Grief and Relief

 It has been a strange couple of days at the Cash house. 

We miss the girls. I specifically miss the way that the littlest would whisper "Hi. Hi. Hi." through her pacifier when I woke her up from her nap (and how she'd likewise greet EVERY PERSON ON THE PLANET). I miss the way she would melt into my body in the rocking chair, holding my arm with the sweetest little death grip. I miss the way the oldest would flutter upstairs to get dressed in the morning (she never did just walk) with her mermaid hair bouncing behind her. I miss her general excitement about everything - outings, food, information, and new people. All of the mothering energy I'd created for them now has no place to land - I can't direct, soothe, encourage or teach them anymore. The first night, I laid awake wondering if they were sleeping okay in their new beds. Phoenix and Jericho have both, more than once, volunteered that they miss the girls. Our life and home were SO FULL and now there is a void: it's less like a cavernous hole, and more like a wispy cloud of lost experience. We don't really know what to do with ourselves.

BUT, the four of us have been breathing much deeper. I can't even explain the general feeling of health that's fallen on our home ... everyone just seems to be functioning from a place of peace for the first time in months. I know it is partially logistics - no toddlers, no diapers, less laundry, less fighting, fewer attitudes, etc. - but there is something more. Previously, being at home was largely about surviving, just making sure everyone was alive, fed, and occasionally bathed. But for the last few days, I've been enjoying my home and my kids. Slow meals, quiet mornings, lots of snuggles, no appointments or visits or paperwork, long bathtimes and lots of eye contact are small graces that compile into huge joy. I think my kids subconsciously shrank to make space for A&A, and I didn't notice it until this week when I've watched their little souls expand again. They are holding longer conversations, living more freely, asking to read more books, finding themselves more frequently on our laps and in our arms. Being a family of four again has been so deliriously sweet. 

I just keep thinking about the significance of my two hands. I'm sure God has a myriad of reasons for creating our bodies in specific ways, and I certainly don't claim to understand those motivations. But, very practically, having two hands means that I can carry more than one thing. So, when it seems contradictory to feel two very opposite emotions at the same time, my hands seem to mirror my soul's ability to stand decidedly in both joy and pain. It's grounding to look at my physical fingers and imagine them grasped around separate experiences, validating my dichotomous experience of losing 'our' girls.

In those same two metaphorical hands, I hold the truths that (1) the girls were a genuine blessing to our lives and (2) the girls were an exhausting drain on our lives. I was feeling guilty about how much I'm enjoying this new season until my counselor kindly reminded me that fostering puts an amazing amount of strain on even the healthiest, most faithful families. Which is why, for the moment, we won't be accepting any new placements. We are going to give our family soil some time to remineralize before we even discuss re-opening our home. 

We are so grateful for all the people that have carried us through the last eight months - we would not have survived this experience without the support and prayers of friends both near and far. And PLEASE PLEASE continue to pray for the girls! Pray for them to powerfully bond with their new parents, to settle easily into new routines/places/therapies/etc, for a case without major hiccups or delays and for them to trust Jesus as the restorative force for their lives. 

Sustenance for the Journey

Illustration by Jago

I am a weary foster momma.
I think some of that weariness is universal to parenthood, and we are caring for four very small kiddos at one time. Having stair-step siblings in this particular age bracket is an insane undertaking.
But adding two foster kids to our team didn't just mean two more small kids ... the slew of fostering logistics is overwhelming.
For example, our fostering schedule this week involves:
- Monday: a potential birthmom visit, which was up in the air until the last minute
- Today: a speech evaluation at the local school
- Wednesday: a home visit from our private agency
- Thursday: a home visit from CPS
- Friday: play therapy and a home visit from the girls' attorney
Throw in visits from CASA, speech therapy, occupational therapy, preschool and all the paperwork, and it becomes a full-time job.
And, not only does fostering dominate our schedule, but it also dominates my thought-life.
"Am I getting them the interventions they need?"
"Where is their mom? Should I start calling hospitals?"
"How much should I push for their best, and how much should I permit their worst?"
"How do I keep them healthy without constant food battles?"
"How can I help heal them when there is so much unknown?"
"Is this four-year-old behavior, or is this trauma behavior?"
"What is our life going to look like in three months?"

