Artifacts to Treasure

One of our favourite expeditions is to our nearest big city, Vancouver.  We have some favourite traditions.  One is to have a meal at our favourite Chinese restaurant, Won More, by the beach near Stanley Park.  We watch the dinner cooked before our eyes by the friendly cook who has served us for over fifteen years there, and then afterwards we migrate downstairs to a great ice cream shop where we mix gummy bears and the like with our favourite ice-creams.  The adults among us get a coffee at the nearby Starbucks before we wander down to the sand to watch the sunset and a lovely walk along the seawall.

Last weekend we visited the UBC Anthropology museum before our feast.  I had not been there for years and our younger crew had never been experienced the great treasures there.  One of my daughters is of First Nations Heritage and has many relatives who are artists from Alert Bay.  We have all been to Alert Bay and so it was especially interesting for us to learn more about the great works of art from both Haida Gwaii and Alert Bay.  There are many interesting similarities and differences that we discovered for the first time.

I particularly respect and am inspired by the totem poles.  They stand tall and straight, giving signs and stories to inspire and treasure.  Today I thought afresh that there are ways that we are all like those totem poles.  We are an intertwining of different influences and stories and images that sometimes take a lifetime to fully recognize and uncover.  As I saw the beaver in relationship with the orca who was in turn held by the bear and topped by the raven, I thought of all these characters represented in my own life.

Like those poles may we too stand tall, expressing the unique intertwinings of all of who we are and helping those around us to similarly grow in their own special expression of life in all the parts of their being.  The carving style for each of us has special characteristics.  Some of the cuts in our souls are deep and definite.  Others are more superficial but still give impact of important sensations to our feel.  We are drawn to different characters and have been impacted by many experiences, both welcomed and endured that intertwine to create the special treasures of ourselves.

The Lupines are Blooming!

Colourful lupines have been delighting my soul these days.  I love their blue, pink and purple shades scattered across hillsides often in the most unlikely and ordinary places.  They are particularly special to me and my children because they remind us of a very special story written by Barbara Cooney about  Miss Rumphius, the lupine lady who wanted to make the world more beautiful and decided to scatter lupine seed as she wandered the roadsides of her home.  Miss Rumphius is one of our favourite people.  She and the lupines inspire us to also find ways to make the world just that little bit more beautiful.  For us we are beginning by noticing the things that are already beautiful as it would be quite a waste of so much beauty if we didn't take the time to notice!  We all need encouragement to recognize  those delicate flowers that so easily get squished as we walk over them and those ordinary acts of kindness that sometimes go unnoticed.  I need reminders to each day remember that this is a special day to scatter those seeds of love and care that do make the world just that little bit more beautiful.  Let's not wait for the inspiration of just the big things, but listen and respond to those quiet murmurings of ideas for the little things of beauty to recognize and to scatter today!

The Porch

We have some neighbours who spend hours sitting on their wide and spacious front porch, quietly taking in all the comings and goings of all the rest of us.  Sometimes I wonder if they count the number of times I pass by their home on my various trips to take kids to activities.  I hope maybe they do notice us all and send us their blessings in our busyness.  They have certainly become part of our daily community and I do appreciate the way they are to me the steady watching sentinels of our neighbourhood.

These days I have also been sitting quietly more often, in what I call front porch times of my heart.  After periods of significant internal rearranging it has been important for me to quietly sit and let life settle in my heart.  In days and years gone by I never sat quietly doing nothing.  I would always have a book or some craft in hand.  I would be taking a break between tasks to be done.   It has been wonderful now to slow right down and enjoy being.  I am consciously cultivating empty time in these days.  So often the bowl of my life has been so full of so much striving and activity that there is no space for receiving and listening to the surprises of God.  I want to be an open receptacle of God's love, letting go of my own plans and ego.  I imagine a beautifully shaped open bowl with a life giving blue-green glaze in my heart.  It has been emptied of all the nicknacks of life and is beautiful as is, whole and full of God's love.  There is room for others there.

In the front porch times of my heart I am quietly watching and observing, all the while praying for those who pass by and stop to chat.  These times are not limited to sitting on an actual front porch.  They are those quiet moments when I take a little longer to empty the dryer and quietly muse as I gather the warm clothes in my arms.  They are moments spent for an extra few minutes  sitting in the car after dropping the kids off somewhere.  They are intentional spaces of time savoured and gently noticed in those extra minutes in the ordinary run of life.

Even though it may look externally like I am busy with one thing or another these days, inside I am sitting quietly on the front porch of my heart with my open blue bowl cradled in my hands.  I can practice these moments all day long, praying and gently holding out God's love to all who pass by, a watching and loving sentinel in the places of my world.

