LOTS has happened since I wrote my last post. We traveled back to Asia, packed up our apartment, and moved to a new city. And now that most of the boxes are unpacked and life-as-we'll-know-it has begun (we've been here now for a month), I've had time to look back on our last five months since getting Isabelle.
First off, the Lord led us to an absolutely insane first five months after adoption–from living out of suitcases for three months, to major surgery, to international travel, to moving cities. If someone else told me that they were going to do these things in the first five months of having their adopted child, I'd think that they should brush up on their decision making skills!
Anyhow, it was our life, and it was His will. And it has been one of the hardest periods of our lives. Yet the Lord has given me Aha moments recently.
One of them happened in the middle of the night, actually. Isabelle had come to our room and tried to climb into bed with us. Desiring a decent night's sleep after weeks of both kids crawling into bed with us, I encouraged her to go back to bed (where Connor was still sleeping). She reluctantly left our room. When Clint checked in on her a few minutes later, he found her at one end of the couch, sitting at the feet of a single guy friend who had slept on our couch that night, whom she'd met a few hours prior.
Frankly, I wanted to get mad at her. After the indiscriminate affection for strangers all summer long (and the, "I love you," she casually tossed to a friend of ours she'd met a day before), I was dumbstruck that she'd climbed into bed with a veritable stranger. It was as though she was saying, "You won't give me what I want? Well, this other guy will do."
Then it hit me. Under the irritation and frustration, I was hurt. Because, after four months of kissing, hugging, feeding, comforting, and all the sacrificing that parenting takes, she was willing to go to someone else for something that's reserved for special relationships. One doesn't crawl into bed with just anybody, you know?
There's beauty in the parent-child relationship, a special attachment that's built over time and care. By the time Connor could walk, talk, and make decisions about who he wanted to seek, there was never a doubt in anyone's mind that he was ours. Sure, he'd talk to others, play with others, laugh with others, but he knew who mommy and daddy were and that the three of us were together. We knew that he liked us best! And it's that awesome reciprocation that makes all the sacrifice worth it. So, after four months of pain, toil, and mothering, deep down inside, I desired from Isabelle an I-know-you're-my-mom-and-no-one-else-will-do type of reciprocation. And it made me sad that she wasn't there yet.
It was an epiphany that I needed. Before, it had just flat out irked me that she blew kisses to strangers. Everyone else thinks it's adorable, so why am I so bothered by it? Now it makes so much sense, when I see that I was jealous for her affection. I'd never quite understood it in the Bible when it talks of God being jealous for His people. Now it's so clear that it's not from ego but from a desire to have a special relationship with His children.
