Exposed

LiLi, Guilin 2012

LiLi’s first utterance out of her mouth last Friday morning was “Bitch,” and it was directed toward me. Out of the blue. No rhyme, no reason. I had a little extra time this particular morning before work, so I gave my husband a few more sweet moments of shut-eye while I made breakfast for the girls and got them on their way. I heard LiLi’s familiar clomping down the stairs and knew it was her in the kitchen before I turned around from my station at the counter. Maybe it was my failure to greet her before I asked her to take her morning “mood” medicine; maybe it was that I failed to come to her and gently ease her into the morning with a warm hug and a pat on the back. Nine years into raising this child, one would think that I would be a little more proficient with the skill-set required, but I still feel like a novice. Most of the time my husband and I must remind her to take her medicine; she rarely remembers. God help us when we forget, because we will be subjected to the wrath of a hormonal teenage girl on steroids without it.

So after asking her to take her medicine, she responded with the afore mentioned descriptive. My response would not earn me any rewards in Parenting Magazine, but it might have earned some respect within the World Wrestling Federation.  It is not pleasant to be called “Bitch” first thing in the morning; much less so before I’ve had my coffee.  I have a seventeen year history of ER nursing. I have been called expletives by members of the “big leagues;” street drunks, addicts, the morally depraved, and intoxicated teenage girls who are sometimes the worst kind… but nothing beats being called a bitch by your sixteen year old daughter, first thing in the morning, whom you have labored over for nine years. One would think that I would be immune to her verbal assaults by now, that her barbed arrows wouldn’t strike their target… but they do. They strike, they wound, they hurt, and they make me scream out in pain. I am fatigued. I am sick and tired of my responses. I am sick from exposing my precious twelve year old to the stress of living in a home with this kind of tension. I’ve asked God so many times, “Why?” and I think I know the answer, but in the heat of the battle the answers don’t matter. She hurts me.

I enjoyed a two-day, Christ centered, Holy Yoga and fitness workshop this weekend. My body, mind and spirit were steeped in Jesus. I was reminded that I am a daughter of the Most High King, and have the birthrights of a princess. I must confess that most days I don’t feel like a princess. I feel like a slave, imprisoned by my own sin and unfaithfulness. I carry the sins of LiLi like a cross, piggy-backed on mine, like a double-edged sword in my side. I forget that this is a battle of the Lord’s; that ultimately, LiLi belongs to Him, and I am just his servant.  I keep trying to fix her as the world would fix her… and I am clearly failing. I didn’t want a child like LiLi, but God wanted her for me. My unfaithfulness to this truth has caused much despair in our home. I need to find the “sweet spot” in my faith that allows me to slow down and receive the blessing of the Lord.  I am paddling too furiously to receive anything… I am too busy drowning to pay attention to those with life preservers in their hands.

Michelangelo said of his “David,” that the exquisite masterpiece always existed beneath the block of marble; all he had to do was chisel and chip away to reveal what stood beneath. It must be the same for a composer of a beautiful piece of music. The melody has always existed… and through a gifted artist, it is purely revealed, establishing an order to the chaotic cacophony.

I believe it is the same for LiLi. She is a melody that is still in the works, a lovely sculpture that is concealed within the confines of a stone mantle. I am no Michelangelo, but the truth is, with God nothing is out of reach.  I must abide in the shelter of the Almighty in order to receive the crafting tools necessary to help this child get rid of her junk. It can be done. I know it. During the Holy Yoga retreat I was also reminded that if I commit my way to the Lord and trust in Him, He will act. This is an undeniable truth. So… I made a new commitment for the nth time, that I was not going to yell, nor smack, nor put LiLi in a head-lock again. I am going to breathe deeply to the tips of my toes, and remind myself that I am a princess and therefore should act accordingly.

So far I’ve stuck to my commitment, but then again it’s only been 10 days. Pray for me people.