The Help

One of the best things about our adoption journey is that it catapulted us over the edge of ourselves so that we needed to get the help of a psychologist.  Actually, in the end we have two psychologists on our family team to serve all our children effectively in a way that meets their unique needs.  Over the years we have come to deeply respect these two professionals.  As time has gone by, both my husband and I have had many of our own sessions and even time specifically geared toward our marriage.   These sessions have been both time consuming and costly, but have been one of the best investments in our lives.

For years I felt significant anxiety and deep unrest but always thought that was what it meant to be a "wounded healer." I functioned well for the most part and I thought that many of my jumbled feelings were part of the human condition.  I never thought that I would be able to know deep peace and harmony of my mind, heart, body and soul.  One of the things about being a human being is that it really is hard to know what could be different in our hearts if we have never known peace.  After knowing one psychologist for several years through our children, one day I took a scary leap to allow myself to share some of my own personal angst with her.  She looked at me confidently and told me that I really did not have to live with such unrest and that she could help me!  I will never forget that moment.  I did not know then that I was embarking on one of the most life-changing journeys of my life.

Now,  just over a year later,  I am a changed person inside.  I do know peace and harmony especially between my mind and heart that I never thought would be possible.  I could not have come to this place by myself.  I have read widely and tried many ways to bring unity of spirit on my own.  I thought that I should be able to rest in God and have Him bring healing directly.  I often have been reminded of the story about the man who arrived in heaven and asked God why He had not saved him from his capsized ship.  God replied that He had tried.  He had sent a helicopter, a life raft and even another boat, but each time the man had held out for God to save him directly.  It has been the same for me.   We are relational beings and God uses others in our lives to help bring healing.  For me it has taken commitment, cost and quite a bit of challenging vulnerability to allow another to help me.  I must say, I have brought my concerns to other therapists in the past.  Not everyone is skilled in the same areas.  Sometimes it takes time and perseverance to find a therapist who is a good fit.  For me it has been an amazing and life-giving miracle to have met this psychologist and to know significant healing.

I still understand myself to be a wounded healer.  There will always be places of wound and pain in us all.  That does not mean that we are to ignore our own wounds.  Just like a wound of the flesh, we must often get medical help to assist in the healing.  Some wounds do heal over time by themselves.  Others need attention and help along the way.  Sometimes it is hard to know whether our internal wounds could benefit from intervention from a person skilled in the ways of the heart and mind.  If in doubt, take the risk to have someone you respect help you determine if there might be relief that they can help facilitate in your heart.  It might take a few tries with different therapists to find someone that you are able to trust and respect and who has the skills to help you.  Take good care of all the parts of your precious self.  The journey of this last year for me is one that has made all the difference for me and for my family and yet I know this process would have been easy to sidestep or ignore.  I hope I will continue to always move forward in life with vulnerability and hope, allowing others to help me as they are able!

The Scream

God encourages us to come to Him as we are.  I have known times in my life when I can deeply relate to Edvard Munch's despair in "The Scream."    It is comforting to me to have the depths of emotional pain expressed in a work of art.  Often our lives are segmented with the more despairing areas cut off and carefully hidden.  It is when these emotions are hidden that they can do the most damage both to us and to others.  I am thankful for those who have artistically given expression to the depth of human emotion.  Mental illness, too, is very much part of a spectrum of emotion that is so dangerously ignored and stigmatized.

In our selves and our children do not be afraid of the expression of despair and pain.  Often we recoil in fear in their expression, preferring more comfortable places.  Seek appropriate places to express those extremes of emotion.  Allow them expression.  Bring them to God.  The Bible is full of real and uncomfortable emotion expressed.  Rage, anger, despair, doubt and hopelessness are as much a part of the human condition created by God as are love, hope and joy.  With Munch I can relate to the despair that is also part of love.

Adoption brings together depth of emotion and pain in both ourselves and our children.  Most of our children can also relate to this person at the depths of self.  Sometimes it is only in the safety of family that these deeply buried feelings can begin to surface and show themselves.  I often want to only acknowledge and affirm the gentle love and smooth emotions in life.  I am disturbed and embarrassed by those raw emotions expressed by both myself and my children and quickly try to change them and cover them over to appear well regulated and happily perfect.  Certainly self regulation is a desirable goal.   May we still gently accept ourselves and others in the midst of those depths of emotion and raw feelings.  Allowing them, may they be catalysts to growth and deeper places of peace in ourselves as human beings.  Do not be afraid.  Come as you are.

