Last spring, Mia began to struggle emotionally again. Her early years of abandonment left really deep scars. Trust is so hard for her. Fear is so instinctual. As she went to school full time last year, we could see signs that she was falling apart, a little each day. Terrified of doing the wrong thing, she was a nervous wreck about everything. She wouldn't even talk at lunch in case she would run out of time to eat her food, or get in trouble for talking too loud. She was wreck every morning before school and confided that she spent the day worried about getting in trouble. This from the child that never clipped down! It was clear to us that she just wasn't ready to be away from home yet. If you think about it, she got three less years with a parent than our other kids did....she was operating with the emotional skills of a much younger child.
About the same time, she began to struggle again with a latent rash newly manifested. This time, worse than ever. Her arms, legs, knees, shoulders, ankles, wrists, hands, everywhere covered in sores that scaled and scabbed and itched like mad. She would wake throughout the night crying, begging me to make the itch go away. In the past year, we've seen six different doctors and tried several different medicines. No one has seen anything like it. And no one knows how to treat it. The best guess is that it's related to either her medical condition or stress.
We soothed and rocked and lotioned and benadryled with the best of them. Nothing changed.
As horrible as the rash is, it's the tip of her iceberg. She's been battling nearly constant nausea for over a year. It seems that the worse her iron numbers are, the worse her stomach feels. Which leads me to her annual MRI. In July, we learned that Mia's numbers have not only not gotten better over the past year, they are twice as bad. As in, dangerously bad. Clearly, her meds are not working. In consulting with her hematology team, we decided to try a newer medicine. She was set to start the week school was to begin. If it didn't work, she would need to admit to the hospital regularly for several day stays for an IV drip of an intensive chelating med.
And that...just weeks before school was to start...is when we decided she was not returning.
She simply isn't in a good place to go. She's not. She needs the time to itch and cry and fall apart and get picked up and lay on the sofa with a good book...and HEAL. As a new friend of mine said, "You can't learn with a broken heart."
And so now she is home. While the stomach still hurts and the itch is still there, her smile is returning. She is forever by her mama, soaking up every moment she can, her little adoring eyes begging for one more embrace, one more word of encouragement, one more smile.
And then there is Violet. Sweet, spunky Violet. How much she's grown this year! How far she's come! We watched so proudly as she conquered kindergarten last year, learning a whole new language and learning to read...not just English words, but facial expressions and nuances and all sorts of things we don't normally think about. But there was one thing we noticed that haunted us as parents...
A year in school left her still more comfortable in an institution than she is in a family. While she succeeded academically, we could see that she preferred to be left alone to figure life out by herself. Not the healthy independent way, but in the no one's ever been there for me so I'm better off figuring it out myself kind of way. Not good.
Please don't misunderstand. She's going to need every ounce of her independence to look at the world and say, "I don't care what any of you say. I'm beautiful, competent, strong, and able." But her heart needs to KNOW that she is loved and that she BELONGS to a family and that we BELONG to her. Because that is crucial to being a whole person.
And so....we decided there was not a moment to lose. Mia was coming home...Violet should come, too.
And that left Gabe. The one who has begged to homeschool forever. Our Davy Crockett meets Grizzly Adams meets Survivor Man hates learning in a sterile environment. He loves nature and biology and hands on learning...the boy who started school loving to learn was beginning to hate it. Combine that with a few lovely instances of bullying and his academic success was in serious decline.
It was time to make a change.
And so here we are...in a place we didn't quite expect to be
. And yet, we feel God's hand in every minute of it. My days are filled with teaching these precious kids and continually pointing them to the God who loves them more than I ever can. I'm part mom, part cheerleader, part schoolmarm, part Mr. Rogers. It's a lot of hats to wear and without God's strength, it's overwhelming. But his grace is enough. Can I get an Amen?
How long will we be living this way? We truly don't know. But we're confident that God's leading this little detour so we figure we'll just let Him worry about it. There's enough worrying in this house anyway. ;-)