Show Us Some Mercy–3rd in a series

The chaplain directed me back to the “Consult Room” where my husband and young daughters were waiting. I knew this place well. The room had an aura about it. It is reserved for families who are in crisis, who have decisions to make, or devastating news to process. It is where families huddle, gather their resources, and call clergy, mothers, fathers, daughters and sons. It is a sacred place where the profane must at times be uttered… it is a room of hope, of despair, of grief and disbelief. I had been in this room many times to greet a family, and prepare them for what they were about to encounter. The lighting is subdued, and boxes of tissues are on the tables. There was a telephone book, a phone, a couple of sofas and some chairs. The irony that my family now gathered in this room, and I was now making the most undesirable telephone calls in my life struck me with a bitter blow. Again, the random nature of tragedy makes us all feel vulnerable. Someone, a loving co-worker, came and took LiLi, age 10, and JaneGrace, 6, for snacks. My girls were familiar with this hospital. It was “Mommy’s hospital.” They had been here many times with me… JaneGrace was introduced to the staff a few days after we returned home from China. It was at the nursing station where I took the call from my husband that we had been matched with a beautiful Chinese baby girl. My co-workers had celebrated with me as our family walked through LiLi’s adoption process, and were there for support as her disabilities became more apparent. This staff knew my family and me well, and was just as dumbstruck as I was at this tragic turn of events.
The calls to my sisters went as expected. It was about 8:00 pm mountain- time and both of my sisters lived in the eastern time zone, making it near bedtime in their respective cities. I called my eldest sister first. Her husband answered. I explained to him the sequence of events in my nurse’s voice… this was my place of comfort in a situation such as this. I had made these types of calls to so many folks over the years. I knew how to do it, how to begin the call, how to keep my voice steady and calm, how to pause to give them time to process the information and formulate questions. The questions coming from my brother-in-law were difficult to answer, and I kept my answers brief and succinct. Yes, I was sure. No, there is absolutely nothing we can do, the ventilator is keeping her alive right now, and I’m praying she can make it through the night. Her brain is filled with blood… Yes, I want you here. Yes, please come, we can’t do this by ourselves. He put my sister on the phone and I hope I never have to deliver this kind of news to her again. She collapsed, he had to help her up, she screamed, she screamed again… No, it can’t be… Paula! Are you sure? No, no, no! I am so sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen, please forgive me-
And the next call to my younger sister went similarly. She had been on the phone with my mom about an hour before the fall. Her husband had been the one to pick Mom up and bring her to Orlando to catch the flight. There were plans for her to spend a few days with them after the return trip home. Our lives had turned upside down. This call was surreal, like someone else was making the call and I was an observer. I learned later that as I spilled out this nightmare to my younger sister’s husband, he began his characteristic pacing of the house while we were on the phone. This behavior did not stir up any concern in my sister, and it gave her husband and I the advantage of being able to keep her in blissful ignorance for a few more agonizing minutes until he could fully grasp what had transpired in my home. Her reaction was much like my elder sister’s, and having to do this twice in the span of twenty minutes or so was depleting my emotional and psychological reserves. As I reflect back on the first few hours that followed Mom’s accident, I am certain that it was God, and only God, that met me face to face and carried me through, enabling me to carry on.
Many phone calls ensued over the next hour or so, back and forth, calls to and from my Mom’s surviving siblings, explaining more about the severity of the injury, that all of her protective reflexes were gone, that she couldn’t feel pain, that it was only the ventilator and now blood pressure support medications that were keeping her alive. My sisters, their husbands, and my elder sister’s two daughters all made arrangements to fly to Colorado first thing the following morning, we all wanted to be with Mom as she passed from this life to the next. Ironically, although she wouldn’t be flying home to Florida on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006, she would be flying home, to her eternal home, to heaven. The front door to our new home where we had lived for only a year became a symbolic place of passage for my mother.
I did make the decision to take my daughters into the trauma room to see Mom. Their exposure to this event began without my permission…it was a terrible twist of fate that placed them in the position of being exposed to an event that would soon rock LiLi’s world. The cogwheels in her brain had already begun to turn backwards. We carried our little JaneGrace into see her Nannie. Now, as a twelve-year-old, she recalls her grandmother looking quite small in the middle of the big white room with all of the tubes attached to her. She took one look, then declared to no one in particular, “Someone get me out…of…here.” Quite intuitive for a six-year-old, she had clearly conveyed what all of us were thinking.

