risky thing.
we prayed.
we told the social worker that we supported finding a home
that could keep some of the siblings together.
we told the social worker that if this was not possible,
then we would pray about whether God wanted us to adopt J.
we left it at that and we prayed.

then we got the phone call.
a family in woodbridge wanted to adopt both J and his 7 year old brother.
they had adopted a special needs sibling group before.
they wanted younger children, but were willing to try with older ones.
the social worker wanted me to let J know that he would be going to a new home.
he would pick j up in 30 minutes.
could i have him ready to go by then?

i prayed.
i sat down with the children
and i asked J if he wanted to see his brother.
his eyes beamed like i had never seen before.
he smiled, he whooped, he jumped in the air.
he was thrilled.
even knox and mary understood:
it was good that J came
and, now, it was good that J would go to someone else
and be reunited with his brother.
God gave us peace.
i was especially glad that knox and mary had peace about this.
as a family made up of adoption and foster care,
the foundation of our lives together involves
this bittersweet coming and going of children.
mercy ministry always comes down to this:
you can help, but only Jesus can heal.
this can be a tough lesson for adults
and a much tougher one for adopted children. kKnox and mary, though, have been cutting their teeth on this lesson
since their earliest memory
and showed real christian peace and insight in letting J go.
but now i wondered about J's future family.
were they christians?

i packed J's things (all gifts from michelle, jane and my mom)
and then i sat down to write a letter to J's new foster mother.
i started with scripture:
but whoever has the world's good and sees his brother in need
and shuts up his heart from him,
how does the love of god abide in him? I john 3.17

for every creature of God is good  and nothing is to be refused
if it is received with thanksgiving;
for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer I tim. 4.4

i shared in my letter how i had prayed for a loving christian home for J.
i tore out pages from my journal that documented his progress
during my precious week with him.
i shared my daily schedule, included the portfolio of his work in homeschool,
my assessment of his learning needs, and our family picture.
i include my name and address and phone number.
then i signed and sealed the letter and prayed again.

J left and we all started to reassemble our house.

we felt like we were underwater.
knox asked:
will we ever know what happened to j?
'i don't know', i said.
and then the phone rang.
it was J's new foster mother
she read my letter and called immediately
to tell me that God had answered my prayers
-before i even prayed them.
she and her husband are a christian homeschooling family.
j was reunited with his brother, and now that J is speaking,
there is hope for his brother, too.
over the years, the boys developed a wordless speech by making up had signals
that narrated to each other their terrifying private world.
J's new mother was describing their interaction and
how powerful it is that j can now speak for himself because now he can also
speak for his brother.
'roaria, she said, God made a door for these boys
when He taught J to speak words,
and now J can lead his brother outside of their private hell.

Jesus is the word made flesh.
we take the role of words for granted,
we for whom literacy is as common as dirt.
i don't think that we 'taught' j how to talk..
i know that a home school environment put him at ease
and i know that he felt safe to 'show what he knows'
at a sunny kitchen table with books, letter boards, crayons,
apple slices and his favorite dinosaur sippy cup.
i think that what really happened is that god
sanctified and then answered our prayers.
...Jesus is the word made flesh and our faith and our deeds of love
puzzle together with ..setting
the sequence that makes the pattern of grace filled life...