The Pity Conundrum

Dear Junebug,

You have been a trooper this this week! You are getting not just one, but your first two teeth at the same time! You are also scooting around all over the place. It's really funny watching you chase our doggy around the house. She doesn't make it easy on you though. She gets up as soon as you reach her. But, you just turn right around and keep following her. I love your determination!

So back to our story. This good friend of mine is the kind of friend that makes me want to be a better person when I'm around her. And when we had our very important conversation, she wasn't making any babies in her belly either. We were both dealing with it in different ways, but it was still so nice to have someone who understood a little bit. Finding people to talk to about stuff like that can be hard. See, there's a bit of a friendship conundrum when you can't make a baby in your belly. Many of your friends feel sorry for you. And if there's one thing that gets my feathers ruffled it's having people feel sorry for me (that's because I'm a little too proud sometimes). Grown-ups seem to have an unspoken rule that if you are able to make babies in your belly you shouldn't say anything to a person who can't, because it'll probably be the wrong thing to say. I always felt bad about that silly rule, because I never wanted my friends with belly-babies to feel like they couldn't talk to me. When your friends are afraid to talk to you about your big sad things, it can make you feel even more lonely...and make your sadness feel even heavier. Really, that's exactly what most friends are trying not to do by trying to not say the wrong thing!

It's really important to know that sadness is okay and normal and even a good thing to feel sometimes. But, you have to be careful with it, because if you hold onto it too tight it can turn into pity, which isn't so good. (I think we've talked a little about pity before, so be patient with me. This lesson took a long time for me to learn!) When you fall into pity (which I've done more than a few times!), you start to believe that everyone's life is better than yours. But, that is never true. Everyone (and I mean everyone) has hard stuff in their life. If you start to believe that all your friends have a better life than you do, you just aren't seeing things clearly...and you probably aren't able to be a good friend because of it. Sometimes we need friends to pull us out of our pity. Lucky for me, Daddy never had much tolerance for pity. This dear friend of mine was another person like that. I just couldn't be around a person like her and get stuck in pity too long. She was always helping others, and reminded me too much of all the people around me who needed help and kindness even more than I did.

So, I was talking with this friend about how I wished for more friends who could help me stay away from pity. I was babbling on about the person I wanted to be, and ended up saying, "I just want to be the kind of person who can be grateful for infertility because it led me to become a foster parent." And then you know what happened? Right after I said it, my own words hit me over the head as hard as a frying pan! I was waiting for somebody to give me permission to stop being pitiful and start being grateful! I was waiting for someone to go ahead of me and do exactly what I wanted to do. But, that was the silliest thing ever, Junebug! Nobody was going to live an example of my life for me and show me exactly how to do it. I finally saw that it was up to me to become the person I had always deep down wanted to be! I just needed to startdoing the things that person would do!

So, a few days after that conversation I spent a little chunk of time filling out a form on my computer. When I was done I went into the living room and said to Daddy, "I just sent in an application to become foster-parents". And he said, "Hurray! It's about time!"

Memory Boxes

A friend today asked me what your personality was like. I hadn't been asked this question before, and I don't think I drew an accurate picture for her. So I thought I would try again, and share my answer with you. You are a morning person like your daddy. You are also full of funny little wry smiles and eyebrow raises. You are insatiably curious. You reach for everything behind, above or around you that would pull you out of your seat, or off the changing table. You keep me on my toes! When you're sleepy, you like to be held upright and slumped over my shoulder with your arm around my neck. I love those moments, and sometimes I hold onto you long after you've fallen asleep.

In our last letter I mentioned that I had to figure out what to do with my sadness about not growing a baby in my tummy. But, maybe I didn't put that quite right. With big sadness sometimes you can't really "do" anything to make it go away. You can only figure out how you are going to live with it. When our biggest sadnesses are very heavy, they are often all we can think about. Then, other times we might tuck them away inside a memory box for safe keeping.
Every once in a while we will pull them back out again to remember. I think that is how this particular sadness is, and will be for me.

So, even though a new love was growing in my heart and mind because of what I'd learned from Teddy and Julia and Tim and Wendy, I wasn't quite ready to put my baby sadness in a memory box just yet. (Daddy's sadness had already been boxed up by then I think!) I decided I wanted to try one last time to make my sadness go away. I knew I wasn't comfortable with the choices the baby-doctor gave me. So, I decided to make my body as healthy as possible and see what happened. That was a way I could fight the sadness that I felt okay about.

I tried some things that might sound a little nutty to some people. Actually, they sounded a little nutty to me too! I went to a place where they put tiny little needles all over me, and they gave me herbs to drink. After that I tried rubbing a cream on my arm. Then I changed my diet, started exercising and drinking more water and taking vitamins. But, you know what happened? Those herbs made my lips itch! The cream turned my arm red and bumpy. And the big vitamins made my tummy feel yucky.

