The Love Train

I follow a few blogs. (Surprising, I know!) Today, I came across a beautiful idea to help children cope when they're having difficulty handling being separated from someone they love. The context was helping children cope when a parent can't be with them, but it could be applied to any separation. The blog is written by Lisa Qualls - you can read the entire post here. She writes about how difficult it can be for children from hard places to believe that their parents' love is constant, that even though they're apart, they are still loved. She shares a strategy called "the magical cord of love" which reminded me of "The Kissing Hand"!

We're expecting a lot of snow tonight, and Brian's going to leave really early for work tomorrow. It's been quite a few months since our early riser has slept through his daddy's departure - and we're praying he sleeps through it tomorrow. In light of everything we've dealt with in this department, we thought we'd forewarn the guy. So, we explained the circumstances and gave him something to look forward to (namely, that he'll get to see Brian at church). Inspired by Lisa's blog, we talked about the fact that we always love him, even when we're not together. I also encouraged him to draw a picture of him and Brian, joined with a rope of love - something tangible to help him remember. He drew a picture of the 2 of them on a train, and then he asked me to draw a heart in the center - he practiced a few hearts but couldn't get it quite right!

Notice how he and Brian are holding hands! So sweet. (Apparently Logan's the driver.) Here's hoping the message starts to sink in. It's such an important message, too. I so desperately want him to have the security of knowing that we love him no matter what. I'm convinced that kids can face a LOT in life if they have an unshakeable conviction that they are loved, that they are precious, and that the love we have for them is but a shadow of the great love of our Heavenly Father.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow - not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below - indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~Romans 8:38,39 NLT

A difficult day

Yesterday was tough. It felt like I was doing battle on multiple fronts - first there was the kid who refused/is unable to keep his seat belt snug. (Public transit seems like a viable option right now.) And then there were the two trouble-makers who conspired to empty a bottle of lotion, smeared it all over themselves and a bathtub, and left a few globs on the carpet, just for good measure. (Did I mention that I discovered the lotion disaster just as I was getting ready to leave to pick up my oldest from school?! I still haven't cleaned out the tub.) The after school/before supper stretch remained bumpy. Bumpy actually doesn't quite describe it - it was more like I was living in a game of Minesweeper, and I kept landing on mines and having to start all over. Thankfully my supper plans consisted of dumping a couple cans of mushroom soup on some chicken and sticking it in the oven, to be served over minute rice. I know, I know, I'm quite the gourmet cook!

As I reflected on my day after the kids were in bed, I realized that there were a number of small (yet huge) victories. Two stand out - first of all, I managed to stay fairly calm while dealing with the lotion incident. This was a tricky one to navigate. Had I vented my anger, one of the culprits would have ended up in his room, curled up in bed. I was able to express my frustration and disappointment without triggering a monster pout or causing them to lash out at me in self-defense. And we made it to school just a few minutes late!

The other victory came as I was trying to halt the downward spiral we found ourselves on after picking up Kolbie from school. I was unsuccessfully avoiding landmines, and wondering how I was going to get that chicken in the oven without facing more overturned toy bins and laundry baskets (or worse, injuries to siblings). At that moment I realized there was an internal battle waging. I knew what I should do - invite him in to the kitchen to open cans for me and help me get supper ready. But this was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to punish him by removing anything that could possibly be enjoyable to him. I wanted him to feel the strength of my disapproval - as if that would somehow get us back on track. I fought with myself - and did what I knew I should do. And we enjoyed a few minutes of peace and connectedness in the midst of an otherwise chaotic mess of an afternoon. I still ended up asking Brian to come home a few minutes early (which he did) and we still ended up dealing with a sizeable meltdown before supper. But we were able to restore our connection, and by the time we tucked the kids in to bed, we were all at peace with each other.

Isn't it funny, though, how so much of our kids' behaviour depends on how we behave? Who knew?! I certainly didn't expect to have to un-learn so much of what I thought I knew, and learn so much new stuff. I definitely wasn't expecting to have to fight my instincts - I figured nurturing my children and helping them grow to be secure beings capable of navigating the world would come a bit more naturally. I did not expect to feel like a failure on such a regular basis. Yet as I look back on days like yesterday, I am so grateful. I'm grateful that it hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be - how else would I learn humility and be able to extend grace to others? I'm grateful for answered prayer - how often have I prayed for patience and self-control and the ability to love others the way God loves me? I was kind of hoping those traits were available in the form of a speedy download, but I'm realizing they grow in me as I depend on God and practice, practice, practice. I'm grateful for the beauty emerging from the mess.