That Primal Wound

Rarely a week goes by that I am not reminded in one way or another that our children by adoption carry a deep and most primal wound from their separation from their birth mother and families.  It is naive for us adoptive parents to discount the power of that event to shape their lives deeply.  The emotions that so deeply impact our children and us cannot be circumvented.  I am reminded of the children's book "Going on a Bear Hunt."  On that hunt the family could not go around the obstacles or over them or under them.  Our children cannot go around those deep emotions in their own lives.  Of course the impact of the wound is different for everyone, but there is a sense that at some time for our children they must wade deeply right through the pain of feelings of that primal wound.  For my children, the pain and the going through has different stages and depths through their life journeys so far.  We talk about the going through those feelings and I try to acknowledge and support them through the dark valleys of these times.

For each of my children there have been times when the pain of the primal wound is reflected in a primal run or escape.  Running away has had a deeper reality for my children by adoption than other kids.  I think of early times in the adoption process when a couple of my children would run ahead as fast as they could along a beach or on a family walk.  Several have gone through times of running away, not so much from our family, but from the pain held so deeply within their own souls and bodies.  There is some relief from the physical run but ultimately the source of the pain must be acknowledged and shared, sometimes often through the stages of life.  The pain cannot be escaped or discounted.  Our love and care as adoptive parents cannot take it away or cover it over.  Do not take it personally, and try to recognize its power and intensity for what it is.  The often subtle ways the emotional pain is expressed can be surprising to both our children and us.  We have needed wise help from those not so intimately bound with the pain to help recognize and guide us all through some of the emotional tsunami that has come from that deep quake in our children's souls.  There has been and will continue to be collateral damage and pain from those tsunamis.

I am learning to recognize some of the signs of that primal wound, but I am still often blindsided with my children by the raw power of emotional pain and the myriad ways it can be expressed.  Though often I am the target of that pain, together we stand remembering together the reality that the lonely path forward cannot be gone around, or over or under.  Together we must walk forward through the reality of that primal wound step by step, often feeling like we may be overtaken by its power or murky depths.  Take comfort that others are also going through this dangerous and risky journey.  The words of the Psalms often give us deep comfort.

Psalm 46 proclaims that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.  God is within her, she will not fall;  God will help her at break of day.  Be still and know that I am God:  The Lord Almighty is with us.

I pray that God might be that strength and wisdom for the deep foundational places of desolation and pain in our children and us who walk this road with them.  Actively seek and  embrace the human help that is available and pray for God's guidance to find the right people to help lead you.   We have needed the support and guidance of a wise psychologist who has been God's earthly hands to help us navigate through these powerful depths even for our own protection.  Be still.  Walk forward right through the pain knowing that it is God who may not make our paths straight, but never stops walking on those challenging paths right along with us.

Good Enough

A big part of my letting going does not involve my children.  Increasingly I want to let go of the tight rein of perfectionism in my own life.  Not only am I often powerless over my children and the circumstances of my life, but that powerlessness starts with me!  Mother's Day brings up for me the many areas that I have not lived up to my own expectations of the kind of mother I would like to be, gentle and encouraging, with just the right balance of love and effective discipling.  Instead often my home is somewhat of a jumbled mess with tempers flaring and voices raised.  Chaos overtakes us all.  The gentle love that I so desire to permeate our home seems unreachable.

I am learning to accept and embrace the imperfections, gently loving my own self in the mess and standing firm in God's love and deep forgiveness for me.  I think that is the beginning to being able to fully gently embrace my family and friends around me.  Being a mother is a daunting task.  The stakes are high.  The expectations sometimes unreachable.   I pray I will grow and improve and that my desire at the heart of the matter will be communicated and expressed to my children almost in spite of me.  I will seek help and care from others and rest in doing the best I can, forgiving myself as I forgive my children and as we have all been forgiven.

Again, I am learning so much from my friends caught in the jaws of addictions.  Release.  Accept.  Turn to God.  Wait and receive His strength and love to embrace a new day.  One faltering step at a time.  Allow God to fill me that I might be His vessel where the life giving water leaks from those very cracks that give me struggle.

Welcome the chaos.  Those glaciers bearing down on the land brought their own beauty and interesting land formations.  Accept those hard places in us all as places of growth and change that bring their own gentle love.  Ask for the gift of God's love to shine through all the places of incomplete chaos and brokenness in us all. Be thankful for the good enough and grow in strength to go beyond the broken.  For those places that I have failed, forgive me God.  I am truly sorry.  I love you.  I love my children and those in my world.  May I know and communicate your love and grace from deep within my heart in the new start of now.

