Haunted

I am haunted by a child.
He was mine and now he is not.
I need to find him.

And here is the story . . .

Back in 2002, my husband and I had two precious children, ages 6 and 8.  We felt very stable in our lives and ready to explore adding to our family.

I found out that a place called Falcon Children's Home had a "visiting resource" program and I called them to investigate.  As a visiting resource, my husband and I submitted to background checks, filled out an application and then were given the privilege of meeting the children at Falcon to decide who we would like to host for weekends and holidays.

We went to the home on a warm summer day in 2002.  I asked the house mother which children were still in need of a visiting resource.
The girls were all claimed.
The white kids were mostly claimed.
The boys were chosen last.
The African American boys were chosen absolutely, positively last.

And then I saw Jaquan.  He was a tiny, thin boy with a beautiful smile and in desperate need of some lotion.  I asked if he had a resource family, already knowing the answer.

He sat next to us on a wooden bench and shyly answered our questions.  I asked if he would like to visit our house sometime and play with our children.  He nodded almost imperceptibly.

But that's all it took. . .

The following weekend we picked him up and within moments of arriving home, he was on the trampoline with my two children wrestling and yelling.
He was obedient and precious and charming.
By the second weekend, I was clipping his toenails and learning how to do something with his hair and kissing him as much as he would let me. 

And then it happened.  When we took him back to Falcon after his second visit, he called us on the phone within an hour.  He was crying . . .
                         "I want to stay with y'all"

My heart physically hurt.   Because I wanted that, too.  So much.

We brought him to our home for every holiday and weekend we could for the next seven months. We took him on a trip to Virginia Beach with us. We took him camping and let him chop things up with a hatchet.

And then his social worker called.   The state was willing to split this child up from his twelve-year-old brother if we wanted to adopt him. His brother had been in trouble. I saw no problem with splitting up these final two siblings who were part of an even larger group of siblings.

But my husband did.   So we had to say "no".

Within two weeks, the social worker called to let us know a family in Charlotte NC was interested in both boys.  They were an African-American family.  They had older children. They were better for these brothers.  The boys could stay together. What right did this white lady have to split up siblings and take a child from his "culture"?  

So I called Falcon to bring Jaquan to us one more time.
I asked him if he knew about anything exciting that was going to happen to him and he replied,
                      "I have to get adopted"  with a sad face. 
 I made him a life book of all the fun things we had done together as a family.  I wrote "I love you" on every page.  I put our phone number and address inside just in case . . . 

And now, he is 18 years old.  I have waited all these years to reach out to somebody else's son.
                                            Because he changed our lives.

My hope and prayer is that he has had a wonderful life.
I have found his birthmother's obituary online.
Mugshots of two of his siblings.
But no obituary and no mug shots for this precious boy.

I just want him to know that he taught me that being a mother has nothing much to do with bloodlines or race or geographic location.

I'd like to tell him that he showed me that foster care was not the place for us.  We are not good
"giver backers".

I hope he knows he has been prayed for regularly for ten years and that I have wondered a million times if we should have kept him and let big brother (one of the mug shots) go.

Finally, I pray he was not hurt in any way by the short-term, non-permanent, time in our home. It must have been confusing for such a young boy.

He was a brother, a son, a beloved treasure . . . for not nearly long enough.

I pray this blog post finds it's way to someone who knows someone who knows someone . . .
who will tell him. 

Mercy is Spoken Here

Let me get one thing straight.

I NEVER intended for this blog to become a "RAD blog".   I had no plans to be the author of one of the most widely-circulated
adoption disruption stories on the internet.  www.bringinghomezeke.blogspot.com/2011/02/adoption-disruption-down-and-dirty.html


This is NOT the type of notoriety an adoptive mother longs for when bringing a beautiful new child into her family.


