I was throwing dinner together last night when my world was unexpectedly turned upside down. Alex was playing the Wii, Claire was wandering around the backyard, Sophia was getting ready to run out the door for Girl Scouts, and Anya had just finished doing math homework with her new Russian-speaking tutor. For the first time since school began, it's a relatively good evening and I think we're going to make it through the school year! I was in the kitchen, and Anya walked by on the other side of the counter... when out of nowhere, she begins to tell me things that we didn't know about her Mama and Papa in Ukraine.
Needless to say, dinner was forgotten and I swept that little girl into the living room and up into my lap, ready to hear everything that she had to say... Did you know that if you let hot dogs boil long enough, they just disintegrate? That's what happened to the kids' dinner.
What's interesting about Anya's admissions, and her timing, is how I had prayed yesterday morning. Anya is a challenge to me - I turn away from almost every encounter with her feeling like I've failed. Twenty-four hours ago, I was praying specifically for God to help me connect with her. I was praying for God to give me more patience with her, and to guide me in my reactions to her behaviors and needs. And to be quite honest, I was praying for God to take away some of my frustration and replace it simply with more love.
God heard me. He certainly delivered. There is nothing, NOTHING, in the world like hearing about your own child's abuse and neglect to give you a new perspective. It's something I wouldn't wish on any parent, but it stirred emotions in me that I didn't even know were possible. The end result was exactly what I had been praying for earlier that day. Thank you God.
Anya shared with us things we didn't know about her family life. We had been told that she and Alex were neglected, and abandoned by their alcoholic mother. We understand now that they endured much, much more than that, at the hands of an alcoholic father that we didn't even know was in the picture. It raises so many questions for me - Is this why their mother drank, to cope? Or as a defense mechanism, because if you can't beat 'em, join 'em? Was she possibly intentional in her decisions to not bring the children home from their boarding school on weekends & holidays? Might she have even done what she did to protect them? Is this why she took the unusual step of voluntarily signing away her rights, when most parents in her situation go to court? Did she love them more than we thought she did? Or was she just like their father?
I want to ask her why she didn't let them go sooner. I want to scream at her for ever letting their father hurt them. I want to beg her to love them like I do. I want to demand to know why she didn't feel it was necessary to take care of or PROTECT them. I want to tell her how much she has hurt them and affected who they are. I wonder if she cares?
But most of all, I just want to thank her for letting them go without a fight, and thank God for watching over them until they could be united with us. I'll never get to ask their birth mother all of these questions. My new, revised prayer today is for strength for me to move past these questions and let them go, and guidance as Neil and I help them to overcome everything that has happened to them.
It's hard to believe that today is the 3-month anniversary of our "Gotcha Day." It's gone by so fast and we are so blessed that Anya already feels like she can share these painful things with us. Now that the floodgates have been opened, I'm sure they will have more to tell. I'm sure we will learn more about their past, and learn more about what they really need from us. There will be so much more to overcome and so many more challenges ahead.
We are a work in progress... but then again, what family isn't?
