A PLACE CALLED HOME

A year ago today, in the rural province of Guizhou, China, our hearts were anxious with the excitement of finally holding our long-awaited treasure. As we rode down the elevator and the doors opened, we heard her voice, her cries for help, even before we saw her sweet little face. The terrified screams of a 17 month old toddler filled the entire lobby.

Shaking and scared, my own excitement of having the perfect pictures to document this wonderful day and the thrill of finally holding our daughter immediately faded as I began to feel the weight of the decision we were making. Right then and there, my heart leapt into action. I was no longer motivated by a lovely dream, but the somber reality of a desperate need. This terrified little one was suddenly all alone in this great big world. She needed a mommy. And I had chosen to be that for her. As she stood helplessly pointing to the door and crying out in Chinese over and over again to be taken back to the only home she had ever known, one thing was clear, we had traded the journey of waiting for a new journey toward healing her heart.

The deep sobs of grief, the heart wails for the one who is missing, these are the cries of brokenness. I knew them well. My heart ached with the pain she felt for I too have grieved for a loved one lost, my sweet little boy, Hayden. How she longed to hold onto the past even as we were desperately trying to make her cling to the present.  It has been months and months of sorrow coupled with months and months of new beginnings. That afternoon, in the summer heat of China, I quietly bent down and scooped her up, held her close, and rubbed her back. I didn't have the words I have now. I couldn't say to her, "Hello, I am your mommy." I didn't believe I was her mommy. I was just some strange lady who was taking her away from the people she loved and her wonderful foster mother. I honestly didn't know if I would ever feel like I could take her place. I will never forget what happened next. My legs and arms seemed to go into auto-mode as I saw myself lifting up this bundle of sadness and immediately I began to comfort and hold and soothe. Within the span of an hour, I had changed her diaper, her clothes, given her a bath, fed her, and sang her to sleep. I didn't think I was her mommy, but I could pretend to be, for awhile, I could pretend. Her screams slowly subsided and over the next two weeks as we traveled through China in order to complete her adoption, it became clear to us, that this was a little girl who had been deeply, deeply loved. She knew a home, she knew a mother's love, she was grieving and heartbroken and for the next six months she would cry herself to sleep every single night. She never did stop asking for me to take her home, take her back to her Nai Nai, and let her Nai Nai hold her. And I never did stop pretending to be her mommy, hoping someday it would feel real and like the Velveteen Rabbit I would wake up in her nursery and find that over night our love for each other had become whole. She was already bonded with David and attached completely. So then why was it taking so long for her to feel this way about me too?

The transition into our family has not been easy for her. Many days of searching for answers and wondering if she would ever feel completely my own. I too had a need. A need for me to be first in her heart. I felt the competition grow between myself and her foster mother. At night she would cry out for Nai Nai to sleep with her and during the day she would cry for Nai Nai to bao. I knew I did not measure up to the love she had for this woman, nor was there anyway I could change the fact that she had not come to us as a baby. She was a toddler full of memories. And we struggled to love her at the same time she was rejecting us.

To hold my heart out for her to break was not easy and I failed most days to keep doing it. It just hurt to badly. I prayed for help and there were nights I cried myself to sleep wondering if I would ever be good enough for her to love me. I pleaded with her to just give me a small part of her heart. Just a little window to look into her soul to see if there was any hope for us and what could be.

And then one morning, after an hour long tantrum about nothing in particular, I was holding her on my lap trying to soothe away her sadness, when she reached up and gave me a big bear hug and slowly began to pat my back in the same way I had rubbed her back that very first day in China. She does love me I thought. She is loving me. The tears of newness came and watered my hardened heart as love began to sprout and grow below the surface. Days of loving me turned into weeks and then into months. It was a two steps forward, four steps back kind of change. Not all at once and not lasting for long at first, but slowly growing and changing in both of us. And then one day as I was combing her hair and changing her clothes, I found myself singing and I giggled at her joyful smile, and I knew that I was no longer just pretending - I was actually being. I was her Mommy. I heard God whisper, "See I am doing something new! Do you not perceive it?" Yes God! Please, keep doing something new!