Difficult days are about so much more than survival. They are opportunities to grow and thrive and learn and love. After all, love that disappears on the hard days isn't worth as much on the good days.

Getting Back on Track

Well, that was unexpected. Looking back, it makes perfect sense, but it's taken me a couple weeks to wrap my head around exactly what's been happening. Our summer was going along swimmingly - we've had amazing weather, and the kids are at an age where we can be out and about for longer periods of time. It wasn't exactly monorail smooth, more like a rickety old steam engine on dilapidated tracks, but we were moving forward. Every once in a while we'd back up a ways, repair a stretch of track, and continue on. Then, a few weeks ago, we derailed. Completely came off the tracks. Behaviours that were rare became common again. I felt like I had to be super-vigilant all the time because I never knew when peaceful playing would turn into war. The level of disrespect and defiance sky-rocketed. Any little disappointment could send our oldest into a tailspin, and he was starting to take the whole house with him.

I knew that I should be handling it with compassion and sensitivity, but I was mad. I was ticked off that we were dealing with all this junk again after all the hard work we had done to move past it. I felt entitled to more, and as long as my focus remained on myself, we remained off track.

Exhausted and desperate, I finally confessed to Brian exactly how I was feeling. As I talked it out with him, I realized just how disconnected Kolbie and I had become. And I remembered an important piece of information from our Empowered to Connect training: positive stress can load in our children's systems in the same way as negative stress. In other words, Kolbie's extreme excitement about our houseboat holiday and the beginning of kindergarten could be turning off the rational, higher-level regions of the brain and sending him straight to the primitive, "fight, flight, or freeze" regions of the brain. Everything began to make sense. He'd been operating in survival mode, and I'd compounded the problem by responding with anger and impatience.

Once we had a diagnosis (or at least a plausible working theory!) I knew what I needed to do. I needed to shift my focus and give my son what he needed, not what I thought he deserved. He needed a "high structure, high nurture" environment. I had to set my anger and self-pity aside (not easy) and look for opportunities to connect - little chunks of time to read a book, play some lego, build a few train tracks. I started a day plan on a little whiteboard and gave him a heads-up every morning so he knew what to expect. I went back to navigating transitions with his needs in mind, and remembering to communicate my expectations clearly in advance. And, slowly but surely, we've seen little improvements. In both of us.

Clouds in the Forecast

A couple of crazy storms moved through Calgary yesterday. There's something about a surprise summer storm, complete with wind, rain, hail, lightning, and a 12 degree drop in temperature, that reminds me of how quickly and dramatically my 3-year-old's mood can change. She can go from happy to miserable in milliseconds, and the resulting destruction might make you think a tornado had touched down!

I've been following Annie McClellan's blog posts on Tapestry's website this summer, and I really appreciate the insights I've gotten into my children's brains. In "Name It To Tame It", we are reminded that a child's feelings are often overwhelming and confusing for them, and that by teaching them how to put into words what they are feeling they can learn to manage intense emotional states much more successfully. In "Let the Clouds of Emotion Roll By", we learn that children may need help recognizing that emotional states come and go, and that we can do this by acknowledging their current feelings while reminding them of a time when they felt differently.

I love the idea of acknowledging a child's emotional reality. It seems so respectful, and honouring of them as people. It's how I want to be treated when I'm having an irrational overreaction to something. And I think it's important to treat our children this way as well. As with most good parenting ideas, though, it's easier said than done. The last thing I want to do when dealing with a meltdown is get down on one knee and communicate to my child that I get where they're coming from. Especially if we're in the grocery store! I'd much prefer to tell them to snap out of it, get over it, and generally move on. Sometimes I feel like laughing at how ridiculous they're being. What I'm trying to learn to do, though, is teach them to communicate respectfully, even when they're really upset. And the only way they're going to be able to do that is if I can show them how.

As I was thinking about emotions and how God invites us to share all of ourselves with Him, I was reminded of the conversation between God and Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3 and 4. God wants Moses to go back to Egypt and lead the Israelites to freedom, but Moses is reluctant. He is afraid that he'll be rejected and unsuccessful, and he tries to convince God that he's not the one for the job. God goes to great lengths to assure Moses that he'll be given everything he needs, that the plan will work, and that God is good, strong, and trustworthy. He does not dismiss Moses's fears, and He certainly doesn't ridicule them. I like that. A lot. I like that we can share our fears with our Father and He will not brush our fears aside. Even though our fears (or whatever emotional state is overtaking us in that moment) must seem ridiculous to Him, He invites us to trust and assures us that He will be with us (Exodus 4:12).

