Above my abilities

Parenting is pretty tough.  Parenting lots of kids is tough.  Parenting lots of kids with histories of trauma, neglect, loss, and grief is sometimes above my abilities.  That's hard to admit but very true.  I pray daily to be the parent each one of my children need.  I have one particular child who simply breaks my heart into pieces over and over again.  I don't know exactly how to help him or make things better for him.  I don't know how to make him "normal," which, sadly, is often my goal.  I see the things he does and wonder how we can ever teach him better ways.

You are told to only adopt if you can accept that things may honestly never get any better.  We accepted that.  We still hope they get better.  We do our best to bring stability, love, and healing.  That doesn't mean things will get better.

Isn't it hard to know that love is not enough?   Love from me doesn't take away all he missed during his crucial brain-development time.  Neglect in the earliest days and years causes real, actual, studied, documented, BRAIN DAMAGE.  Yikes!  Brains are amazing, changing things, but damage at crucial early development times is the hardest to overcome.  A child who has been loved and cared for fully for the first year of life and then locked in a cage for years after that can recover and thrive because of that first loving year (The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog).  It is all much more complicated when the earliest days and years were the worst.

I know we are giving him what he needs to be the best he can be.  Some days, parenting him is above my abilities.  It is my goal to entrust him as fully as I possibly can to the love of God.  I cannot be enough for him.  I cannot erase the damage or even love it away.  I have to remember how much God loves him.  I have to learn to see him through God's eyes.  He is made in the image of God even when almost every phrase out of his mouth is a lie and when he does weirder and weirder things that make me want to cringe or cry.    I cannot be enough for him, but I have to trust that God is there where I fall short.  No consequence or incentive or anger or hurt reaches him.  He is a child fully in the moment with no care for what could/should/would be.  

What would God do?  He would be in the moment with him.  He would focus on the beauty (there is so much beauty!).  He would love him as he is and accept that "normal" may never happen.  He would not bring fears for the future into today.  Time is on our side.  God is on our side.  That has to be enough.