to be continued

Show Us Some Mercy- 2nd in a series

I knew the route to St. Anthony Central from my house like I know the back of my hand. I had Sixth Avenue memorized; every bump, every exit, every sign. I knew the length of time it took between each exit and could estimate my arrival to the hospital within a minute. This particular ride, while sitting in the front seat of an ambulance screaming down the road with my mom being worked on in the back, took seemingly forever. My mind was racing, yet time stood still. The moments at home before the ambulance arrived were already being replayed in my head, frame by frame, in slow motion. This was a living nightmare. I began to flip through the possible scenarios of different degrees of head injuries, but my gut told me this one was going to be really bad, with a devastating outcome. I was absolutely incredulous at this tragic turn of events. I had been an ER nurse for 13 years at this point in my life. I had seen tragedy, had walked others’ family members through unimaginable outcomes of senseless acts of violence, of catastrophic failure of the human body, and of random acts of nature with devastating consequences. I knew what it was like to be on the caretaker side of these events. I knew nothing about being the victim, or the loved one of a victim. This was brand new territory. It felt surreal. My turn, my family’s turn, had come.
Every few minutes I would glance over my shoulder and watch the medics as they tended to her. There wasn’t a lot for them to do. I wanted her to wake up, to move, to blink an eye, something… For every minute that she lay there lifeless, my prognosis for her became grimmer. Yes, this was a nightmare. Please, somebody, wake me up!
We drew closer to the ER, and I became aware that we would be arriving just before the evening change of shift. Thank God! I desperately wanted my day-shift co-workers to care for my mother. I knew them well. I knew the work of which they were deftly capable. We fought in the trenches daily as nurses, doctors, and ancillary personnel in an inner city level-one trauma center. We had seen and been through it all… I hungered for familiarity, expertise and comfort that I knew they would provide. All of the staff in this department, doctors, nurses, technicians, desk clerks, chaplains, volunteers, specialists, were all like extended family to me, and I knew they would care for my mother like she was one of their own. If there was any relief in these dire circumstances, it was that I knew she would be receiving the best care possible.
After what seemed like forever, the ambulance finally pulled up into the bay. I slid out  of the front seat, and followed the gurney as the crew was directed into a resuscitation room. I saw some of the staff, my friends, glance curiously at me, trying to figure out why I was there in my street clothes, following this crew into Room 2. They went to work quickly, like a well-choreographed act on my mother, and the ER physician immediately called a “Level-One” trauma response. At this point, I nearly collapsed, covered my face with my hands, and backed out of the room sobbing. I couldn’t take it any longer. Someone led me to a chair at the nursing station and sat with me as the trauma team continued their work on Mom.
She required immediate endo-tracheal intubation, which was a breathing tube that would keep her alive. The ER doc treating her was one of my favorites with whom to work. He was a no-nonsense, expertly skilled clinician with whom I could trust my mother’s life. The team collectively stabilized her, and rushed her to the cat-scanner. She remained completely unresponsive, and as I sat at the nursing station my ER doc friend came to me, reluctantly sharing that her pupils were fixed and dilated. I was numb, speechless, unblinking, trying to will myself to another dimension, another string, somewhere, anywhere but here. I had to be dreaming. People were standing around me, my co-workers, my friends; they had their hands on me, patting my back, offering me hugs, holding my hands. I looked into their eyes desperately seeking some sign of hope, and there was none. They had a bewildered look about them, equally clueless as to why something like this could happen. That is the thing about tragedy: It makes us all feel vulnerable. None of us are immune from being the victim of a random act of violence. The staff in this particular ED had seen it over and over and over again… Columbine in 1999, Platte Canyon High School hostage crisis in September 2006 just five weeks earlier, drowned babies, high school girls pulled from twisted metal in their prom dresses… we just shake our heads, do what we are trained to do, and keep moving forward, placing one foot in front of the other. We learn to cope in many different ways… pushing ourselves to the limits in endurance training, immersing ourselves in our families, living life on the edge, turning to alcohol as medicine, and sick humor, just to name a few. And now, here I was, one of their own had fallen victim. We all dreaded the day when someone we knew crossed that line from caretaker to victim. It was easier to disassociate yourself from an event when you weren’t socially or emotionally connected to an involved party. When you were connected, it was harder to let go.
Mom was now out of the cat-scanner and back in Room Two, and the ER doc and consulting neurosurgeon called me over to the radiology image screens in the ED. The images of my mother’s gravely injured skull and brain sent chills down my spine. I now knew what made those breaking sounds that had caused a knot in my gut at the precise time of her fall. Those sounds, combined with the images on the screen, have been the most difficult memories from which to escape on that dreadful day. Bottles of wine, drugs, therapy, nor all the riches in the world could help me escape from that sound and those images. That is something to which I must accommodate, with which I must live, and must practice to surrender every single day of my life. The doctors informed me that the injury was fatal, her brain was filled with blood and the pressure within her skull that was being created was inconsistent with life. There was no fix, and my mom was going to die. Just like that, when you least expect it, the door slams shut; or is flung wide open, depending on which side of heaven you reside. The time had come to make those dreaded calls to my sisters.
To be continued.