Much of my parenting journey has involved learning about God's great love for me, and then striving to show that love to my children. One way I can do that is by seeking to understand how they're feeling, which will teach them to trust me with their feelings, which will enable us to move forward together.

The Early Riser

It's 5 am. I hear the familiar footfall - feet frantic to find out if Dad's still home.

"Mom!" (It's funny - I always called my mom first, too.)
"Yes, Kolbie?"
"Is Dad still home?"
"Yes."
"Oh, good." And his feet carry him back to bed. He'll get up every 15 minutes or so, just to make sure he hasn't missed Brian's departure for work. But, for the most part, he'll be quiet and everyone except me continues sleeping.

I am often annoyed by this interchange. Nine hours of sleep is not quite enough for a growing 5-year-old boy who frequently has difficulty controlling his impulses when he's angry. I have to remind myself of a couple things, though. First of all, we've come a long way. This is the same boy who used to wake up in the middle of the night and stay awake for a couple hours, doing his best to wake the entire household. When it first started happening, we didn't know everything we know now, and we didn't respond with compassion. Once we realized that anxiety might be driving his sleeplessness, we simply made a bed for him on our bedroom floor and calmly welcomed him into our room when he woke up too soon. It took some time, but we finally got him sleeping through the night again. We experience little setbacks now and then. Currently, he seems to be reacting to Brian's summer hours. In the past two months he has slept through Brian's 6 am departure a handful of times, and he seems determined not to let it happen again.

The other thing I have to remind myself of is that it's a deep-seated fear that is bullying him into waking up so early every morning. It's not really his fault. He seems to have an extremely strong sensitivity to loss and separations. The stuff we've learned since adopting leads us to believe that it is the loss of his first family that impacted him so deeply. He was 13 months old when he came to live with us, and already securely attached to his foster family. The loss of his family would have registered as a significant trauma in his young brain. You'd think that the fact that he can't remember any of this would make it easier to get over. I wonder if the opposite is true: his lack of conscious memory of this event actually makes it more difficult for him to recover.

In Anatomy of the Soul, Curt Thomson describes memory as being composed of 2 kinds: explicit and implicit. Explicit memory consists of facts and experiences - stuff we are consciously aware of knowing. Our brains start forming and storing explicit memories between the ages of 18 and 24 months. (p. 73) Implicit memory is the earliest form of memory in the brain. Thomson asserts that it is present at birth, and may begin to develop as early as the third trimester of pregnancy. It is largely unconscious, and involves the more primitively developed regions of the brain. (p. 67) Implicit memory is at work every time we walk across a room - we don't usually consciously pay attention to the act of walking, and most of us have no memory of learning how to walk. Implicit memory can also come in the "form of perceptions, behaviors, emotions, and bodily experiences." (p. 68) This has enormous implications for children who experience loss/trauma before their brains are capable of storing explicit memories. The memories that are stored are unconscious, and may be highly emotional and stored in or close to the regions of the brain largely responsible for survival.

For Kolbie, this means that waking up in time to see Brian before he leaves for work may feel like a matter of life and death. He may genuinely (and unconsciously) believe that his survival depends on waking up early enough. Despite the fact that he has experienced Brian coming home at the end of the work day at least a thousand times since his brain became capable of storing explicit memory, it's not enough to override his more primitive, implicit memory of losing his parents. As his parents now, it is our job to figure out how we can help him heal. I've been learning a lot from Annie McLellan's blog posts on Tapestry's website. She's been writing about what she's been learning from her reading of The Whole-Brain Child by Siegel and Bryson. Our brains were created with incredible resiliency and potential for healing, and I'm so grateful that we have the privilege of being the agents of that healing for our children. We will continue to do our best to respond with sensitivity and compassion when Kolbie wakes up ridiculously early. We will also continue to take advantage of opportunities to learn how we can help him recover from his early losses. Here's hoping his healing includes the ability to sleep in once in a while!!

(Here's a little cuteness from WAAAY back when he was 2!)

Roy

I met a man named Roy one Saturday. Had it been any other Saturday, our meeting would not have impacted me as much as it has. But it happened that Saturday. The day I seriously started praying that God would show me how to live with my eyes wide open.

