On the Road to Recovery
Thank you to all who sent comments and prayed for Michael and I these past few difficult days.Before I go on, I do need to recognize what my husband did do while we had the kid-os. He researched day cares, and visited them and enrolled the children by himself. Every day, he dropped them off at school and day care. All but 2 days, he also picked them up. He taught Howard lots of things, like counting to 10 when he washed his hands, remembering to flush the toilet, saying please, thank you, you're welcome, and excuse me. He held the baby when I was busy with something else, and changed her diaper as much as I did. He boiled water and made bottles and sterilized nipples. He warmed bottles in the middle of the night while I held Autumn in bed. When Howard cried when we first got to his Sunday School class that first Sunday, it was Michael who stayed with him the entire hour to make sure he was going to be okay. He read bedtime stories to Howard as often as I did, and he taught him how to pray.
These weren't easy tasks, and I never had to ask him to do any of them. Many of them he seemed to enjoy doing.
I needed to remember that Michael was grieving in his own way. He cried about loosing them long before we ever got the call that they were going to relatives. He stressed more over not knowing the future, and of fearing that a phone call would eventually come. I did not know about some of the grieving he did do, and that often he does not share that with me. I typically need someone there with me when I am grieving. Michael prefers to be alone. Hence, his grief is usually invisible to me unless he discloses it.
I know he feels bad when he disappoints me.
Last night I came home to find that he had prepared dinner - Caesar salads and veggie lasagna, and Haggen Daz strawberry ice cream for dessert (one of our favorites). Exhausted from teaching my night class and from the stress of the last few days, this dinner was as close to ideal as you could get.
Over dinner, he told me he had good news - he had found an adoption lawyer who would set up a payment plan for us. He offered to come back early from a conference he is attending weekend after this in order to attend an adoption fair with me. While it was a nice offer, the conference is important and I can attend the fair alone and gather the information. I appreciated the offer - especially since I know how much he enjoys the last Sunday of this particular conference. He also told me that he had found a house for sale that he would like to go look at this weekend. I'm excited about the possibility of being a home-owner for the very first time - and soon! To end the day, we watched Criminal Minds in bed before turning out the lights and talking a bit. If you haven't seen the show, it's about profilers, and I think it's pretty interesting.
I'm not crying today. I pretty much slept through the night aside from a tummy ache at 4 in the morning. I petted the cats who seemed quite needy last night and this morning. Callie seems to keep coming up in the bed looking for the baby (she liked to come up and look at her and smell her head). Macy Gray just seems to enjoy having my full attention now.
I'm going to join the Foster/Adoptive Parent support group here in town. I hear good things about it, and I could use advice from others who have had children returned to birth families, and are hoping to adopt. I need to know tips for handling the days after the parting. I need to learn how to better control and manage my emotions so others don't get hurt, and I feel more sane.
My dear sister in Christ, Cindy, wrote me a lovely note. As if she were knew my heart, she suggested Michael and I return to counseling. Last night, I asked him if he would consider going back with me. The last time we went, it seemed to go downhill so we stopped going and things got surprisingly better once I wasn't constantly griping about how disappointed I was with everything. Interestingly enough, I simply asked him if he wanted to go back. He thought about it for a few seconds, and said he would like to. He added that he knew that he didn't do well with it before, and thought that he would do a better job this time of working with the counselor to make the counseling more productive (i.e. he would talk more and participate in the discussion more as opposed to sitting silently). I made an appointment for us already, and felt good about making the call.
I appreciated the gentle nudge, and the concern. It was God speaking to me through her. It is amazing how God finds a voice to reach us when he can't simply email us himself. I am thankful for her willingness to be that voice for me. Too often, I'm sure we turn away from others and say, "wow, they really need help", but walk away because we are afraid to "butt in" to someone's business. In some ways, I put myself out here knowing that folks may says things I don't want to hear. But God motivates people to come to this blog and comment here for good reason - and sometimes that reason is to give me a gentle nudge in the direction He needs me to go. It's a beautiful thing.
I still hurt, but its going to get better.
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 11/03/2005 10:35:00 AM
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