Show Us Some Mercy- 1st in a series

Friday, November 3, 2006, I flew my mom out to Colorado from our family home on Florida’s east coast to spend a sweet weekend with my two daughters and me. My husband was out of town for a conference, so it made for a perfect girls’ weekend.

We were blessed with the typical Colorado fall pattern of weather: cool and dry with cobalt blue skies. We filled the weekend with fun activities. Friday after picking her up from the airport, we went to a luncheon hosted by a friend from my church. She was able to meet many of my friends with whom our family worshipped. Saturday morning we headed to a holiday bazaar at the Chinese adoption agency through which we brought our daughters home. This was a special treat for her. Both of my daughters were adopted from China, one at age fourteen months, and the second, a special needs child, was brought home two years later at the age of seven. My mother was enamored with my beautiful girls, as they were with her. It was very special for her to visit the adoption agency where our family journey began. We shopped for Chinese trinkets and gifts for the upcoming Christmas season. Saturday night I cooked one of our favorite dishes with shrimp and pasta; we shared some wine and watched a movie with the girls. I made a bubble bath for her in our gigantic tub, and had candles and music to help her relax and enjoy herself. Sunday morning we served communion together at my church. What a privilege this was, to share in serving at the Lord’s Table with my beloved mother. The weekend was truly spectacular. I am the middle of three daughters and had raised hell through my teenage years (and actually into my twenties as well…). Our family hadn’t been perfect; there were addiction issues, and my two sisters, my mom and I all suffered because of them. Mom had done the best she knew how to do in raising us, and I had turned out to be the rebel. My mom and I butted heads from the get-go, which is one of the reasons this visit had been so sweet. It seemed there was always residual tension between the two of us. This time had been different. Although my mother was 82 years old and in relatively good health, I felt as though I was finally placed into the special position of “looking after” her… holding her hand, cooking yummy food, taking care of her. It was the best time we had ever spent together, and I didn’t want it to end.

Monday after we sent the girls off to school, my mom joined me to run a few errands. She saw the emergency department where I worked, and then we headed home to drive up to the mountains with my husband, home from his conference, to enjoy lunch together at one of the large hotel-casinos in a nearby old mining town. We threw a few quarters in the slot machines just for fun, winning a few bucks. We had a blast. Afterwards, we headed back down the mountain to pick up my daughters from school and take my then six-year-old, JaneGrace, to her dance lesson. Mom was excited to see JaneGrace dance with all of her little friends and meet her dance instructor. We finally headed home to settle in for Mom’s last night with us. Little did I know it was truly to be her last night with us.

Mom went upstairs to get ready for dinner and do a little packing, for she was flying home the next morning (little did I know…) and I began scurrying around in the kitchen. Some amount of time went by, my husband was tucked into his chair in the living room and the girls were upstairs playing. I was in our pantry gathering dinner ingredients when all of a sudden I heard a horrific sound… a brief outcry, some kind of fall, something broke; it frightened me and I was immediately overcome with a sense of dread. I ran from the pantry and around the corner into our foyer area, arriving at the same time as my husband. I saw my beloved mother sprawled at the bottom of the stairs on the hardwood floor, with her legs splayed out on the last few steps. She was pale and very, very still. My first words were “She’s out cold!” as I leapt to her side, taking her head into my hands and performing a rapid assessment. My husband had glanced over as she was in mid-flight from the first landing to the foyer floor and was helpless to change the outcome, it all happened so fast. She had struck the floor with such force. My ER nursing skills took over instinctively as I cycled rapidly between daughter and nurse, my senses clumsily conveying the gravity of the situation to my brain. My next few uttered words were “Call 911,” “Clear the area for the medics,” and directing my husband outside to flag down the ambulance. This was all in between intermittent guttural wails as I was living out this unimaginable horror. While protecting my mother’s neck and keeping her airway open to ensure breaths, I slid her backwards until her entire body was off of the stairs and she was lying fully on the hardwood floor. It wasn’t until this moment that she gasped. It was the only movement and sound she made during those interminable moments while I was listening for the scream of the sirens. I realized that had been her first breath she had taken since the fall. In my terror, I had missed this crucial assessment finding.

