Really Long Post On Our Mutant Family Tree

Our world is broken. Things went wrong in the garden and everything since has been broken. At times I feel quite helpless when I try to line up the life I live with the ideals in my head about what life is supposed to look like. To try and reconcile myself to the condition of humanity, I spend a good deal of mental energy considering the worldviews of others. Sometimes it helps. Other times, however, it leaves me profoundly sad.

Yesterday the girls and I spent several hours over at their biological aunt's house. We were hunting for pictures of the kids' pre-Lewis days. We looked through thousands of pictures.  As I poured through boxes and boxes of the very well documented life of that family, I became sadder and sadder. The weight of the loss that family must have felt, and are likely still feeling, that those 5 kids were taken just fell hard on me. What completely captured me were the pictures taken in the months leading up to when the kids were taken. It was like watching a horror movie frame by frame. Particularly unsettling were the pictures from their aunt's wedding. The wedding was almost exactly 5 months before the kids were taken. It was a beautiful wedding. The bride and groom were happy. Her colors were really pretty. The kids were all in the wedding and they were perfection. The girls had beautiful dresses and their hair done. I saw pictures of them dancing and enjoying themselves. But.. in the hundreds of pictures (literally) of the event, in every frame that contained their biological mother, it is blatantly obvious that she was completely high. She's pale and drawn and all but drooling. She had a vacant, glassy gaze and was clearly there in body only. I found myself wanting, much like the way you shout at characters in a scary movie, to warn the the kids of what was coming. I wanted to warn them that very shortly life was going to do a 180 and would never be the same again.

Toward the beginning of our time with the girls, their biological parents told them during a visit that we had kidnapped them. They set them up to despise use. They told them that they had to stay with us until they were 18 but then they could "come home". That statement isn't true. They are card carrying Lewises forever. And..As time rolls on, their allegiance will dampen. It has a great deal already.  But, I'm realizing more with the passing of time that that particular chapter of our story left me very hurt. I feel like it permanently planted a seed of doubt in my heart. I often question their love for me. I hold suspect any act of kindness from them.  I realize that's a pretty big broken place for me that I need to work on. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to escape because we've chosen to involve their biological family in their lives.

The life the girls led pre-Lewis was a 24/7 party. There were no rules. There was no bedtime. They didn't require hygiene of any kind. School was a drop in one or twice a week event.There was no consistency... at all... ever. That is what they learned from their formative years. Life is a party. Responsibility of any person is completely unnecessary. Alcohol is perfectly fine. Drugs and any other things considered unhealthy and dangerous are fun. My oldest clings to those notions with every fiber of her being. It scares me and paralyzes me.

The minute they get around any person(s) from their biological family their demeanor changes. I can see their training from their formative years.I'm sure there's some psychological reasoning that explains that phenomenon. It's not like they turn into the little hellians they were before, but their attitude shifts into "party" mode. And... in their eyes I see love and acceptance for their biological relatives that I never see when they look at me. In one piece of my brain I get that. They've known them longer. The oldest one has anyway. Hubby Guy and I have been the little one's family longer than the biologicals were. She still acts like the older one at times. But, in another place in my brain I feel so disrespected. None of their biological family (who was appropriate) stepped up to take them in when they were taken. The children still feel, though, that our only function should be to take them to see biological family members who are all (to some degree) 24/7 party types. Their identity is with them, not us. Try as I may, that hurts. It pokes at a very sensitive place.

So in my consideration of worldviews there are three separate but intertwined people groups that I spend the most time considering. The first group is the children themselves. I can't imagine being torn from my family, broken or not.  I can imagine how that would cause some pretty serious trust issues with adults. I can imagine having a draw to biological relatives. I believe with all my heart that's the biggest reason people adopt infants and children from other countries. The children may still have the draw to their origins but those people don't have to deal with biological family. What they put out in expense they get back emotionally over and over again by not having to deal with the issues we face daily having adopting older children locally. As much as I try to see the world from my children's point of view, it's hard not to be hurt by how much they pine for their roots.

The second group of people I spend time considering is the girls' bio family. We have ongoing relationships with their biological maternal aunt and her family and their biological paternal grandmother. So, they are in pretty regular contact with representatives from both sides of their family. For the most part we like all of them. The troublesome part for me is that they are not Christ followers. They are good people but just don't live the way we do. They don't believe what we believe. Some of them are even outwardly nasty towards anyone claiming to be a Christian or who is trying to live by Biblical imperatives. That part is truly for a different post. It's hard, though. They were upset by the children being taken. They still claim them as their own, yet strangers are parenting them. It's been a little more then 5 years and I feel likes there's still a gorilla in the room when we're all together. I hear them say they are grateful. I see how sweet and loving they are with the kids. I think of my precious niece and how I would feel if she were taken by DSS. If I couldn't take her for some reason and she was placed with some family I don't know who believes differently than me, I would completely flip out. I wouldn't handle that well. The gorilla's name is suspicion. He is a cruel, cruel animal and he works equally on all of us.

The third group to mention in the families of Hubby Guy and myself. Honestly of all the groups they surprise me the most. They are all far away so even though they support us, it often doesn't feel like they are even out there. They aren't the type of family that is involved much. They hardly know us. I would love to be near some of them and see them regularly. I would love for them to be able to support us in real time and be able to invest time in our girl's lives. It hasn't happened that way for us. Hubby Guy and I went from zero to 2 children, 5 and 9, overnight. There was no building excitement like with a traditional adoption or like with an infant. I feel like it left them cold. It's been more then 5 years and my own father hasn't even bothered to meet his grandchildren. He's never even spoken to them on the telephone. That makes me livid every time I think about it. That is probably a post for another time as well. I just can't get a handle on how they see our family. I can tell you with certainty that if my brother decided to adopt a kid, no matter what age, I would be there with bells on to love on that kid.

When I consider the family tree of my children, more often than not I picture a very grotesque bush. The biological roots are extremely shallow. The trunk of Hubby Guy and myself is in decent shape but the quality of the branches leaves much to be desired. They are often broken, weak, or suspect. No matter how I draw it, I can't get the sum of the parts to equal anything particularly strong and sturdy. They have a mutant family tree.

The only hope I have is that God will take that grotesque bush and transform it. I absolutely believe that He will. The hard part, though, is the process needs a lot more years.