Birthday

Today we celebrated Zee's 2nd birthday.  He is fantastic, amazing, wonderful, onery, and just about the culmination of everything I ever hoped to experience in adopting a child.  He is amazing.  He brings our entire family more joy than I can even express, but this post isn't about Zee.  This post is about Chi.

See Chi is everything I had hoped to avoid in adopting.  I apologize if this offends anyone, but I have to be real.  His special needs make me feel like a lunatic.   There seems to be no place I can zero in and be the hero for him.  He wants love but he rejects love.  He wants peace but spreads rage and chaos.  He is angry, neurologically impaired, and incredibly unsettling.
Yesterday, I watched his raging silence a store full of people.  He has a stealth mode.  He smiles and chats he can be Mr. Personality then something happens... This time it was something so mundane as not allowing him to carry a cleaner through the store.  First his back arches, his legs join the act, he moans, he throws himself in a jerky fashion to the ground and the screaming starts the screaming doesn't stop in 5 minutes it can go on and on and on.  An older lady walked up and asked him what was wrong and he stopped and stared blankly at her while she talked.  Then I announced we needed to check out, he puffed his arms out turned and gave me an angry glare and growled, "I Am NOT talkin to YOU."  Even Obee was shocked at his boldness.  I remained calm and told the boys it was time to go.  Cue the flailing, jerking, dancing like he has to pee, and screaming.  The older lady tried to calm him.  He turned his glare and screeching on her and the 15 or so adults around us went silent. Outside, I am the picture of calm, but inside?  Well, inside it's not pretty.   He did not stop screaming until we were home and then it was just long enough to tell me he was not going to his room.   Oh yes he was!

Here is the thing, I love Chi.  I mean I love him deeply.  I don't have any tricks left in my bag for Chi.  I have tried it all.  I have worked to change myself and my family for this little man, I have done so much to try and help him heal, but it doesn't work.  Nothing works for long.  Lots of things work for a little bit. My only remaing strategy that I cannot and will not abandon is prayer.  When he starts I try to remember to do nothing but pray.  Too often any other method seems only to place temporary bandages over a raging wound.  I don't remember to pray nearly enough.

Then there was tonight.  At the close of Zee's party I gave Chi a big bubble wand so he could run with the other kids as Chi had been so desperate to participate in the game.  In less than 2 minutes he had used it as weapon to inflict pain.  Ryan looked at me with incredulous  eyes.  Why would I even give Chi the opportunity to participate? We KNOW this boy.  Just as quickly he let it go.  We have to give Chi room to succeed too.  I looked Ryan in the eyes and we shared a soul moment.  "He is so hard," I whispered.  Ryan's eyes reflected my pain.  At the end of Zee's special night it was Chi we bundled into our bed for special time.  We talked with him about Dora and Spiderman, Mexican hats, and the Octopus he tells us lives in the pond.  We held hands and prayed over our boy and we prayed for ourselves.  We cannot abandon him to his anger and pain. He is 3.  He needs to know he isn't going to be abandoned again.

For better or worse he is our baby boy and we will stay in the trenches with him, because when he makes his silly faces and sings his silly songs and tells Cy, "Remember Mom loves you even though you got in trouble." It is enough.  I see him in there behind all the junk.  I see this amazing person under all that pain. I see the beautiful soul God put inside of Chi and I am so grateful that God gave me easy, breezy, Zee.  If I had been given only Chi maybe I wouldn't have held on long enough to see the beauty inside my beautiful Chi.  He is a strand of gold embedded in the rock, beautiful, and valuable,  and just waiting to be set free.