At this point, my daughters had gathered at the top of the stairs, hearing the commotion, and wondered what was happening. Neither of their young brains could protect them from this vision at the bottom of the stairs. They both began to cry, and JaneGrace, asked me if her Nannie was dead. I assured her she was not, that I was doing everything I could to take care of her Nannie. LiLi also began to cry. The whole scene was just too much to bear. My girls adored their grandmother. We had just spent the most beautiful few days together; how could this have happened? I was supposed to put her on a plane tomorrow to head back home to Central Florida. What was I to do? I had to call my sisters… they would be so angry that this happened on my watch. This was a nightmare rapidly unfolding at the speed of light in my head. The emotions within me unfurled with the momentum of a great sail. I waited on my knees leaning over my mother’s lifeless body and cradled her head in between my hands until the ambulance and fire-truck crew arrived and took over. Her breaths were guttural, barely enough to sustain life. I could feel a faint pulse. “Oh Father God,” I cried; “Please show us some mercy.” My daughters were stricken with grief as they remained perched at the top of the stairs with a bird’s eye view of the unfolding events. I could not protect them from this event. It had happened in front of them. JaneGrace, my little sunshine face, and LiLi my special child were both witnesses to a cataclysmic event in our family’s life.

I asked the rescue crew to please take her to the emergency department at which I worked, which was St. Anthony Central in downtown Denver; a top-notched level-one trauma department. It was ironic that we had just been there a few hours earlier to show my Mom where I worked. The captain of the rescue team happily obliged… it was their predetermined destination. They stabilized her, loaded her into the back of the ambulance while I was helped into the front seat. My husband, LiLi, and JaneGrace followed in our car. I bowed my head in my hands as we drove down my residential street, with neighbors standing outside of their homes wondering what had just happened. The tragedy arrow had struck our lives, and we would never be the same, especially LiLi.
To be continued.

Dear Owl

“Owl” has been the recipient of my journaling for years as I’ve chronicled through all of the ups and down of my life. “OWL” represents “One who listens.” It helped to imagine a wise, grandfatherly old soul to whom I could pour out my heart unabashedly and with a no-holds-barred conviction. Lately, I have been disclosing the challenges through which I’ve traveled as I’ve raised my second daughter, LiLi. This child, seven years old when we brought her home, was my second internationally adopted daughter from China. Raising LiLi has been the hardest, most guilt-ridden challenge of my life. When I was called to adopt a second child from China, I never imagined a journey like the one our family has traveled since 2003. Riddled with heartache and sprinkled with bittersweet joy, there wasn’t much time to dwell in the “Why me” sorrows. It has been revealed to me that the answer to that question is this: LiLi’s arrival into my life was the beginning of a long road toward redemption. I have a plaque in my kitchen that reads “Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best.” LiLi was my slam-dunk. Journey with me as I recall memorable moments in our evolving story.

Call Me Crazy- On Returning Home

Two weeks from today, we depart for our heritage tour to China.

Back in January, we were on our way home from a day trip with our two daughters  when an email popped up from our adoption agency, Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI). I opened the email to discover that the Chinese Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) had paired up with CCAI to offer a heritage tour for adoptees and their families.  The tour was, in part, being funded by a special grant from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs, therefore the adoptees in-China travel expenses would be covered. After about a two minute discussion with my husband, we jumped on the deal. We’ve had a good laugh ever since, because although our daughters’ costs are covered for the travel in China, we’ve nearly had to take a second mortgage on the house to cover all of the unlisted expenses. The international airfare alone, for the four of us, could pay for a year of college. Oh well… so much for a free trip. If it sounds too good to be true… it probably is.

After getting over the sticker shock for this tour, we began to marvel at the opportunities this adventure would bring. Todd and I remember quite well both of our adoption trips. The first one, bringing home our then fourteen month old, consisted of the most sweet, memorable days of my life. I became a first-time mother on foreign soil, to the most beautiful baby I could ever imagine. Room 902 in the Majestic Hotel in Nanning, Guangxi, P.R.C. was my birthing room. This was the room where the orphanage nannies delivered my baby into my arms, and where, approximately fifteen minutes later, she promptly puked all over me from the wailing and crying that ensued. But vomiting aside, it was the most beautiful, magical two weeks of which I could have dreamed. I knew at the San Francisco airport, as we waited to board the Singapore Air 747 bound for Hong Kong, that we were embarking on an adventure.  The crew for the jumbo-jet drew a collective gasp from the would-be passengers as they rode the escalator down to the boarding area. We quickly figured out that these exquisitely beautiful Asian women wearing brightly colored sarongs were to be our flight attendants. My husband knew from that moment on that he was going to enjoy that trip a great deal. He thought he had died and gone to heaven. The service and food throughout the twelve hour flight was impeccable.