To be honest, I feel like I'm drowning -- I was a confident swimmer until I decided to land myself in the middle of a typhoon. And all arenas of my life are sinking too. I'm less available to my forever kiddos, I'm less prepared as a home school mom, I'm less stable as a wife (ha!), I'm less committed in my ministries, I'm less diligent in other responsibilities, I'm less present in my friendships and I have less bandwidth to love/serve outside our home.

I want to quit.
But God won't let me quit.

As much as I want to be frustrated at God for keeping me in a place that feels so hard and thankless and desperate, God keeps being near and kind.

I've been reading The Chronicles of Narnia out loud to Phoenix at night. A month ago, when we were still in 'The Magician's Nephew,' I could barely finish reading because my eyes and voice were brimming with tears. Digory, the main character, is standing before Aslan, the creator and leader of Narnia. A series of unwise mistakes have caused Digory to bring with him a person of great evil into the fledgling world. Aslan is giving Digory a task to help save/protect the land, but Digory is distracted with worry about his mother, who is dying at home.

"'But please, please -- won't you -- can't you give me something that will cure Mother?' Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws upon them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself."

Aslan doesn't instantly heal Digory's mother, nor does he release him from the task at hand. Digory is expected to carry his own pain forward into obedience. But Aslan is fully present with him in his pain. While our two girlies surely carry the greatest sadness in this season, I have my own legitimate grief. But (wonder of wonders) my roaring lion of a God is bent near to me, shedding tears on my behalf.

Over breakfast, we read a Bible story to our kiddos, and then a page from Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing. The other morning, I read this (which references the illustration above):

"God's Spirit is called the 'Comforter.' Does it make you think of a nice comfy quilt - all cozy and warm? Oh dear.

In the Bayeux tapestry of 1066, there's a knight on a horse and the caption reads: 'Bishop Odo comforts his troops.'Is Bishop Odo giving them nice fluffy quilts? No. Look! He's prodding them from behind with a stick! NOT comfy.

But Odo is spurring them on, encouraging them, urging them to keep going and not give up. Because comfort in the Bible doesn't mean 'to make comfy.' It means 'to send help.'

When we want to give up, when we are afraid, God sends his spirit - the Comforter - to make us strong, to give us courage, to lift us up."

My latent desires for a predictable, comfortable life are being beaten out of me by the fostering process. God doesn't comfort me with retreat or rest, no matter how much I beg for relief. Instead, God is asking me to lean into the pain, to put aside self-preservation, to trust God with my family and to keep pushing Kingdom lines forward.

I have the wine of divine tears and the bread of divine encouragement as sustenance for the journey. Those traveling mercies are yours too, whether you happen to be on the same road or have your own path of exhausting obedience.

Redefining Motherhood

Up to this point, I've been quiet on this blog about the hardships of foster parenting. Honestly, it's because I believe fostering is good, important work and I don't want to scare anyone away from its particular graces because of its particular pains.
But I've decided that it's important for me to own the emotions of this experience, and to tell the truth about things that felt really dark until I processed them with God.
So here's the brutal truth: I feel almost zero affection for my foster daughters.
There are a lot of articles circulating on the internet about how the extensive paperwork, the regular intrusions, and the sketchy system make fostering difficult. There are plenty of people that tell the truth about how fostering blows up your family, incites difficult sibling relationships, requires endless empathy and wears you to the bone. So I saw all of that coming.
But because so many vocal foster parents proclaim deep love for their kids and how they dread birth parent reunification (even if they support it), I just assumed that I would bond quickly and easily with our girls.
They've been with us for four months, and I still don't feel particularly attached to either of them.
So I've felt guilty. MAJORLY GUILTY. Everyone else on the planet seems to easily figure this out, and I've been over here floundering in my efforts to muster up the feels that come so easily with my other two. I've wanted to quit more than once, just because I feel like the girls deserve more than I seem to be able to offer.
Until recently, I didn't realize how much of my innate definition of mothering was reliant on affection. I thought being a mom meant being crazy about your kids, because that's such a huge part of my relationship with Phoenix and Jericho. I think their antics are endearing, that their sweet toes are adorable, that their sleep-sweaty bodies are a treasure. I could stare at them for hours, and that kind of soul-deep tenderness is incredibly energizing. When they are a hot mess, all the warmth that burns for them in my bones makes it easier (though not easy) to teach and love them in spite of themselves.
I just don't have that with the foster girlies. The first time I clipped our four-year-old's toenails was a major exercise in self-discipline. Their little smells (you know, the kind that mommas drink in deeply?) kind of gross me out. And even though they are generally cool kids, the times that I really enjoy them are few and far between.
But, after a meaningful conversation with Josh this weekend, I'm standing a little taller before God and asking for a new definition of motherhood. Turns out, God never asked me to have warm-fuzzy feelings. Even Karyn Purvis, the guru of attachment parenting, says "It's okay not to feel love for your child right now."

