Moments

It was a normal summer day as we walked out of the church building after Vacation Bible School. My three daughters, adopted all at once from foster care, chattered on about what they had learned that day. As they did, my oldest daughter started hopping from one star-sticker on the ground to another without even realizing she was doing it. She hopped like that all the way to the car door, holding my hand and not paying attention to anyone else around her.

My throat closed up as I watched. Tears sprang to my eyes. It was a big moment, because my oldest daughter was acting like a child.

As the protector of her younger sisters throughout the years before we knew them, she had a hard time being a normal kid. Instead, she was a mother. A better one than I probably was at the beginning of all of this. I even had to sit down with her once and have a talk with her about how she was mothering her sisters:

“Sweet girl, you are amazing and strong,” I told her one day, “and I love you so much. Do you know that?”

She nodded, apprehensive as to why I had asked to speak with her privately.

I went on, just as nervous as she was because I didn’t know exactly how to word this. I had read something about this in a book, and I was trying to remember what it said. “I respect you for all that you did when you had to protect your sisters before you met us. You were awesome at it. But guess what? Now, you can let me do that. You just get to have fun and be a kid! Isn’t that great?”

She smiled a little and nodded again. I didn’t think she really understood what I had said.

But since that talk, there had been a shift in her. She wasn’t as concerned about her sisters. She had gone from asking if they had their coats and if they had washed their hands after going to the bathroom, to just doing her own thing and worrying about herself. 

After working at it for a while, I found myself in that special moment, watching my daughter be a child while she jumped from a golden star to a purple star to a green star. We crossed a milestone that day and haven’t gone back. I’ll never forget it.

Every parent has moments like this, I’m sure. Parenting isn’t constantly sentimental and sweet, something you want to cry happy tears about every second. Quite the opposite. If my husband and I have learned anything from becoming overnight parents of three, it’s that years of good memories are built upon the tiny bricks of special moments.

Our middle daughter – when we first took the girls in – needed to be held almost constantly. In fact, our arm muscles got very strong that first six months! She found security in our love through testing if we would pick her up or not. It was tiring and honestly a little frustrating. Whenever we had to say no to her, or if we picked up one of her sisters first, she would go into a quiet, near-depressive state for up to an hour sometimes.  For a while, we felt we had to allow it because we were all bonding.  Then slowly, we had to cut it off and stop allowing this behavior. 

There was one day after coming home from school that I got her out of the car and planned to carry her into the house, like I usually did.  But something caught her attention when she was in my arms.

“Oh!  Mama, let me down.  I wanna go jump on the trampoline.”

I paused, unable to believe she was saying this to me.  She wriggled out of my arms and hopped down, happily running to the trampoline without looking back.  Again, it was another moment that might’ve been so normal for some parents, but for me, I stood crying and staring after her.  Another milestone.  She’s been the same ever since – secure in our love whether we pick her up or not. 

The last moment I’ll share about was probably the most impactful for us.  It happened during the transition into our home, at a time when we would take the girls one by one for a sleepover and get to know them individually.  It was our youngest daughter’s turn, and she wanted to watch Cinderella with us that night.  During the closing credits, I told her that my parents used to dance to the song at the end of every movie we ever watched.  It was a tradition. 

“Do you want to try it?” I asked her.

She nodded, smiling, and the three of us stood up and started dancing.  When her new daddy picked her up and held her as they danced, I looked on, unable to believe we were parents.

But suddenly, something changed.  We realized she was crying.  Very hard.

Brandon immediately stopped dancing, thinking he had accidentally hurt her.  “Honey, what happened?” he asked.  “Did I accidentally hurt you?”

She shook her head and cried silently, burying her face in his chest.  I rubbed her back, filled with that strange, almost uncontrollable anxiety that every new mother feels.

Then, after a quiet few seconds of letting her cry into Brandon’s shirt, something even stranger happened.  She started laughing. 

Brandon and I blinked at each other, completely at a loss and honestly, a little creeped out.  What the heck was happening?

She laughed really hard and tried to catch her breath while we waited and watched in shock.  Then she wiped her tears and said she wanting to keep dancing. 

Glancing nervously at each other, we danced for a few more minutes until the closing credits stopped.

Later, when she was down for bed, we called her foster mom in a panic.  We told her what’d happened, knowing our new daughter was probably missing her foster mom or was crying from trauma or stress.

“I don’t think that’s it at all,” she told us.  “She might not know how to handle the emotions she felt, but think about it.  She was a princess in that moment, dancing in the arms of her prince as her new mommy watched.”

Brandon and I looked at each other, both of us crying as we listened. 

“She’s never experienced anything like that in her life,” she said.

What a privilege it was to be a part of that moment with her.

“Whoever receives one such a child in My name receives Me…”

Matthew 18:5

There are at least 100,000 children in foster care in America who are waiting for their forever families.  Yes, the effects of trauma on the brain are real and can even physically damage the makeup of the brain, but studies have shown that the brain can also be healed – sometimes almost completely – with the right techniques, love, counseling, and bonding with a safe and trusted caregiver.  For more information, or if you have a special stirring in your heart to look into how to help these children, visit https://nightlight.org/foster-care-and-adoption/.