A reality in adoption

Two nights ago we had a horrible night. I knew a night like this would come, but it didn’t make it less easy. M woke up crying at 12:30. I get to him one second after he wakes up as he is in a crib about 4 inches from our bed! He was screaming and after about 2 minutes I knew this was not a quick cry and back to sleep, so we left the room so Brandon could sleep. Once in the hallway, I could tell M was clearly upset. I changed his diaper and it was wet, that would make me upset too. That wasn’t the problem... I WAS the problem! My sweet child either had a dream about Ethiopia, was grieving leaving his nannies (and culture, language, smells, sounds etc), was dealing with some dark stuff or all of the above. Anyway, he looked at me with glazed eyes filled with fear and anger. My heart broke. He screamed in my arms, everything I tried to soothe him made it worse. I finally decided to lay down with him on another bed and put a wall of pillows on one side of the bed and me on the other side of the bed. This was a bit better as he didn’t want to have anything to do with me and this way he didn’t have to be held by me. My plan was to have him fall asleep and then carry him back to the crib. Well, he would start to calm down (I was making sure part of me was touching him the entire time) and then look and me and cry again. I just kept praying over him, demanding that darkness leave our home, calling on the Lord, and telling him “Mommy is staying here, mommy loves you.” At almost 3:00 after hours of prayer and tears the darkness left. My babies eyes were his again. He seemed to be very alert and actually a bit happy. I brought him downstairs and we looked out the windows as a huge blizzard was going on this entire time. After watching the blowing snow we laid on the couch and he fell asleep on my chest. I carried him upstairs and he woke up and needed another cuddle before he finally went back to sleep after 4:00 am. He was up for the day at 6:00... oh how I pray that is it! I am not sure it will be, but there was battle going on that night, and our God is higher than any other! We will take it each day and rejoice in the good! We know that God loves adoption... which leads us to... who hates adoption? The battle is real friends... as M is grafted into our family we pray that God will protect us and our home!

So, to those of you who ask how the sleeping is going... it isn’t predictable at all!