Eventually I had to look at all my attempts at fighting the sadness and just laugh at myself. Nothing I tried worked to make a baby. I felt a little bit like a cartoon character who keeps ramming himself into a locked door and getting swirly stars above his head. I just felt silly. Not silly in a way that made me ashamed, but silly in a way that made me start to chuckle a little bit at myself.

A tiny part of me began to realize that there might be a reason I wasn't comfortable going to the baby doctor. Maybe even deeper down within me was a different desire.

It still bothered me that I didn't know any other women that had decided not to fight their sadness with the choices the doctor gave them like I had. I wished someone would just tell me what to do next. I didn't want to make my own path. I just wanted to walk in a path someone else had made. But, I couldn't find one that suited me.

All those thoughts and stars were swirling over my head one day when I had a very important conversation with a good friend.

Listening

It is so easy to believe that life is about making ourselves happy. Most people who are selling us stuff are tugging on our self-pity, or our desire to look good to everyone else. They know that we are usually focused on ourselves. So, when you finally find people who remind you that the world is much bigger than you are, you should listen to them.

That's what I heard when I listened to Tim and Wendy.

Daddy and I met Tim and Wendy at our church. They were really friendly and kind. We were excited to talk with them since we didn't know any foster-parents back then. They told us about a podcast they had made about being foster-parents (www.fosterpodcast.com). So as soon as we got home that day I started listening to their podcasts. Before long I was walking around the house humming their little program jingle. I listened to podcasts while I worked on my computer. I listened when I took walks. I listened while I did the dishes. I listened and listened. Pretty soon Daddy started listening too.

Tim and Wendy shared the hard stuff in their lives, as well as the good stuff. Sometimes they were really silly. Sometimes they were serious. Most of the time I would get teary when I listened. But every time I would hear something that sunk deep into my heart. Pretty soon there was a big pool of challenging stuff welling up in me, and I knew I needed to do something about it.

But, while I was listening, I was still kinda sad that I didn't have a baby growing in my tummy. I still had to figure out what to do with that sadness before I could go searching for you.

The Dream List

Dear Junebug,

I'm going to have to get off track a little bit from our story. I just discovered something that I didn't know about myself...well, something I had forgotten. I was writing in my journal yesterday, and just happened to flip back the pages to read something I'd written a very long time ago. It was a list of things that I wanted to do in my life...a list of dreams, big and little. I know I must've written it at least a year before I ever met Daddy because meeting him was on my list too! (as well as learning how to scuba dive, which I also did before I met him)

Do you know what else was on that list? It was YOU! I wrote that I'd like to foster or adopt a child! I must've written that over a decade ago. And here I've been thinking (and telling everyone!) that the dream of you started in my heart only a few years ago. Boy was I wrong! I just think it's so neat that God brought me back around to you...despite my forgetfulness! I think He has a LOT of patience with me. I just had to share that with you. It encouraged me and made me feel so loved, that life has brought me all the way back around to my dream, despite myself and my forgetfulness.

So, back to our story. After camp, Daddy and I had begun to think a little bit about maybe... perhaps... possibly... someday being foster parents. (Remember, I had completely forgotten this was on my dream list.) But, like I mentioned earlier, I still needed some encouragement. I didn't know any other foster-parents. So I needed a good dose of courage.

That's when we learned about Tim and Wendy...

Mama Bears

Dear Junebug,

We are on night four of having no electricity. There was a crazy storm that knocked down trees and powerlines all over town. While Daddy was gone, our doggy Brecka and I stayed in your room with you while the wind howled so loud outside that I thought the windows would burst! Luckily, we didn't suffer any harm, and the next day I went and collected some greenery that had blown off the evergreens for Christmas!

So, back to my friend, Julia.

Julia was a mama-bear. She was only eleven, but after years of not having a loving and protective mom for her and her siblings, she had learned how to be the "mother" that her siblings needed. When she was at camp she went around mama-bearing any little stray cubs that came her way...and she was good at it. The littlest campers trusted her quickly. She was gentle and kind.

It was Julia's 4th year at camp. That means for at least four years she had been in foster care. That's a long time to not have a forever-family. And, because she was eleven, the next year she wouldn't even get to come back to camp.

On one of the last nights of camp, all the eleven-year-olds get something really special. They get to go to "graduation". That night they stay up later than all the other campers. They sit around a campfire while their counselors share cool stories about them. At the end of all the counselors sharing stories about their kids, Julia was asked to share on behalf of all the eleven year olds what camp had meant to her. She said that life for her was hard. People don't always treat her well. But, at camp it's different. At camp she knew that people would do anything for her. At camp, she felt loved. It was the one week of the year that Susan got to be a cub, and have mama-bears looking out for her.