On our next adoption trip, post 9/11, to bring LiLi home, things were different. We flew on an American carrier with an older, tired, burnt out flight crew that just wanted to get where we were going. Service was an afterthought. The flights for this current heritage tour have been booked on Korean Air, and we have hopes that the Asian influence on the service will be, once more, memorable.

Yes, both of those adoption trips are seared into our minds, nearly every moment; but not into the minds of our little daughters. When we traveled to bring LiLi home, JaneGrace was just a few months past three. Her big memory of that trip was greeting her new big sister under the porte-cochere of our Taiyuan Hotel with a big hug and “I love you.” My big memory of JaneGrace was of our new little family standing in the airport in Shanghai on departure day and her asking me, with the most serious tone she could muster… “so… what are we going to do with LiLi?” To be honest, I was asking myself the same thing. We all boarded the flight and flew from Shanghai to Tokyo and from Tokyo to Seattle. LiLi sat directly behind me and next to my sister on the nine hour leg, where she never slept and kicked the back of my seat the entire journey.  I was nearing the crazy zone as we circled Seattle, preparing to land. LiLi finally fell asleep as the big jet hit the runway. Had I not been so exhausted, I could have drop-kicked her off of the plane.

LiLi’s memory of the adoption trip is fuzzy, although she has recalled not liking me very much. I must add the feeling was mutual. That’s not to say I didn’t try. I do recall sitting on the floor in the hotel room in front of a wall-length mirror with LiLi in front of me and my legs crossed around her. We sat there peering at our images. I had read in an adoption prep book that this was a helpful tool to promote bonding. The typical child coming out of an orphanage has not seen themselves very often in a mirror. So here I was with poor LiLi, sitting in front of this mirror, neither of us understanding the other, and wondering what to do. I would hug her and kiss her, and smile, and she just sat there, wondering what this giant white woman was going to do to her next.  She thought I smelled odd, looked odder, and could we please just get downstairs to the buffet?

The hotel buffets bring to mind another memory from our two weeks in China finalizing LiLi’s adoption. The girl ate more food than a grown man. If watching beautiful Asian flight attendants on our twelve hour international flight was heaven to my husband; LiLi’s idea of heaven was an “all you can eat” Chinese buffet in China.  Her little belly stuck out like a basketball after devouring platefuls of food. She thought this new life was going to be okay after all, and maybe I wasn’t so bad. However, her digestive system took a beating as islets of sluggish cells secreting digestive enzymes were slowly being called into action. One particular night, as we were out eating again, and doing a little sightseeing, LiLi indicated she had to go to the bathroom. We scampered into the public restrooms that were nothing more than holes in the ground,  were as nasty as you can imagine, and weren’t outfitted with toilet paper. Neither was I. The floors of the public restrooms were littered with all sorts of bodily excretions, and I had to help LiLi squat over one of the holes, take aim, and deliver. I squatted in front of her and held her hands to keep her from touching the filth beneath our feet. After what seemed like an eternity of the great exodus, I realized I had nothing with which to clean her bottom. Oh my. Frantically searching through my pocketbook revealed the only paper I could come up with:  the wrapper from a candy bar. We used it. I don’t remember if we ate the candy bar first or just tossed it down the dark hole. Of course public restrooms have no facilities for washing your hands either. Hoo boy.

So now, here we are planning to return to China to take our girls on a heritage tour of their native land. We are thrilled to return to JaneGrace’s city of birth, and tour some of the most beautiful, archeological, historical and cultural jewels of China. We will be blessed to visit with JaneGrace’s foster family and to show her the finding place. LiLi, on the other hand, has not wanted to return to China. I believe she is fearful of not being able to return home. Her memories of her life in the orphanage haunt her. Most often she doesn’t want to even talk about China. She grieves for the loss of her biological mother ,and is fearful that she is dead. Her feelings oscillate between anger and grief for her birth family. Sometimes she gets angry at Todd and me for making her wait for seven years before we “rescued” her. China represents a land of hurt, of injustice, neglect and abuse. So, call me crazy… we are taking her back. She needs to know that her country is beautiful, is filled with beautiful people, and that she was a victim of a most callous from of social injustice. I feel compelled to show her the beauties of China, to fill her mind with memories of the Great Wall, the terra cotta soldiers of Xi’an, giant pandas, and the mystique and wonder of Guilin. She needs to know that China is not to be feared, that we love her very much, and she belongs with us. She is on a journey destined by God Himself… she is a chosen child; His and ours.