In trying to capture what was missing in our relationship, I had held onto the emotional pieces of her past for too long. That, coupled with my own heart's grieving over not being there for her from the very beginning, was slowing down any healing that might take place. I was holding onto the idea of her past when in fact, she was ready to move forward. I was trying to be what she was missing, her Nai Nai. Instead, God showed me I could be something new - I could be her Mommy. I didn't have to compete with her Nai Nai's love, I could combine my love with that love and create something new. I began to hold her and ask her if she missed her Nai Nai and oh the crying and grieving she did as I held her and talked about China and that Nai Nai was all gone, but that she loved her and wanted Mommy to hold her and love her too. Slowly, like a soft gentle rain that over a long days time soaks the earth with its goodness, she began to embrace me. Not hug me from guilt, not cling to me from fear, not out of jealousy love me, but truly on her own, initiate love. Spontaneous hugs. Unplanned kisses. Purposeful requests. "Mommy pat my back." "Mommy you hug me too." "Mommy I sit your lap." "Mommy I want you love me."

For most of this year, I have found it nearly impossible to write these next few words. I have cried and cried because I could not write them and wished and hoped that one day I would be able too.


"It feels as if she has always been here."


I have typed them out numerous times, but each time I found myself deleting them. It simply was not true. For a long, long time, she was a stranger living among us. And we felt the difference, the sadness clouded her eyes and our days with sorrow.

Walking around on egg-shells trying to not make her upset, there were mornings I prayed she would sleep-in and that I could have a few moments alone just like the days before she came to us. I prayed for peace. For quiet. For calm. The truth is in the eye of this storm I cried out for a reason why I should be made to continue to deal with this adjustment. Wondering who I could give her too? Who would love her and care for her and help her? I remember screaming up to the sky, "After all God, haven't I been through enough! Grieving for the son you took from me and now this too! A child who hates me! Why are you doing this to me?!" The heavens rang with eerie silence and I found myself alone in the midst of it all and all I could do was just the next thing.

I tried to keep my heart out of it. I tried to be neutral, but I was desperate too. How I wanted her to love me. I wanted her to need me. I wished for her to smile and play with me like I had dreamed. I longed to be able to say, "It feels as if she has always been here." I wanted that for her as much as for me. I wanted her to feel that way too. In fact, I purposely avoided that phrase. While reading the blogs of adoptive families who had just arrived home, I could feel the text building up to the grand crescendo of "always been here" and I would quickly close out of the site. It was so difficult at times because there was always the question haunting us, "Why is it so hard for us? Why can't our experience be like that?" You can never know the depths of grief not the heights of love until you have journeyed through them both. And so it is with Jessa. She has given us the greatest joys and the greatest sorrows, and we pray constantly for more joy. It has been difficult beyond our coping at times to deal with the grieving, the rejection, the tantrums. God has been so faithful to bring families and counselors into our journey who have gone through similar trials and have learned how to love beyond them. What a gift to be able to talk with another mommy and have her tell us that it will get better, lots more time, lots more prayer, and it will get better. Even though we know there will always be an emotional trauma in her little heart that only God's love can make whole. How we pray that she will come to know "how wide and long and deep" the love of God is and to let Him heal the broken places.

It still is not easy, but then I guess if it was, maybe I would take our relationship for granted. Instead, I am always journeying toward her, reaching, praying, hoping for more. I still long for her to love me fully, but there are days, and weeks at a time now, where I know that she is fully mine and I know she loves me as her Mommy. 

She may need a lifetime of reassurance. "Mommy's here. Mommy will bao. Mommy ai ni." David and I are both committed to giving her that comfort because she is so precious to our family. Along with her trials and tantrums, there is a very real place in my soul that knows despite the hardest of days, I love this little girl as my very own daughter and I would choose to do them all over again. Out of all the little girls in China, I would choose her. I would choose our sweet and beautiful, tender-hearted, Jessa Li Hope. She is mine. She is that much a part of who I am becoming. She has changed so much in me, for good. I am not the same person, but I don't think I want to be. I know now the price of love and the work it takes to trust someone and the reason God's grace is free for if it cost me I would be in poverty. I can see my adoption into His family so clearly now. The sacrifice He made for me even while I was rejecting His love. How He chose me to be His daughter. The desire He has to be first in my own heart. The way I grieve him when I turn away, the way I bring him great joy when I give love completely. God is faithful. He is teaching and changing so much in me. So much in her.

I can't be her first mother, I can't be her foster grandma, but I can be her mommy now and for the rest of her life. Maybe one day, when she looks back on all the women who have shaped her life, she will see a group of women who were courageous for the choices they made, full of hope and determination, who loved her completely each of them and tried desperately to give her the best of themselves in the time God had given them. And looking back now, I know how silly that was to want to be first in her heart because really there is room for us all. She doesn't have to choose. God has given her the amazing gift of all of us. There is no first place, nor second, nor third. She loves us each uniquely, and if there was a place for her to put me - then I'd like to think that place is home, for it is and always will be, hers.

Happy Forever Family Day Jessa Li Hope!