This got me to thinking, Junebug. A part of Julia had turned into a grown up really quick. She had learned how to be an adult for the smaller kiddos around her. And there I was, an adult, and I was still a kid, just looking out for myself. I think that's what made me start to realize that Julia needed more than a week of camp. Julia needed a mama bear of her own. A part of me had always wanted to be a brave mama bear. But to do that I was going to have to find the grown-up in myself...

Thanksgiving

Dear Junebug,

You will have your first Thanksgiving this week! I'm sad that it's just a little early for you to get to enjoy the mashed potatoes. But, maybe for Christmas! During a meal enjoyed with friends recently, we all shared one thing we were thankful for and one thing we longed for. You fit both categories for me. I long for the day we get to know for sure that you'll always be ours, and I'm grateful that you are ours right now.

I've been wondering if some of the people reading these letters might be very scared for us as they read this story. Because I bet they realize by now that we are pretty attached to you. And judging by the way you now lift your arms to be picked up, and smile wide at us in the morning, you feel the same way about us. (Getting attached means warm fuzzies and trust growing in your heart for someone you didn't know before. Really, it's just a big word for love.) Well, I just want to let folks know that it's okay to be scared. I'd be lying if I said I can't stand to even think about you leaving us. But, I also want everyone to know that you are worth the risk. Actually, you are worth far more.

We had to say goodbye to a baby boy before you came into our world. I will talk more about him later in our story. But, I just wanted other readers to know that it's because I loved him so much, that I will always be grateful for the three months I got to be a mama to him. Even though I don't know how I would handle not getting to keep you forever and ever, you (like him) are precious enough to be worthy of my heart breaking.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful that I've come to know this:

having you is worth the risk of losing you.

I just had to share that before we move on to Julia.

I promise we'll get to her in the next letter.

Bear Hugs

Dear Junebug,

When you say yes to one thing, it can lead you to a place you might never have gone had you stayed safe and kept saying no. It can lead you to a lot more yes's. I'm so glad I said yes to camp.

When a bus full of kids arrived at camp, daddy and I were out on a field with tons of other camp counselors and staff. We were all cheering for the royal kiddos on that bus. As they stepped out one by one they each came through a tunnel of high-fives and cheers. Most of them were probably nervous and excited at the same time. Maybe they didn't realize how anxious a lot of us counselors were too. I was nervous that my wisdom, patience, and energy would fall short of what they needed. For most of these kids, this is the one week in the entire year when they don't feel like an outsider. They get to just be kids. It's an incredibly important week.

The first summer my cabin was filled with eleven year olds. I have so many memories that I could write you stacks of letters just about those five days, but for now I will tell you just a few stories of little heroes I will never forget.

One is of a girl I will call Teddy. Teddy wasn't even my camper, but we shared a cabin together. Her counselor had to leave camp a day early that year. Teddy knew saying goodbye to her counsellor would be tough. So, after a few days at camp, we started to become good buddies. She hoped that becoming friends with me would make it easier to say goodbye to her own counselor. Teddy was so much fun. She was sweet and friendly and she always held on to hugs. At camp we aren't allowed to give big bear hugs, but we can give side-hugs. Well, Teddy would hang onto any kind of hug for as long as you would let her.

One day we were sitting and listening to story time. Teddy had her arms wrapped around my legs and was sitting at my feet on the ground. I was stroking her hair when I started to feel little hot drops of water hitting my feet. I gulped as I realized that Teddy was crying. Her little hot tears were hitting my feet. Drop...drop...drop. I didn't want to embarrass her, so I waited until the story was over before I asked what was wrong.

She told me that story-time had reminded her of her mom. You see, the story mentioned the great big hug that a runaway boy got from his dad when he came home. Teddy told me that her mom was a big hugger too. She gave the best kind - the big bear kind that swallow you up and warm you all the way from your ears to your toes.

Then I realized why Teddy hung onto hugs for so long...why she wrapped her arms around my calves during story time. Teddy just didn't get enough hugs. For whatever reason, her mom couldn't give her those bear hugs anymore. From then on, I let Teddy hang on for as long as she wanted.

Teddy made me realize that there were things I could do to help kiddos with big hurts. I didn't have all the answers. I couldn't take away Teddy's pain.

But, I could let those side-hugs hang on longer.

Because of Teddy, I started to see that the fear of not being helpful, wise or useful enough could keep me from being any of those things at all.

If I had said no to camp because of fear, I couldn't have given Teddy one single hug.

Teddy wasn't the only camper who helped me see things more clearly. There was another brave eleven year old in my cabin that year. I think I'll call her Julia...