Instead, as a mother (biological, adoptive AND foster), God has asked me to:
EQUIP my kids.
ENCOURAGE my kids.
ENGAGE with my kids.
And, most importantly, to INTRODUCE my kids to Jesus, so they can be loved perfectly (with abundant affection) by the tender God who created them.

Seeing the job description written down leaves me sobered by the gravity of my role.  But because these tasks are God-assigned, they can be Spirit-fueled. Instead of trying to fabricate feeling, I'm asking God to enable choices that serve Kingdom purposes instead of my own misguided notion of what I'm 'supposed' to feel.

I may be the only foster mom struggling with affection, but, just in case I'm not, I hope this post leaves you feeling less lonely. This is hard, holy work, and all of our imperfection and insufficiency just leaves more space for the glory of God.

Poverty of Spirit

[I was commissioned to write a little thought about Christmas for one of our church's social media outlets, which I'm re-posting here. Thanks, Kathi, for forcing my hand to write what God's been teaching me in this season!]

This time of year, we give a lot of mental energy to gifts. We make lists of things to buy for family, drop subtle hints about things we may like to receive, stalk Pinterest for cute teacher gifts, make generous financial gifts to worthy nonprofits, and generally drain our bank accounts trying to make sure everyone in our world feels loved. To be clear, I love the exchange of presents - there is nothing like the perfect gift to make you feel known and treasured, supported and seen.
And, if spirituality is part of your normal life, you probably turn your attention to the precious gift we were given on Christmas. God's very son, wrapped in humility, was given to us. There is no gift quite like it - both universally appealing and perfectly personal. The Incarnation, Divinity gifted into our very human experience, is surely worth extra mediation during this season.
This year, however, a lot of my thoughts and prayers have been centered around the gifts that I bring to the cradle. Every  Christmas Eve, we bake a birthday cake, light a candle and gather in the quiet to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. It is a sweet, small way to celebrate the baby who right-sized the world. I want to honor this newborn King with precious, lavish, beautiful gifts - like the wise men, I want to approach Christ with gifts fit for royalty.
But, if I'm being quite honest, I don't feel like I have much to offer. I can be overwhelmingly selfish, impatient, controlling and distant. And even when my sinfulness relents, the fruit in my life still seems too meager to present to a King.
But my Emmanuel keeps reminding me of this truth:

"For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
    you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Psalm 51

The only gift Christ desires is me ... just as I am. He doesn't want a magnificently orchestrated holiday or a giant donation or perfect patience with my kids. He doesn't want me to muster up holiness or to strive for success - my brokenness and desperation for His presence are the perfect gift. This truth has me crying every time I listen to 'Little Drummer Boy,' because I feel insufficient in the same way, approaching Jesus with only a (metaphorical) drum and not much skill. But, miraculously, my smallness and poverty of spirit are a gift that makes Him smile.

So gift yourself to Jesus afresh today. Set down the piping bag, drive home from the mall, turn off Mariah Carey. Bring your entirety, both sinner and saint, to the cradle. Your empty hands and expectant heart are the greatest gift you can give this Christmas.

Laid Bare

I've been in strange season with God for more weeks than I can number. More months that I can number. Actually, I'm pretty sure we've camped in the same strange space for years.

