Ok, so the blog's been all solemn lately, with serious posts.
Just so you all don't think I need an intervention or something, here's something to brighten the mood for today.
Saw this at the great site, Love that Max, and well, this video says it all and makes me smile.
And yeah, it's cheery and STILL apt for this season of lent.
Yup, lent isn't only about the tough bits, it's a season of cheer in a weird way...because we can see and smell the rain, Easter, just around the bend.
Enjoy.
Showing posts with label family life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family life. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Turn-Keys: Prayer
I've written a number of posts on turn-keys in adoption. {Enough of them that if you want to go back and check them out (and please do!) it's probably easiest to do a search on the phrase "turn key." }
Here is another one that I've been thinking about for awhile but have hesitated to post because many of you will scoff or immediately click away. It's not out of character for me and for this little blog but it's not always a popular subject. But, regardless, it's integral to me, this blog, and this post.
So, here goes:
This turn-key is about prayer.
If you are parenting a kid from hard places, or an older child new-ish to your family, or yes of course, any of your kids.....prayer is simply key. A turn-key. Perhaps THE turn-key.
But it's not nearly so pat or simple as you might presume.
I think prayer works as a super skeleton turn-key in that it unlocks that attachment in both directions. Read that again. Prayer helps the bonding and attachment and healing, in both, or all directions.
No surprise that, eh?
I prayed novenas to bring our Marta home.
I prayed novenas after Marta was home to help us grow through those difficult first months.
I prayed the rosary, every day, for over a year, to help bring Marta home - to help her heal from her TB, to help us have the faith and courage to go get her.
I prayed the rosary most days, but not all, after she got home; and am back at it now, more diligently again.
Others, friends and family, have and do pray the rosary then and now, on behalf of our girl, and me.
I don't of this praying of mine to say I'm all that. Because I'm so not, if anything it reflects how low I can go, and how great my need is. Ever.
But I put this out there to say that ALL of these prayers, and the intentional action of doing them, have carried us to this Now.
I can't even begin to imagine trying to undertake this without all that prayer, those rosaries, those novenas, the Mass.
{I should also insert my a declaration of my endless bottomless gratitude for all of you who have prayed on our behalf, you know who you are, and oh, my, thank you and please don't stop!}
But another important angle in all this is Marta's part in those prayers.
We have had to teach Marta how to pray, these prayers.
Well, we haven't had to teach her, but she wanted to be taught.
Even before she had/has the language sufficient to say the prayers in full, still, she understood immediately that this was prayer that she could do with us. It was similar enough to some of her Ethiopian Orthodox prayers that she could feel a bit of familiarity.
The Mass worked the same way for her.
Marta, from the first day we met her in Addis, has asked us to go to church, to Mass, to pray.
She asks to pray rosaries with me, with us, even though she still doesn't have all the words down yet. She asks to go to Mass, every chance she can get (Which is really every day, Mass is a daily event in the Catholic Church, thanks be to God). She doesn't get to go EVERY day, but she goes every day we can get her there, of her own volition.
Because she sees that we value this, she can hold onto one of the deep values from her life before us. She can even grow it into deeper faith and understanding, of faith, of family, of what it means to love....and that's just pure gift to us all.
More, when you pray for someone for a year, or every single day...you cannot help but attach to them, to some degree. The point of prayer is not that WE transform God's mind, rather it's that the praying transforms our hearts.
I need to transform my stony heart into God's heart, big enough to love someone, all ones, who cannot love me back, not really.
She needs to learn to open her heart to love and trust this new family, letting God himself in more and more by love.
Praying brings us to common ground.
It's no longer our big old established family and her small tiny new hurting self; it's each of us, opening our heart's to love.
Prayer is the key to that door.
It's a familiar, well worn key....but it's a golden turn-key.
Because that familiarity, that common ground of praying as a family, WITH her, FOR her but with her, has been a huge, gigantic, encompassing tool for her to find her way to us and us to her.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Race Card
She did it.
My daughter, she played the race card.
I guess I knew it was coming.
And it's not like we haven't had all the usual discussions over the years, comparing skin tones, talking about history and social aspects of racism historically and now, current events etc...
So I was kinda hoping, in my heart of hearts, to get a "bie," a pass, on this particular, barbed, targeted lob.
