Challenges: Part I

I guess I could keep this post completely sunshiney, which I usually try to do--on here,  Facebook, life, but I'd like to keep it real and share the tough stuff too. So here I go.

Sweet Emory is truly made in the image of God. A beautiful, sweet, sometimes very smiley little blonde boy.  I call him a baby because it is hard to believe he is not far from four--he seems like a 9 month old. Let's take a step back though. He's been through a lot. First, he was completely given up at birth for reasons he could not control, an extra chromosome, Down syndrome. Immediately after, on the day he was born, he had major surgery to create a passage for his bowels since he had no anal opening. No mommy to care for him, he survived, and went on to live in a baby home, which is a kind way of saying orphanage. For babies. He is three years old now and has since had two additional surgeries, the last one to create an opening in his anus.  I'm sure the follow up for the last one was far from enjoyable. Poor Emory!

It would take a very long time to list how the above challenges can negatively affect a person. I'm no doctor, I don't even have a college degree, but some things are not hard to see. It would be different if he had an even somewhat loving mother throughout all of this, but no, not even consistent caregivers.

I can see it. I can see that he has not had any--well, not much--loving social interaction. Sometimes when we go to visit him, he spends a lot of his time staring blankly into space. Not all visits, but some of them. We have even wondered if they sedate him, like we have heard in some orphanages, so they don't have to deal with their crying, but I doubt it. He's not a cryer. He's the easy one they don't have to worry about. Many times when I walk in to get him, like yesterday, I find him plopped in a walker, staring up, way up, at the TV that he has been placed right in front of. I hate that. He can crawl and cruise, why not let him do that? He is the only one in his group of 6 that cannot walk and I'm sure that is a big inconvenience for some of the nannies. As I was saying, he stares sometimes, he can be quite unresponsive. My best guess is he has been around a lot of interaction, like other nannies talking to other nannies, or other children playing near him, but not much, if any, one-on-one interaction.

It is hard though. Most of our time is spent watching and playing with Emerald while I hold Emory and sing or talk to him. I do wonder what his future will look like. Will he be able to talk or communicate? Will he ever be potty trained? Will he become more responsive? What will our family dynamic look like? All of those questions we have wondered, but none of those questions change, even slightly, my decision (resolve!) to be his Mommy, our decision to be his family, for him to be our forever son. We have committed to caring for him for the rest of our lives, however that looks, because Jesus adopted us and Jesus decided to care for us, no matter what that looks like. We did nothing to deserve the grace and adoption of the Lord of Lords and King of Kings and Emory did nothing to deserve being adopted by us. But there is nothing I ask of him as my son, except to be loved and hopefully to love. I do pray that he would be a light and a city set on a hill and I believe that the Lord will use Him to bring others to Himself.

May God give us the grace to show Emory the love He has shown us. Unwavering, agape love.


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A friend from Facebook shared this link. Think of the children in the orphanages, like Emory, who have known only this.

Also, things like this give me hope. Look at Emory's progress in just two weeks.



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PS-Thank you Jane, my wonderful mother-in-love (who if she had a blog, would have TONS of followers) for the blog encouragement. That's all I needed to hear.