The days have passed so quickly lately that every night has met me far before I have finished my to do list and long after my tired body has begun to crave the blessed oblivion of sleep.
Please excuse the abundance of Nutcracker photos I posted without captions, but I wanted to get them on my blog so I would have them for the children in the future.
Many have asked which of our children danced. Evan is the Nephew and is the tall young man in the camel colored tuxedo jacket. Colin is Fritz, and he is in the green velvet suit, and white prince outfit. He is the boy in white in the front with his arm raised at the curtain call. Victoria is a big angel, a soldier, and a Punchinelle. Little Sophia is little angel and a soldier.
The performance is extremely professional and a wonderful thing to be a part of albeit exhausting for the mother.
We are all doing well.
The girls amaze me everyday with all the English they are learning. They are so excited about Christmas. Tonight Eliza asked so many questions about how we celebrate. She is just giddy with excitement.
It almost seems like the girl’s emotional stability has flipped flopped. Eliza seems settled and comfortable, and almost easy going. She seems to go with the flow, is eager to obey, and sweet when I gently correct her. I have no doubt she loves her life here with us. She is content, bright, playful and has so many different relationships with her brothers and sisters.
Evangeline is having more issues now. She is having times when she just rages. She cries and kicks and screams for a good hour. On every occasion I have ended up holding her until she has settled down. Throughout every incident, I just keep telling her I love her and holding her tight. Someday I pray she will know deep down inside how much we really do love her.
Today she screamed, “You’re not my mother. You don’t love me. You love family, but not me.”
How I wish I could open up my heart and show her a picture of how incredibly I love her. God has filled our hearts with so much love for these precious girls. Someone said to me when we had only been home a couple of weeks, “They’ll never be your babies.” And I have to say, they were absolutely wrong. They are my babies, just as surely as our nine biological children are my babies. They are my precious, precious daughters.
Most of the time, Evangeline is so sweet and happy. I can tell she genuinely loves us. She tells me how much she loves her family. She just has born so much in her short little life, so much loss, so much poverty, so much hunger, and so much illness.
In a way, I’m thankful Evangeline is raging. It shows she feels comfortable and secure enough here to let out the confusion, hurt and anger of the years past, and it allows me the incredible blessing and privilege of being her comforter.
When I’m holding her, and she is just sobbing, I think of that precious serene little face I saw on Facebook of the amazing little girl who had loved and protected her tiny friend in the orphanage. I think of how I knew the moment I saw her that she was my Evangeline and no matter what it took, I was going to bring her home.
And I feel like I am the most blessed mother in the world to have her in my arms sharing her pain with me.
There are not enough words in the English language to adequately express what a joy it is to have our girls home and have the privilege of watching them blossom into the happy little girls God created them to be.
Blessings All!
You are such a good mom! Grief is so hard and ugly but you are the best person to walk her through it. Just keep swimming!
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Prayers for you…
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Just keep it up. I know there are days when you must question–what? why? how? Just keep loving and caring. Eventually they will see. They will feel. Every child is UNIQUE–Aren’t we thankful? Every child grieves differently and right now you have 2 still very emotionally fragile children. You will see the fruits of your hard, tiresome, labor. A few months from now–you will look back and wonder and think–wow! We’ve come a long way! You will rejoice and celebrate the victories. And you will continue to work on the things that they need.
If at all possible–you and your husband might need to have a date night too! I know I needed that and didn’t think it could happen, but we did manage a few hours of just us and we really relished that time.
Still praying for you guys!