I've spent this season becoming overwhelmingly aware of my own sinfulness. Obviously, I
understand that this is a vital part of a healthy relationship with God. If I want to be made into the likeness of Christ, then I need to (1) have the Holy Spirit illuminate areas of fault and failure, (2) repent of those ways I've wounded the heart of God and offended the holiness of God and (3) cling to the Holy Spirit to see the fruits of righteousness manifested in my life.

But dang. It feels like my mess is all we ever talk about.

Everyone has at least one friend who wears a particular topic threadbare, hijacking every conversation to discuss their treasured subject. You know, when you are find yourself doing a mental eye roll when Crossfit or lawn care or Trump or essential oils come up in conversation. It's not that you don't care about the person or the topic, but ... really? Again?

My own personal depravity is not a fun subject to constantly revisit with God.

It feels like a never-ending dermatological exam. Me, exposed and vulnerable, laying beneath unforgiving light, clinging to any last shred of dignity. All while God just keeps taking note of every blemish, noting changes in size or depth. Murmuring, "well that's going to have to go" and "here's another one."

A couple weeks ago, during worship, I could feel tears welling up in my eyes as I felt the gaze of God run up and down my soul. Again. And I prayed, "Really, Lord? Is this fun for you? Because I'm exhausted. It takes all my emotional energy (like ALL of it) to be with You, holding back tears. Can I have a break from this so I can breathe?"

And good ole' dermatologist Jesus replied, "I'm keeping you here until you can be here without wanting to cry or run or hide. My grace really is as big as I say it is. I expose your sin to save you, not to shame you. So until you can look me in the eyes, resist the urge to cover up or explain yourself, and you can really just trust my love, here you will remain."

So, of course, my knee-jerk response is to pretend I am so okay with being laid bare, hoping God will buy my act and leave me alone. Which is pure silliness, of course. Pretending to stay present for the sake of running away makes no sense at all. So here I am, a giant mess, fighting to be truly vulnerable and accept that Grace really can cover it all.

I put all this out there just to encourage anyone else who feels the acute eye of Christ - you are not alone. For those willing to endure this kind of relentless examination, I'm believing all the weariness will someday bud and blossom into a display of Glory.

Orlando

When I was pregnant with Phoenix, Josh and I watched all the available seasons of Dexter with amazing speed - to say we binged is really an understatement. One night, after a marathon of episodes from season four (the Trinity season, for fellow fans), I got in the shower feeling really unsettled. I have a high threshold for fictional blood/guts/crime (not really sure what this means about me), but I was deeply shaken by the particular form of evil personified by John Lithgow's character 'Arthur Mitchell.' As water fell from my downcast eyes onto my swollen belly, it occurred to me for the first time that we would be introducing our child to a world wrought with evil and destruction. Why would we bring a child into a world like this? A world where evil seems to have free reign, where one is always at risk of bearing the soul-deep consequences of someone else's depravity? How could we possibly protect a child from such present, subversive, expansive evil?

Obviously, it was a little late to ask such an important question. Like it or not, our growing child already had traction in this world, and the question changed from "Why would we raise a child in this world?" to "How will we raise a child in this world?" 

Sunday, upon hearing the news of what happened in Orlando, I was freshly disturbed by the realities of this world. And this evil was not fictional - it was real in the most profound sense of the word. 

Phoenix, now five, is at such an amazing age -- the whole natural world feels like a gift that I get to help her unwrap. She notices all the variations in the clouds, she instantly internalizes the names and habitats of ocean creatures, she overturns rocks to see what she might discover underneath. But those tangible expressions of Glory that she's constantly encountering are only a small portion of the world she will continue to explore. This week, I weep that giving her the world means she will inevitably be hit over the head with pain and grief and tragedy and unspeakable evil. 

Forty-nine mommas lost their babies this week. I wish more than anything that there’s a way I could ease their suffering, ascribe meaning to their loss, or offer small graces like a hug or a meal. But I can’t. There's nothing that can undo or reverse this horror.

What I can do is keep answering “How will we raise a child in this world?” with a resounding commitment to empathy. I cannot bring back lost lives, but I can fight for character in the lives of the two small people in my home. They are my sphere of influence for this season, and I can affect the trajectory of our world by the way I teach them about loving others. It is no easy or small thing to really understand and internalize the experiences of another human being, to see them with your whole attention and value them despite glaring ideological differences. It is no easy thing to set aside agendas, to find the smallest square of common ground and to contruct a relationship built first on love. It is no small thing to intentionally change words, phrases, behaviors and habits for the sake of honoring someone else’s experience. 