854 Friends on Facebook and No One to Come to My Party

My daughter has an acquired heart condition. She was born with a hole in her heart. Not the kind, mind you, that requires a skilled cardiothoracic surgeon to repair, but the kind in which you can dump anything, including the kitchen sink, and it still won’t be filled. This type of hole is the “black hole” of emotional ans developmental wounds.

Abandoned at birth, she was found on a dirty street corner in a bustling northern city of China at one day old. She weighed in at 5 and one half pounds. To complicate matters, she had a uni-lateral cleft lip-plate. Destined to become a social pariah, a Good Samaritan took her to the city police station after a day of care in his home. From there, she was delivered to the city’s social welfare institute.

The institutionalized years took their toll. She has shared with us that in those early years she was often cold and hungry. She cried to me one day, early on, that when she went to school, her back pack was empty. She had no supplies. This deeply frustrated her. On the floor in our Colorado kitchen, I consoled her as she grieved for that empty back pack, vowing to myself that she would never want again. On another occasion, she shared with me that the kids in the orphanage did not have breakfast, and usually only had a “bun” for lunch. This was the norm, and this was her life.

She has scars on the back of each ear. For years I thought they were cigarette burns, inflicted as a type of punishment. In time, my forensic training revealed they were more consistent with human bite marks. Some scoundrel bit my daughter’s ears to the point where the tissue has been permanently scarred. Both of her feet have a permanent outward rotational position which causes her walking gait to appear glide-like, similar to an ice skater. Once, when she was calming herself down from a tantrum, I understood why. As she sat on the floor with her knees drawn to her chest, she wrapped her arms around the outside of her legs, and firmly grasped each foot from the inside. While rocking back and forth in a trancelike state, she pulled her feet outward to a ninety degree angle and held them there, rocking to and fro. Left to her own devices in the orphanage, no stimulation, little play, rampant cold and hunger, she likely rocked herself for hours as a self-soothing activity.

Back to the present: She has a tremendous need to be accepted, I believe, more than the average 16 year old girl. She longs to be normal, to feel normal, and to be a typical student. In many ways she is a typical teenager. She loves listening to music on her I-pod touch. Her favorite food is spaghetti. She changes her hairstyle almost as many times as her outfits in the morning before departing for the school bus, always asking, “Mom, does this matching?”  My response: “Yes, this matching.” She cares greatly about her outward appearances and the perception others have of her. She dreams of being able to drive someday, and wonders what will happen to her if she is not able to accomplish this goal. She has failed her learner’s permit exam three times now. Maybe it’s because she reads at a first grade level? What are we to do? Extinguish her dream? Help her to dream realistically?

LiLi has 854 friends on Facebook… yet we still were not able to come up with a list of peers to invite to her sweet sixteen birthday.  She has created a virtual world for herself where she can play out her fantasy life. She can be the most popular girl, the most intellectual, and the girl whom everyone wants to be at their party. She takes photos of herself, stunningly beautiful photos, and changes her profile picture almost as often as she changes her hairstyle. She has befriended people half a world away whose language she doesn’t speak.  LiLi has tried to “friend” so many strangers, that Facebook deactivated this privilege because of her misuse. She became a public nuisance.

Last year my husband threw a surprise 50^th birthday party for me. At this party, he mistakenly gave LiLi the job of taking photos. Anyone who knows LiLi knows how much she loves getting a camera in her hands. This particular night, she did a great job taking photos; she took over three hundred as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, 95% were of LiLi and her two friends who attended and 5% were of me and my party. It’s all about the image, pun intended. LiLi lacks a comprehensive self-identity. Seeing her own image enables her to create an identity for herself. She is putting together pieces of a puzzle. The damage of institutionalization runs deep in this child. Although she has been with us nine years, the seven years she spent in an orphanage left her scarred.  The scars may fade, but her memories of the infliction carry on.

