Right now I have a pulled muscle (again), a bruised hand, aching knee, I’m sore all over, and I am on day five of a headache. I am weary of being kicked at and screamed at and yelled at and hit at. Of things being thrown constantly, kicked, torn apart and damaged. Of being told how I care only about myself - by the one for whom I chose to spend my past 12 months wrecked. Having hatred and rage and anger spewed directly at me. Only at me. Only because I am mom.
My days are spent in a fog. Either I am spending hours managing an irrational and escalating child...or recovering from the adrenaline surges of it all. I can’t just walk away from it and continue my day where I left off either. My brain simply can’t think straight and my energy is sapped. Possibly sustaining an injury or two. Always scrambling to think through how to respond next. Or how to avoid the need for me to respond because my calm responses are all used up.
I love everything about Christmas. This year I am wondering if we will make it to Christmas Day with our family intact. Nine days left. Nine days of a child trying to cut her losses and get her Christmas taken away already so she can quit dreading losing it, in spite of anything we say. Indefinite more days of a child trying desperately to break me. To prove that we were going to give up on her at some point anyway.
It feels impossible to see her as she is through what she does. We haven’t settled down in four months. I am weary, my other children need me, and I cannot continue functioning like this. Yet there is no other solution. In the end, no matter what we do, it will always come down to me and this child. Either she breaks me or she does not. I do not have it in me to love her through this. I do not have it in me to hold on through the hurricanes. I do not have the patience or the fortitude or even the love to get us through. Only God can do in me what needs to be done to get her through. If I can stick it out just long enough, she will stop trying so hard to push me away; I’ve seen it in her and I know this to be true. If I can be the safe mother she’s never had, she might one day believe that a mother can be safe. If I can love her right through the storm of hate, she may finally, eventually recognize love for what it is instead of all the things it has masqueraded as in her life. I do not have that kind of love. It isn’t there. It does not exist in me. Yet it does exist in Christ. It is the love that gave us Christmas. The love that drove him to the cross - while we were yet sinners. The love that whispers grace to our hearts in the very moments of our darkest sins. That which ignites hope in the midst of hopelessness. The love that gave himself for the very ones who rejected, abandoned, mocked and killed. This is the kind of love he calls each of us to walk in. Not just me with my child, but you in your own life. And he does not ask of us what he does not promise to supply. It is not in me. It is not in you. It is all from him.
I can stand on that truth, even while everything else falls away. His love IS strong enough to hold us together. I know this because it is his strong love that has held me to himself right through the rages of my own life. If his love can keep my wayward heart in his, then it can certainly teach my heart to love like his.
This is the very essence of both Christmas and adoption, is it not? To take the love given to us by a Savior who took us at our very worst and loved us to himself - to take that love and offer it to another in the very same way. He offered his very life for us, to the point of death. No exceptions, no limits, his love and unending grace stands open to any who will accept it. May we, by his great power, learn to love as he does in order that those who we love will see the love greater than ourselves.
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