Abandonment Pain

These past couple of weeks, I have been a wreck thinking about abandonment pain and the feelings of being unlovable that go along with it. As Angel at the Voice of Adventure puts it, I have been "overwhelmed by ugly". I feel overwhelmed and helpless when I think about the pain my little ones still have yet to go through. When parents leave because of death, divorce, or just their own problems, at one time or another, children feel abandoned. No amount of being wanted by another parent or even God can stop that feeling from welling up every now and again, a feeling of being unlovable. We can even tell ourselves that our parent leaving was really for the best. And it can be true. Still the pain, the hurt is real.

There are times when you want to cry so hard, you can't and as Christine at Welcome to My Brain writes, "Healing from trauma takes time, even for the parents." It's just plain hard. It's hard for our little ones who will have to go through this many times as they grow and mature emotionally from one stage to the next. And it's hard for parents who also have to go there with our children.

I'm trying to learn from Apryl as she deals with adoption angst. I know that the questions her daughters are asking will some day be asked of me. I'm glad for this. I want to be there for my little ones and help them grow up healthy. I just don't relish the uncertainty and the helplessness I will feel, not to mention reliving some of my own baggage. I pray that God will show me how to help heal their hearts as they grieve their losses.

Along with the abundant joys, there are so many losses, both good (poverty, malnutrition) and bad, in adoption. Be Bold Jen wrote a wonderful devotional about saying goodbye and following God's lead. Children who are adopted needed to say goodbye to their birth parents whatever the reason. Thankfully, like for Abram, God had a plan for my children and brought them into a family. Involuntarily, they were following God's lead and as they grow, they will hopefully own that decision. While it is by no means ideal, it is for the best. I am once again reminded of the song "Everything to Me" by Mark Schultz, who through the song thanked his birth mother for giving him life. And then of this man's story of his own adoption and adopting his child. He too thanks his birth mother for giving him life and his adoptive parents for their love.

Bethany Christian Services - A Story of Hope from Catalyst on Vimeo.

I began thinking about this anew after reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. The main character, Lily, is a teenage girl whose mother was killed when she was just a tot. She runs away and finds home with three sisters. Lily wasn't an orphan, but she was dealing with the hard fact of her mother's abandonment and death.  Lily expresses it this way on page 278, "I wished she’d been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don’t give up their children."

One of the sisters, August, tries to console Lily and lead her to forgiveness.
“The whole problem with people is [t]hey know what matters, but they don’t choose it. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters. Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes, Lily. Every last one. We’re all so human. Your mother made a terrible mistake, but she tried to fix it. There is nothing perfect. There is only life.” (page 256)

My heart hurt with her loss, the same loss my children will feel. I can only hope and pray that I can help them come through the other side, to a place of forgiveness.  As Lily says, "I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again." (page 301)

It will be a process, but I am determined to help my little ones feel the sadness, and wake up and forgive again.