October is Double Impact Month at Antioch Adoptions – give now to help families adopt children right here in our own backyard!
There were many reasons that we decided to add children to our family through foster/adoption. One of the primary ones was that we believe it is a glorious picture of the good news of what Jesus has done for us. We also felt that our life was pretty comfortable and knew that God didn’t call us to comfort, but to serve and love others. At the time we began the process of getting our foster license, we had two school-age children and life seemed pretty manageable. But we wanted the opportunity to learn to trust God more fully and knew He was inviting us to do that through bringing foster children into our home with the purpose of adoption
Tobias, the 3-and-a-half year old boy that God chose to become part of our family, arrived in our home in March of 2014. At first, he was cuddly and mostly compliant. This was, of course, the honeymoon stage which probably lasted a few weeks. Then the difficult behaviors began to emerge – behaviors we had been prepared for in classes but had not yet experienced. Things like constantly bossing our other children, resisting whatever we asked him to do, breaking things, throwing tantrums, stealing small items, sneaking things that we had said no to, etc. Initially it wasn’t too hard to be compassionate and show love along with appropriate consequences. However, after months of the same behaviors, my patience began to wear thin.
One of the challenges of adopting an older child is that there can be behaviors set in place that are difficult and need to be addressed but there isn’t that underlying foundation of attachment that you build gradually with a child who is younger and doesn’t yet display challenging behaviors. Babies cry when they’re tired, hungry, overstimulated, or wet. They don’t yell “no” or deliberately do things you’ve asked them not to. If I’m honest, it’s terribly difficult to display affection and warmth toward a child who is defiant, especially when a strong attachment hasn’t been formed yet. For me, it was hard to set aside offenses after they had been dealt with – to forgive, and move on. There have been moments in the past 18 months that I have felt no warmth toward this child, no desire to draw close or show affection and even a desire to punish him with a withdrawal of affection.
Difficult behaviors and not yet having the benefit of a strong attachment were factors in my struggle. The sin in my own heart, though, was also a strong influence. My selfish nature balked at the idea that I should have to deal with all of this ugly behavior. Here I was, just trying to love on and care for this child and he kept challenging me at every turn. I didn’t deserve this! I was frustrated at Tobias’ lack of change in behavior despite all of my consistent boundary setting and maintaining.
I was pouring out to God these frustrations one day, when my eyes fell upon the large chalkboard hanging on the wall behind our dining room table. Several weeks earlier I had written Romans 5 on it. The part that hit my heart was verse 8, “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While I was still a sinner, still rebellious against God, still wanting my own way rather than submitting to His gracious love and care, still tantruming because I couldn’t have my way – while I was still a sinner sinning, Christ died for me. Christ left the glory in heaven that He deserved to come here and be ignored, mocked, spat upon, hated, crucified in order to display for me the love of God and save me from the punishment my rebellion deserved. I have been and sometimes still am that child resisting what is good and best for me and God still pursues me.
In that moment, I was so humbled. And in that moment, God gave me something to hold on to when my feelings in response to ugly behavior and lack of strong attachment were telling me to push away. Seeing His grace and goodness toward me, a sinner with nothing but sin to offer, gave me what I needed to forgive and move on, to pull Tobias close in a hug after a timeout or a tough consequence, to say, “Even when you ____________, I still love you. You are part of this family and there is nothing you can do that would cause us to change that”, to not grow bitter and hopeless when the same challenging behavior shows itself again and again.
I am so thankful for this journey of fostering and adoption, when God helps me to stop and reflect. There is so much beautiful opportunity to trust God, to rely on the truth of the gospel and to grow to appreciate it in a depth and richness that makes all of the difficult moments worth it. And, God has faithfully and graciously birthed in my heart true affection and love for my son, Tobias, through all of this. He is good!
Carly, Antioch Adoptions Adoptive Mom
October is Double Impact Month at Antioch Adoptions – give now to help families adopt children right here in our own backyard!