I should back up a bit. We (Brian and I) have felt, well, kind of restless for the last while. Like there's more to life than what we've been living. We've felt a tension, an uneasiness, a sense that something needed to change. We've been increasingly, uncomfortably aware of just how easy our life is compared to the difficulties so many face. It's been kind of like the freezing wearing off after dental surgery: a throbbing ache, a growing awareness of pain that hasn't stopped us from going about our daily life - it's just thrown us off a little.

Then I started reading Jen Hatmaker's stuff (7 and Interrupted), and finished Mercy Triumphs, Beth Moore's study on the book of James. The discomfort grew. I was becoming more and more convicted that I'd been somehow missing the point of how I was supposed to be living. That too much of my time was spent perpetuating my family's comfortable lifestyle, and not enough time was spent in using our abundance to help those who really needed it.

So, after I finished reading Interrupted, I felt that I needed to get serious about praying for clarity and direction from God. If He was truly leading me to make significant changes, then I wanted to know what the next step would be. I decided I'd stay off facebook for a couple days (sort of a fast) and every time I felt the urge to check it, I'd pray instead. I started praying that my eyes would be open to opportunities right in front of me. I figured I probably walk past hurting, vulnerable people every day, so I just prayed that I would be able to see the needs around me and have the courage to step in and meet those needs. After all, James 4:17 informs us that "if you know the right thing to do and don't do it, that, for you, is evil."

Enter Roy. I was at Chinook, having coffee with a friend, when another friend (one I haven't seen in years) approached our table with her mom and an older gentleman. She introduced us to Roy and explained that he had lost his wallet and his keys, and that he was rather distressed about it. She was glad we were there because he needed a place to sit while she went to try and find someone who could help. I was astounded that God had worked this quickly. (My actual thoughts went something like, "Seriously, God?! I'm half a day into my fast and you've already placed a vulnerable person in need in my path?! Wow.") What happened next revealed to me just how inexperienced and ill-prepared I am for all this.

As Kate walked away to find someone, the inner debate started. I felt a strong desire to do something to help. After all, it couldn't be mere coincidence that Roy was sitting at our table! But isn't that the kind of thing security is supposed to look after? It's their job, I reasoned. Wait a minute, isn't that the kind of thinking that's gotten us to this place of keeping ourselves distanced and insulated from suffering in our world?! Smarten up, Colleen. So we conversed (awkwardly) with Roy. Kate returned, unsuccessful, and attempted to get a phone number from Roy. She called it - no answer. When security staff came, they got an address from him. Immediately, I thought that maybe I should give him a ride home. But what if he's just pretending to be helpless? What if I'd be putting myself in danger? And what if the address he gave us is incorrect? I'd be stuck with him for who knows how long. We soon discovered that he still had his bus tickets, so he would be able to get home. I felt instant relief. The security personnel had left a message at the phone number Roy had given, and they assured him they'd check on him again in an hour. We made sure that he had something to eat and drink, and went on our way.

Driving home, I continued to wonder what else I could have done. Did I do enough? Should I have offered him a ride home? What would have been some way to help?? Then it hit me - I could have waited with him. If someone I knew and cared about was alone and vulnerable, I would have waited. But waiting would have made us late for church, I argued. This next thought slammed into my brain with the force and speed of a wrecking ball: Is it more important to sit in church, or be the church? Ouch.

I have two main thoughts after meeting Roy. First, I'm going to have to change the way I see and think about the world. Other people's pain and discomfort are not necessarily someone else's responsibility. There may be something I can do to help. At the very least, I can dignify the suffering of others by being aware of their existence. Second, I'm not nearly as smart as I thought I was. I know very little about how to actually live moment by moment with eyes and heart wide open. I'm going to have to approach this with a little humility and take advantage of opportunities to practice being the kind of Christ-follower I believe I'm called to be. It's time to be the church.

Staying hydrated

Wow, has it ever been hot the past few days! As tempers flared at our house this afternoon, I started thinking about how much harder I have to work to keep my cool when it's hot outside. As voices rose and toys flew, I hurried to pour some iced tea for everyone, and I wondered - hydration must be just as important emotionally and spiritually as it is physically. It was a good reminder. Have I been watering my soul? Have I been nourishing the part of me that can dry up at least as quickly as the potted flowers on my deck?

 I've been watering these every day, and they still look like they're taking a bit of a beating from the sun. I'm not much of a gardener though, so be gracious with the analogy!! If I'm not tending to my own emotional and spiritual needs, then I'm likely to dry up a little. And if I'm dehydrated, the people who live with me are likely to feel the effects of my parched spirit.

Jesus said, ..."Anyone who drinks the water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life."
~John 4:13, 14 MSG

Sounds good.