lena

i lay in bed with her and tell her once again that i am sorry.  it's dusk and there are 14 small windows in her room, each giving the last light of day a few more moments with lena before they are both asleep.  i whisper to her things without having any idea which parts she understands.  but as i whisper, those green eyes look off and around and finally meet mine.  in that rare and fleeting moment of eye-to-eye, i still don't know what she understands, but i know she hears me.  i know she knows i am her momma.  and i know that she knows that she is loved.  

her eyes move on from mine, but i'm locked in and i keep whispering.

i know this life has been unfair to you and i am so so sorry.

i'm sorry i try to fix you when only He is healer, i know He is.

i know i let you down sometimes, but i am always asking Jesus to help me mother you and i know He will because it is who He is ya know... Help, Rescue.

they are wrong.  all the world that would see you as broken, sweet love, they are wrong.  we are all so broken.  the piece of the shattered world that made it so you were in that place for so long.  that is the brokenness, my beloved daughter, not you.

and then, what i whisper not just on this night, but every night...

mom loves you, Jesus love you, He made you perfect and wonderful.

she used to look like this..

and now she looks like this...

i don't write about lena a whole lot on here.  i barely really even talk about what it is to be her mom in the deepest part of my heart to many of my friends because...well, i just can't do it.  it's too much beautiful for my heart to take and words don't ever do justice to all that is inside.  

it's many moments of looking back on despair.  just because we crossed the ocean with lena doesn't mean we left all of that over there...and the wrestling with what we did leave there, well, that's another story.  the other day was a really hard day with her.  unless you see it, it's hard to know what a hard day with lena is like.  but there are layers upon layers.  things that have to do with a diagnosis but mostly a lot of reminders of where she was.  and don't get me wrong, there are days thick with sadness and then bursting in like the dust popping off the sofa with a pat of the hand...hope drifts up and all around.  that's when you see light...on each spec of hope.  

in october of 2011, she used to sleep here, that is actually her in mid-rock. back and forth like a teeter totter with her body because she has nothing else to do...

and now she sleeps here (on the rare occasion that she actually sleeps, this is still a major work in progress)...

and this is how she ate, how she was fed...

and this is now how she is eating, feeding herself, only 18 months after the previous picture

do you see it all?

and i'm not someone looking at a few pictures, i'm living the whole hard and beautiful story unfolding. it's really hard and it's really really wonderful.  

she won't quit hitting her head and i don't know why she's hitting her head this time.  

and she learns to walk up stairs at the playground and scoot herself off the edge of the slide and slide down by herself.  

and she cries and cries until i finally realize she wants cereal and she doesn't want grapes.  

and she can have a choice of cereal or grapes and we figure it out because she is rocking learning how do sign cereal and grapes!

and she is beginning to get ready for bed by herself, opening her toothpaste drawer, taking out the toothpaste/brush, turning on the sink, brushing her hair.

and everyone is staring at the farmers market when we're trying walking instead of the wheelchair and lena is screaming mad, head hitting, hair pulling, stomping her feet then falling to the cement, crying.  

and to everyone staring, i wanna scream out 

"do you have any idea how you would act if you spent even a day where she was for 4 long years!!"

 and then...through all of that, when the day is done...

i need to go through these pictures.  after some hard days and even after good days, i need to slam my hand hard on the dusty couch, sit still and see the light all over each spec.  

do you see it in those pictures, too?  all the brokenness of the world and then so much hope.  

so much glory.  

so much beauty and renewal and life.  

and i just sit and watch it all and can hardly breathe.  why?  why would He choose me to be her mom, when i don't deserver her.

and all that Jesus has said He is, He is...and when lena flashes that snaggletooth smile, i can't explain it any other way than to just say He is.  

this was our holding her in the orphanage trying to walk her around and then her laying on the floor to play with her & talk to her, because all she was really used to was lying down.

and this summer, less than 2 years after coming home, she walked independently past kids kicking soccer balls and she smiles at lunch because she always gets giddy about half way through a meal when it all hits her belly...

"i think of all the things you and i could remember that would not bring us peace at all, but i believe...that way beyond all those things, and the innermost heart, at the farthest reach, of our remembering, there is peace. the secret place of the Most High is there." 

--fredrick buechner