Oh foolish me.
Because this is part of, a huge part of, transracial adoption.
Some will argue that it shouldn't be, that we should be 'colorblind.'
To which I say, "Baloney."
You can't be colorblind if you have a multiracial family.
You shouldn't be colorblind any way; but you sure better not be if you are raising a family of many hues.
Because if you are a white mom and are raising kids who have skin color that is different: brown, nutmeg, mahogany, ebony, dark, light, pink….whatever…..then you have to deal.
It's easy to deal with when they are little and adorable and just so darn cute.
But, what's so easy to ignore is the looming fact that kids grow up, into the people they are meant to be, and if you have a brown skinned baby, that person is going to be a brown skinned teen and adult.
As they should and will.
And then you are going to, not might, not could, but you WILL get to deal with a teen that looks different than you.
Overstated, you think?
Think again.
It might seem like nothing, when that teen is still a baby or toddler and looks different than you.
It might thrillingly radical or like you are making a stand for something, that we are all God's children and such. Well, yah…….
And might not seem like a big deal since you loooong ago, as a wee one, knit this now teen into your heart and soul and very fiber of your being and she's just your kid who has a messy room and hates math but makes you laugh with the way she shuffles in to say goodnight.
But this teen is gonna be a teen with teen attitudes and fussing and pushing boundaries and all the usual teen standard issue, expected, and even on some levels necessary, drama.
But this teen, she's got a little extra ammunition.
And if you don't know it yet, you will soon enough…but teens, they like to stockpile what they can -ammunition - to lob at you when they are irritated or angry or feel like they are being unjustly asked to do, oh, anything. Like dishes or homework or chores or ________ (insert request here).
Our kids are savvy.
By which I mean, kids these days, are very savvy and tuned in to the culture at large.
I swear they have a usb port somewhere on their person that is a direct connection to the www.worldOteendom……that feeds them a constant stream of teen and/or early adult content somehow.
This is to say that, no matter how limited and guarded you think you are about keeping your kids sheltered from the pervasive cultural attitudes that float about, from the net, from tv maybe, from MTV, whatever….some of it does drift in, more than you realize.
This teen, she's actually a PREteen.
But she knows enough to know she could play the race card, she could give it a try if she's angry.
So she did.
I asked her to fold her laundry.
I know!
Horrible.
She was so angry that she stomped and shouted at me, "Just because I am black doesn't make me your slave."
"What?" I said.
"You heard me," she said, arms crossed glaring.
"Nice try," I said. And I should'a then just probably repeated, "So, fold your laundry please now," and walked away.
But I"m not that good.
So, I said, instead, "Come with me."
And we went to talk to the cool headed Dad, who never really gets his buttons pushed by the girls (the boys did that, not so much the girls…you can see the fun we have ahead with four teen girls at home now, but I digress).
I made her repeat her declaration; mumbled this time.
He gazed at her and said, "Nice try."
Then he said, calmly and well, "You are our daughter. Ever. Period. You are the daughter I walked the floors with when you were swaddled. You are the daughter we have kissed and fed and tickled and hauled to sports and schools and kissed your booboos and wiped your tears. You are the daughter who is part of the team of this family and who has responsibilities because you are old enough to have them, along with the privileges that go along with that too. You have brown skin and I have white skin and God gave you to us as our daughter, and us to you as parents."
Now, please go fold your laundry."
And so she did.
The race card.
Prepare for it.
It's gonna happen.
This won't be the last time, I'm quite sure.
Maybe it shouldn't even be, maybe I shouldn't wish for it to be the last time.
I write this post not to show that we did any good job with this fired lob.
I'm sure we could'a should'a handled it better and/or differently.
I write this post because so many families now have adopted transracially, and so many of those families still have only smalls.
It's easy to forget or dismiss the reality that you are charged with raising every child to adulthood, not just into kindergarden and we are charged with teaching them how to navigate this world as a person of color.
And it's not a nothing.
The world is not colorblind.
Not only should we as parents not be so, but we need to remember, always, that our kids are not either.
My daughter, she played the race card.
I guess I knew it was coming.
