Wounded People

I'm thinking today about beautiful children, created in the image of God, who satan is attacking to try to fight against God. He damages their families of origin, breaks them apart from them and leaves them lose and unattached. The fear and pain these children have is immense, and not something they can work with on their own.

Oh, the grief. And it's God's grief. On the adoption webboard that I am a member of, someone posted about a disruption. It rends my heart. Because that could be my daughter there. They described a child, a gorgeous, brilliant child, who has hurts so deep she has to subtly control her family. The family has gone beyond the end of their rope, farther than they ever imagined, over what some people believe are "little" things, but for them, in the day to day, it is ripping everything that is good and healthy about their family apart.

To not be able to go on - for the family who brought this girl home, it is a pain that is deep and filled with shame and guilt. Yet there is so much fear about how what has already become worse and worse could become even more. And the enemy of our souls is using this, using this to create an opening in all their lives for more attack. And an opening in others' lives- other adopted children who may know the girl who will be going to a new home - other adoptive parents who wonder if maybe their child will never get better - other prospective adoptive families who look and see all the best intentions and devotion crumbling to dust - and the "general public" who will take their own notes and tell their story their own way.

I have to give a disclaimer here. I don't know all of the details of the story. In fact, maybe I'm not even describing it just quite right. But there is a resonance, and I'm working through it.

My children need a safe place. All children need a safe place. All adults need a safe place, and then have a duty to create havens for children. When we are removed from the safety the terror can set in and make us crazy or unable to function well because we're in an adrenaline fight-flight-freeze mode - not good for problem solving.

I have wonderful, magnificent, amazing children. One of them will tell you that those words are an act. That I'm play acting at being a good parent by saying them to impress you, and that it's all an act, that I believe the opposite of it. Her hurts and betrayals.... yes, even the hopeless choices that are better than not making a choice can be a betrayal... they are so deep that they have scarred her to the very essence of who she is. The father of lies whispers in her ear that she does not have worth - or else this person or that person would have done this or that thing to value her.

And it doesn't help things that she's a girly-girl and I'm the antithesis. My passions being different from hers are just another echo that she doesn't belong, that I don't like her. (Ugh.. I think the logical conclusion is that I should go shopping with her.... Pray for me, ok?) And because she has the fear and rejection wrapped up in the core of her being, she tests. She sets emotional land mines to see how much of her defects will make me give up on her.

And it's interesting - it's not Dad so much- which may be the difference between the girl in the beginning of this post and my daughter. She tests him but feels more secure. But there's a mother on both sides of the Atlantic for this girl, one who sent her away and one that she is waiting to send her away. Because, in her world, mothers do that to their daughters. Not always to their tiny sons, which creates incredible jealousy, but to the older girls - they aren't important. They're expendable. You hand them off to someone else to raise.

I should stop here, to protect whatever privacy is left. =) Which makes this quiet space where very few go a safe place to write this. But please, if you are here, pray for the girls who believe they have been abandoned and rejected. The ones that would rather have the sense of control by manipulating the emotional mood of the family rather than the vulnerability of being nurtured. The ones who are waiting for the next rejection.

~~Mommy~~