The Other Shoe Just Dropped

There are few things like getting a phone call from your fifteen year-old daughter informing you that she is being escorted by police to our pre-determined meeting place at the Strawberry Festival on a Friday night at 10:00pm. In a state of hopeful denial, I figured that LiLi had gotten lost, had met and charmed the police, and they were accompanying her to meet us and report what a sweet girl she was. Wrong. As soon as I spied them walking up the hill toward us I knew something was askew. They were plain-clothes officers with badges worn around their necks on silver dog-tag style necklaces. The look on LiLi’s face was that of agitation and apprehension. It was her well-familiar scowl. They identified themselves as undercover narcotics agents who were patrolling the woods surrounding the festival to check for illegal activities. After nine years of raising this child, I have a hard-earned simple comprehension of the complexities of her psyche; what drives her, what motivates her, her character flaws; and with truth being stranger than fiction, what the officers described to my husband and me still rocked my socks off.

They had stumbled across fifteen year-old LiLi and an eighteen year old, male classmate in the woods that were known for alcohol consumption and drug use by the local teens. They told me that they suspected no alcohol or drug use but thought there had been sexual activity. All of a sudden the “fresh hell” from last week’s episode of the freshly caught rodent-turned-domesticated pet that LiLi had in her room seemed welcome by comparison. Could I just step back in time please? My stomach dropped to the dirt beneath me as I tried to comprehend all that the officer’s words implied .

We have grown accustomed to unsolicited melodrama while raising LiLi. We are always on guard, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I just commented this morning to my husband, that raising LiLi has caused undo wear and tear on the rest of our family. We had anticipated a moment such as this, but not at the Strawberry Festival; not from a chance encounter with a young man who is hardly more than a casual acquaintance at school. What happened to first dates, hand-holding, stealing a kiss or three on the Ferris wheel? Because of LiLi, our stress response is in gear most of the time. This particular night, my sister had accompanied our family to the festival and now had a front row seat to this new chapter in the ongoing sage of raising LiLi as a morally intact young woman.

Lili’s immediate response to the interaction between the police officers and her parents was defensive and anger-based. It also kicked her mouth into gear resulting in spewing forth a string of four letter words that served to accentuate the mess of emotion that was unfurling from her brain. LiLi is unable to self-modulate her feelings and it always provokes aberrant behavior. For example, as we were walking back to our vehicle after the initial confrontation, I had a firm grip on LiLi’s arm because she was ready to throw herself in front of the buses that were ferrying festival-goers to and from the satellite parking lots. This type of impulsive reaction is with-in normal limits for LiLi. My reaction to keep a firm grasp on her arm and not call 911 to carry her off to a psychiatric unit was a normal counter-reaction from me. We are concurrently dulled by and used to LiLi and her irrational behavior. We suffer from emotional fatigue. I wouldn’t be surprised if a psychiatric professional would declare our entire family to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; LiLi’s from her seven years in an orphanage and the rest of us from nine years living with and raising LiLi.

The outcome of that evening was not very pretty as you can imagine. After we arrived home and had LiLi sequestered, she revealed the nature of the encounter under careful questioning. The aftermath then involved agencies, institutions and questions directed toward my daughter that I hope to never hear uttered again. I try to always find humor in a situation but for the life of me I could not find humor in any of the events from that night. The events did reveal the severity of LiLi’s vulnerability and inability to make safe decisions. It has underscored the need for supervision above and beyond what we already provide. On the way to the festival, my husband had drilled LiLi with all of the rules surrounding this two hour window of privileged freedom including “do not leave the property, do not get in any cars, do not leave with a boy, do not talk to strangers…” ad nauseum. Within minutes of arriving at the festival, LiLi met up with this young man, and at his suggestion, followed him into the woods. Her desire to conform and belong supersedes any desire she may have to obey and respect her parents, or any thought for her well-being for that matter. Her desire to belong is as strong as any eighteen year old young man’s sexual drive. That is a really undesirable combination from her parents’ standpoint.

We were blessed that God’s providential hand was upon LiLi. It could have been much worse. The male classmate could have been a stranger. We might have been asked to provide dental records and DNA samples for identification. This has given us another opportunity to protect and educate LiLi about the evils and potential dangers of living in this world. We have no choice but to live in the world, and have to continue to compel LiLi to not be “of the world.” “He tends his flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” Lord, please be my eyes and ears when I am not close to my children. Please carry LiLi as if she were a little lamb, protected in your shadow and precious in your sight. Amen.