“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” John 1:5

Emma’s 13th summer was hard.  Between the typical 13 year old girl drama, Attachment issues and ADHD she was rough and this mama was STRUGGLING!!  I felt I could do nothing right. She was very angry and most of that anger was directed at me. One day, after yet another shouting match, I calmed down enough to begin to see that there was something else going on. She was really hurting and I had been so frustrated and focused on the behavior that I did not see it.

I sat her down and began to ask heart questions. At first she blamed all her feelings and  behavior on me, on her brother moving away, on being bored….the list went on. But I knew in my spirit that there was something much deeper going on, so I continued to pry and pray for THREE HOURS. Finally she burst into tears and screamed that she hated her birth mom for giving her up.  OK now we were getting somewhere. She lamented that her birth mom gave her up because she was not valuable enough to fight for.

Adoption is beautiful….all the loss that happens before adoption is brutal!

Because Emma had stuffed and not expressed all she was feeling those feelings had festered and become unbelievably destructive!  She became stuck in a vortex of anger and bitterness because she believed that she was not worth fighting for.

Here’s the thing, we can only heal from what is TRUE. As long as she believed that she was not worthy of saving she was going to be stuck. I am so glad she was brave enough to express what she was feeling! When she was honest  and open with her feelings I was able to shine the truth into her sweet little heart. sharing how she felt made it possible for her to exchange the lie of “I am not worth enough to fight for” with “I am sad that my birth mom did not keep me” And this allowed the healing to begin.

The truth is, Jesus deemed her so valuable that HE died for her and WE deemed her so valuable that we traveled around the world to rescue her.

What a privilege it is to walk with Emma through the process of forgiving her birth mom, to give her a safe place to be sad and mad and confused. As I validate her feelings, because feelings are never wrong, she is able to process and emote in a healing, healthy way….

She could not feel loved by the family she has until she grieved the family she lost. And she could not enter into her sadness until she let go of the anger. She could not grieve until she forgave.

Of course this is a life long walk. The wounds are no longer hidden infections threatening to turn septic an any moment. They have begun to heal, but they are still very sore. They have grown scabs that some days she is tempted to pick at.  As her mom I have the privilege of treating them with the salve of unconditional love. I point her to the one who heals and trust that one day, with HIS, help only scars will remain……there will always be the scars.

But they will be reminders, not definers.

I pray that they will remind her of how much she is loved, that they will remind her that she was worth fighting for and that they will remind her that her past does not define her future.

I will share more about the power of filling the gap with grace next week . For now just let me share that filling the gap of what we know about Emma’s birth mom and what we do not know with the kindest explanation has made all the difference.