Since becoming a foster family again, I have learned first hand that healing is so far from being a linear process. It’s been almost 6 years since baby J’s case and not even a month ago I was in the trenches when our sweet baby “Roo” left to be with family. The anger that I didn’t allow myself to feel from baby J’s case came full faced. I felt the grief again of the life hoped for, the joyful pain of watching him be adopted while feeling like motherhood wouldn’t ever find me again......that it’ll be another 11 years of pain....you name it Satan claimed it....and I was in the ick of it. Instead of pushing it away this time I pulled up a chair and sat with it. I let myself feel it, so I could hopefully heal it this time.....
A new day came and my heart wasn’t heavy anymore. I felt like maybe I was finally healing from the pain of loosing him so many years ago so I pulled myself out of bed to start my day when my phone rang....one of our caseworkers was on the other end. A hesitant but desperate voice asking if we’d take in a sibling group.....I looked up and just laughed at God....I swear He either has super slow mode or super fast mode.....either way, He’s always on time isn’t He? 😉
Without hesitation I called my husband to talk with him about it and before we knew it we had three kids 4 and under and I’m here to tell you, raising a little girl in between two boys is not for the faint of heart....
The idea of being a girl mom has always scared me, well okay, maybe not “scare me”....let’s just say it intimidates me.
That title forces me to face a deeply hurting heart from my own childhood in the midst of an already chaotic life, I guess you could say I just don’t want to “heal” anything else right now Lord....but here He comes in all His glory with this fragile beautiful little girl with her sweet little brother and again....foster care is revealing more places in me that need to heal too 😞
See, you’d never know this (well I hope you don’t notice lol) because I try to quiet these voices in my heart but majority of my life I’ve been told I’m “too loud, too much, too often” 😔 and in complete transparency.....that made me think something was inherently wrong with me growing up. It’s been my inner critic most my life that who I am, how I act or even how I respond to situations is wrong. That somehow who I am doesn’t fit right in this world, and conformity is where I’d find “me”....... and all it took was a split second of watching my daughter interact at children’s church and I knew, she was just like me....”too much, too loud, too often” and all I wanted to do was dance with her and let her know, I’m gonna heal me so I can teach you to love and embrace your “too loud, too much, too often” too.... because I know how that story can unfold if I don’t.....
You see that tiny little seed of inadequacy will grow into a little girl who longs to be seen because she doesn’t feel loved. Then it blossoms into jealousy, envy and competitiveness because it’s watered with comparison of people “you ought to be like”. It creates this inner voice that says “YES! Be like her and you’ll finally be loved and good enough!”
That little girl then grows into a young lady who doesn’t really know who she is because she is always chasing who everyone wants her to be or said she should be, just hoping one day she would get it right 😔 that maybe one day she would be seen, TRULY seen and loved right where she was at, but as the years proved, she was only chasing unicorns......
That now unseen, envious, lost young lady grows into a woman that needs outside validation for inward gratification mixed with perfectionism who marries young hoping to finally feel loved and seen.....(insert me waving “Hi” here)
As broken as I was I married young and I definitely carried all that baggage with me into my marriage. A marriage that did not start off well........the marriage you see today took grit, work, prayer, counseling, time, patience and a lot of veteran wisdom because I was learning and healing with another person who had a broken inner child too.
I heard a lot of how I wasn’t good enough there too, but you see he could tell me exactly how and why I wasn’t. It was a different kind of “too loud, too much, too often” kind of song that played on repeat for quite some time in our marriage and Lord knows I pushed back and found myself right back in that cycle of a little girl who longed to be seen because she didn’t feel loved 😔
I chased jobs, modeling, new makeup trends, clubbing, shopping, anything really that gave me dopamine to starving myself to binging and purging to changing myself to meet what people needed while still feeling empty on the inside never truly being seen....afraid to move any kind of way because I didn’t want to upset those around me.....I feared loneliness because then I’d be left with this stranger I didn’t know.....
So, I stopped talking so much, I stopped laughing so loudly and I stopped smiling because I was a broken girl chasing unicorns just hoping I’d run into myself one day.
Now, a good 15 years later, I’m still searching for her even in the midst of parenting a younger me. I’m not chasing unicorns anymore because I found Jesus...again.....and again.........and again 😉 (it’s a lifetime journey I’m told 😉) but that seed is still there and I’ve spent the last decade uprooting it but every once in a while a new sprout pops up and I’m right back to being that little girl who fears not being good enough....
From lost friendships to truly being too much for some people, to being the family scapegoat, to being the girl that rarely gets asked to meet for coffee or invited to anything really, to being the lonely special needs mom that never gets asked for play dates or anything that blossoms a friendship to my phone only ringing when someone needs some to be their therapist to fear of failure, indecisiveness and crippling anxiety....
I’m a mess.......I get so tangled in the voices of who I should be that I can’t see who I am intended to be....
So, here’s to a new journey for the sake of my daughter.....a new blog series if you will 😉 where instead of chasing unicorns I’m going to chase Jesus.
Im going to discover me with Him, while embracing my “too loud, too much, too often” and praying He will meet me there......in the coffee shop because I decided to take myself out.....at the park with my kids because I decided to give them a play date or at the lunch date because I decided to take myself out.....and maybe....just maybe I’ll find myself there so my daughter can know what it means to fully know who you are in Christ and not carry these chains too ♥️