Letting Go

Our older children, home for a time this month, are now beginning to head off again on their summer adventures.  Again we go through a time of reshuffling and adjustment.  I am always amazed at how each person contributes to the entire family dynamic.  Though sometimes we all struggle with finding our unique place in the family and especially in larger families can feel like we get "lost in the shuffle," the reality is that each person brings their unique self to the family, significantly creating the larger whole.  We often feel it especially when someone leaves or when someone has dramatic behaviours, both positive and negative, but I am so thankful for the daily ordinary dynamic of each person in our home.  This evening I let go of one of our sons, missing him but excited too for this next step in his life.

A big part of my own journey these days is in the letting go!  That letting go happens on many levels for me.   There is the letting go of older children.  Not only are they physically out of the home more these days, but my active parenting days for them now have a very different shape, even when I wonder if they are ready for the change!   I trust that they will continue to be cared for and lead on even when I am not a primary person in their daily lives.  On an even more challenging level, I  am growing in releasing myself from some of the behaviours of my younger children too.  We get help, do our best as parents, and then on many levels have to let go of the results.  Many of our children have many many influences that contribute to their lives and behaviours.  We continue to support and love, but often I need to consciously open my hands and release them.  I am not helping either them or me if I cannot let go of them and some of the expectations that I have for them in the right ways.

I have found the Twelve Step Program so helpful in the practical steps of letting go.  Over and over each day I affirm that really so much in my life and in the lives of all my children is way beyond my ability to control or heal.  In many areas I really am powerless.  I do believe that ultimately God loves each of us more than I can even begin to understand.   He wants to lovingly restore us all to fullness of life and health!   I pray for His love, care, guiding and healing touch in the lives of us all.  I especially need help to know how to walk this fine line between being involved and letting go.  Even the letting go is hard to do by myself.  Each step of the way I pray for the ability to release myself into God's care, praying for His help and wisdom.  Love.  Pray.  Let go!

Tonight, know that I love you, my son.  Praying for you, I send you on your way to a great summer adventure ahead!

Leaning In

We all have choices to make about the way we live our lives.  What may seem to reflect success in life decisions for one person may not be success for another.  I have very decisively made decisions that I feel have brought success even when it really doesn't look like any kind of success on the outside.  One of those decisions that I made early on was to aim for an occupation that would allow a lot of time and energy to also be a mother.  I chose to shoot high for the goal of being an involved and relaxed mother who would be the kind of person that my children could lean in to.  I wanted to be available and have lots of time and energy for my primary role as the mother of my children.

As I have enjoyed my occupation over the years some people have asked why I have not progressed or moved to more prestigious positions.  I actually quit one job where I was being pressured to take on more responsibility as a department manager.  At one point in my career I did get my Master's Degree but have not specifically formally used that degree as the work that it brought involved a lot of evenings and weekends that did not facilitate my primary job as a Mother.  I have not aimed low in my career choices as a default because I am a woman.  I have aimed high to have an impact in the lives of my children as their mother.  For me, that is success.  Others have often made me carefully examine my choices.  I have had periods of deep angst and question about the decisions I have made.

Today I took a holiday day from my work in order to watch my two girls give their speeches at school. Tomorrow I am driving another son to catch a ferry and head off to his summer job.
Many days I wonder if I have any impact in any area of my life, work or at home.  Most days we just don't know and maybe that is just as well.

What I do know is that I am glad that my own mother was available for me to lean in to.  I never questioned that I was more important than any job or other role for her.  I hope my children too will rest in the security of leaning in.  May I be there for them.  I certainly will not be perfect especially as that mother, but just the trying will be success enough for me.

Go for success as both men and women in this life we are given!  Just be sure not to limit success defined as only for those top corporate leaders, physicians, lawyers or work leaders.  If you decide to have children, please rank them as central in your life mission.  Give them time and space to lean in too.

Yellow Poppies

My garden is bursting with abundance in these warm days.  Most dramatic are the delicate and gentle yellow poppies, emerging in plenty from places all over the garden.  I cannot remember ever seeding these delightful gems, but each year their presence is increasingly dramatic.  They thrive even from the most barren cracks in the cement and along scarce bits of soil beside hedges, bringing colour and light.  They are ever changing as the days go by.  Tender drops of water grace their petals like diamonds in the early mornings and by evening the sun shines delicately through the incandescent yellow.

Sometimes the good things in our life like love and joy and peace multiplying are not as dramatic or obvious as my ever-spreading yellow poppies in springtime.  They are real nevertheless and they grow and spread all year long.  Watch for their growth among the weeds and cracked cement of our lives and delight in them.  Make sure they do not get pulled out with the weeds.  Recognize their distinctive shape and let them multiply.   Like the poppies they come announced and spread freely.  May they bring encouragement and hope in our lives today.