Something else happened when Ryan left. It triggered a lot of memories for our Etienne. He can't articulate specifics, but he can use words like "dark," and phrases like "I didn't want to be alone, I was scary." Not any descriptions that we have ever given for his birth country, the people or "his story." Not any descriptions that any child should ever choose for their memories.
This has changed me too. For two plus years, we have been telling Etienne and Ezekiel that before they came home, the people and the places that cared for them cared for them. For as long he either boy can remember, I have striven to paint their story happy. That our birth mamas couldn't give them food and clean water, but they knew a place that could. That their first family didn't have the means to give them what every little boy needs and deserves, but someone else could. But what if the reality isn't so? What if my son's beginnings were every parents fear?
Ultimately, everything broken is fixed the same way. Every healing comes from God. I know this, but I am grieving. I am grieving a story that was probably always fictional. I am grieving for my child that still has so many layers of hurt to heal. I am sad that my other children have watched him and their mama suffer. I just need to cry.
While my husband was out of town, I really held it together. I kept and will always keep a lot of the conversations that Etienne and I had in my heart and the back corners of my brain. Now that Ryan is home, I am overwhelmed with emotions. I am impatient, overly sensitive and dramatic. It took a sleepless night for me to realize that I just needed to process all that is. All that has been done.
"Then your light will break forth like the damn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go forth before you and the glory of the Lord will be your guard." -Isaiah 58:8
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