None of this comes naturally to me, so thankfully I have access to the greatest example of empathy in the Incarnation. Christ (quite literally) took on the form of those he meant to serve and love, experiencing the spectrum of our temptations, our hardships, our pain and our joy. Setting aside his glory, Jesus humbly walked among us, getting his hands dirty on the front lines of love. With no concern for social norms and no tolerance for religious spectacles, Jesus locked eyes with the misunderstood, the ostracized and the forgotten.

I am praying that my children are leaders in a generation marked by empathy. I cannot gift them a hate-free world, but I can foster the bravery and kindness that will change the tide. 

To the LGBT community - I weep as you weep. 

To the families and friends who lost someone they love - I weep as you weep.

And to the rest of us - let’s fight first in our own hearts and then in the world for the empathy that can prevent such senseless acts of violence.

Mourning in my Kitchen

Not long after receiving the call that my grandma was in the hospital, I found myself in the kitchen. An unfortunate by-product of having a family is feeding them. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Normally there is a fair amount of drudgery in the dinner experience for me; trying to cook amidst squeals and screams, force-feeding my small people, and then immediately cleaning up the inevitable messes. Not my favorite.

But something was different on that particular evening. 

It was almost an out-of-body experience, my senses both heightened and dulled by the news of potential loss. Peeling carrots, shredding cheese, whisking a roux - small moments of normalcy intoxicated with the immanent.

Since that call, I have found myself acutely aware that we live in the “now and not yet.” The kingdom of God was surely inaugurated in the first coming of Christ, but it has not yet found its fulfillment. Death has no ultimate power over those who know God, for we are promised resurrection bodies and eternity with Christ. But that happy truth is tethered to the inescapable presence of Death among us in this present age. 

To love someone on the brink of eternity is a strange and holy thing. It is a stark and obvious intersection of the temporal and eternal, which brings into focus all the other ways that heaven breaks into our everyday. It gives one fresh eyes to see the sacred in things that have become overly familiar. The last traces of baby smell that linger on Jericho’s skin, the perfect turn of Phoenix’s curls on a humid day, the crisp blue of Josh’s eyes … these things became miracles. 

I was in yoga class on a Monday when a YMCA employee came to tell me that Josh was in the lobby. As I quietly rolled my mat and slipped out of the room, I imagined all possible reasons for this interruption. Our minds are amazingly complex … I knew exactly what he’d come to tell me, but I deceived myself in entertaining other possibilities. 

After a lifetime of faithful service to Christ, my grandma took her last breaths that Sunday night, January 10th.

Mourning her loss means allowing Grief to be my ever-present passenger again for a season.  Having been introduced before, I thought I would know exactly how to navigate our relationship. But, as it turns out, grief is not that consistent. Mourning a particular person in a particular season brings a very particular pain. For me, this time, I started stuck in the mire of numbness and emotional volatility, which admittedly made me a miserable person to be around. 

And, for some reason, the loss seems to strike me afresh when I'm in my kitchen. Not every time I cook - only those times where I find a strange balance between focus and contemplation. Grating ginger, carefully avoiding my fingers while simultaneously basking in the sharp, herbal scent that my grandma loved so much. Watching swirls of sour cream slowly disappear as I mash potatoes, remembering all the Thanksgiving dinners where my grandma would stand at the stove whisking gravy. Sprinkling freshly cut tomatoes with herbs and garlic to roast for spaghetti, thinking about how she relished in beautiful produce (and anything else that grew from the Earth). 

The tediousness of cooking for my young family has been imbued with new meaning for me - largely because I know that my efforts in the kitchen would make my grandma so proud. The ways she loved were not grandiose or extravagant; she loved with meals, with presence, with a listening ear, with understanding, with greenery, with prayer. She wasn't changing the whole world, she just showed up every day to care well for her people. I'm learning the eternal significance of seemingly small acts of love, and Grief is a patient, long-suffering teacher.