I simply shared my son's agonizing story and it resonated with more than 50,000 readers.  I poured out my heart in that post for catharsis but primarily because I had turned over every stone online and in the professional world of adoption-focused literature looking for help in the painful choice of whether or not to disrupt this child's entire world for a for a fourth time and all I found was ridicule and
criticism.

I read articles regarding disruption and the comments under the articles scared the confidence right out of me.
". . . treating a child like a pet . . . "
" . . . what if he were biological? You can't give him back them . . . "
" . . . should never have been allowed to adopt in the first place . . . "
" . . . should have ALL her children taken away . . . "
" . . . should be put in prison for abandonment . . . "

And I knew some of YOU must have been in that same desperate place hoping to find some kinship after that Reactive Attachment Disorder diagnosis darkened your world.

No warm, safe place existed for a family struggling with whether or not to disrupt a failing adoption.  No listening ears and sympathetic hearts were available to the mother who simply could not spend one more night sleeping with all her children in her master bedroom except THAT ONE and the door locked for fear that he might come in and harm them.   No gentle encouragement for the couple who's marriage is in tatters because THAT CHILD has triangulated them in the worst way possible and they blame one another all the way to court while the child sits, satisfied, on the sidelines and enjoys the show.  And he is not to blame. He is broken from the inside.

I wanted to be that place.  And after I hit "publish" on that article in February of 2011, I had no idea how my world would change.

You came, meekly at first, asking me if it was okay to email privately about your children.  You broke my heart and drove me to my knees before God with your stories.  I prayed for you.  I wept for you and I wept for your broken children.  You trusted me, a virtual stranger, with sacred parts of your hearts because there was not one other place in your life where it was okay to talk about how you really felt about that child you adopted.   Your in-laws had already said "I told you so" one too many times. Your church friends told you over and over how "lucky" you are and how "cute" he is and you wanted to shout "I CAN'T STAND HIM" and run from the building. . . I get that.

And I want to say "thank you" . . . to every Mama who wrote me a private note and thanked me for the risk of my post.  THANK YOU to every person too afraid to sign an email in which you bore your soul and asked for help.  Jesus knows every intimate detail, Anonymous Mom. . . He cares and He loves your family, even when it doesn't feel like it.
 I took a gamble that talking about "the 'D' word might just fill a niche left open by everyone too afraid to mention it.
"You've never thought of disrupting your adoption? Yeah, me neither  . . .just thought I'd ask . . .crazy question . . . I must be tired"


And if you followed my precious son's story, you already know that our gracious, good, kind Heavenly Father brought healing after six years of brokenness and acting out by our boy.   I would love to promise you that if you can just hang in there for six years, your child will receive healing, too.

But it doesn't work that way.  Some children are healed and some stay broken. In THIS life.

For those of you reading this who have seen great improvement in your children, I am BLESSED to hear those stories, too.
Remember to show mercy to those Mamas who are still in the throes . . .

For those who are still trudging along the painful path of RAD,  waking up in the morning wishing it was bed time already, you have my ear, my heart and my deep gratitude.  You are still walking, even if you feel dragged, you're doing it . . .

For those who have chosen to disrupt and are living with the pain of wondering if that child hates you, remembers you, understands that you did your best . . .for YOU I pray the most often.   The Enemy loves to accuse you, doesn't he?
But our son CAME to us from a Mama just like YOU . . . from a family that wanted so much to help him but became paralyzed by his gigantic needs.   A family that wanted to make the world a better place and give an orphan a home but got swallowed by his pain and anger and needed an escape hatch.  I have to believe someone, somewhere wants to thank you for giving them their miracle.

I thank both of my son's disrupted families here and now.   I know you read this.  Thank you "M" and "E" and  your families.
I pray you have no guilt about the life of this boy.
He is one of my my treasures!
He was worth those six years . . . and then some.
It took a long time to be able to say that with such certainty but I say it now.
He is a prize.   He belongs here, with us. He is ONE OF US.  He is mine . . .
He just took the long road...