And it's not like we haven't had all the usual discussions over the years, comparing skin tones, talking about history and social aspects of racism historically and now, current events etc...
So I was kinda hoping, in my heart of hearts, to get a "bie," a pass, on this particular, barbed, targeted lob.
Oh foolish me.
Because this is part of, a huge part of, transracial adoption.
Some will argue that it shouldn't be, that we should be 'colorblind.'
To which I say, "Baloney."
You can't be colorblind if you have a multiracial family.
You shouldn't be colorblind any way; but you sure better not be if you are raising a family of many hues.
Because if you are a white mom and are raising kids who have skin color that is different: brown, nutmeg, mahogany, ebony, dark, light, pink….whatever…..then you have to deal.
It's easy to deal with when they are little and adorable and just so darn cute.
But, what's so easy to ignore is the looming fact that kids grow up, into the people they are meant to be, and if you have a brown skinned baby, that person is going to be a brown skinned teen and adult.
As they should and will.
And then you are going to, not might, not could, but you WILL get to deal with a teen that looks different than you.
Overstated, you think?
Think again.
It might seem like nothing, when that teen is still a baby or toddler and looks different than you.
It might thrillingly radical or like you are making a stand for something, that we are all God's children and such. Well, yah…….
And might not seem like a big deal since you loooong ago, as a wee one, knit this now teen into your heart and soul and very fiber of your being and she's just your kid who has a messy room and hates math but makes you laugh with the way she shuffles in to say goodnight.
But this teen is gonna be a teen with teen attitudes and fussing and pushing boundaries and all the usual teen standard issue, expected, and even on some levels necessary, drama.
But this teen, she's got a little extra ammunition.
And if you don't know it yet, you will soon enough…but teens, they like to stockpile what they can -ammunition - to lob at you when they are irritated or angry or feel like they are being unjustly asked to do, oh, anything. Like dishes or homework or chores or ________ (insert request here).
Our kids are savvy.
By which I mean, kids these days, are very savvy and tuned in to the culture at large.
I swear they have a usb port somewhere on their person that is a direct connection to the www.worldOteendom……that feeds them a constant stream of teen and/or early adult content somehow.
This is to say that, no matter how limited and guarded you think you are about keeping your kids sheltered from the pervasive cultural attitudes that float about, from the net, from tv maybe, from MTV, whatever….some of it does drift in, more than you realize.
This teen, she's actually a PREteen.
But she knows enough to know she could play the race card, she could give it a try if she's angry.
So she did.
I asked her to fold her laundry.
I know!
Horrible.
She was so angry that she stomped and shouted at me, "Just because I am black doesn't make me your slave."
"What?" I said.
"You heard me," she said, arms crossed glaring.
"Nice try," I said. And I should'a then just probably repeated, "So, fold your laundry please now," and walked away.
But I"m not that good.
So, I said, instead, "Come with me."
And we went to talk to the cool headed Dad, who never really gets his buttons pushed by the girls (the boys did that, not so much the girls…you can see the fun we have ahead with four teen girls at home now, but I digress).
I made her repeat her declaration; mumbled this time.
He gazed at her and said, "Nice try."
Then he said, calmly and well, "You are our daughter. Ever. Period. You are the daughter I walked the floors with when you were swaddled. You are the daughter we have kissed and fed and tickled and hauled to sports and schools and kissed your booboos and wiped your tears. You are the daughter who is part of the team of this family and who has responsibilities because you are old enough to have them, along with the privileges that go along with that too. You have brown skin and I have white skin and God gave you to us as our daughter, and us to you as parents."
Now, please go fold your laundry."
And so she did.
The race card.
Prepare for it.
It's gonna happen.
This won't be the last time, I'm quite sure.
Maybe it shouldn't even be, maybe I shouldn't wish for it to be the last time.
I write this post not to show that we did any good job with this fired lob.
I'm sure we could'a should'a handled it better and/or differently.
I write this post because so many families now have adopted transracially, and so many of those families still have only smalls.
It's easy to forget or dismiss the reality that you are charged with raising every child to adulthood, not just into kindergarden and we are charged with teaching them how to navigate this world as a person of color.
And it's not a nothing.
The world is not colorblind.
Not only should we as parents not be so, but we need to remember, always, that our kids are not either.
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