This is a letter I wrote and actually shared with my twins…..You know, after all this time (5 years)… I still love and miss them and hope one day they will get it and want to be a part of my life………..I can honestly tell you……No one could have tried harder than me…….but, no one could have messed it up more than I did………….KT 2009
Dear Jay and Dee-
This letter is long overdue……….. It has been seven years since you’ve walked through our door and into our hearts. You were the sweetest, cutest kids. We were the envy of our foster agency. You had the least amount of problems of any of the agency’s kids. Little did we know there was a severe RAD-storm brewing within those precious little bodies of yours.
These last two years, I have been trapped in a pool of bitterness, disappointment, anger and regret. I have decided that I do not like who and what I have become because of the stress of living with RAD. No one can change anyone, so I know I have to change myself……… That means the way I look at you….. needs revamping.
You are fragrant roses………. So many times, I have been poked and pricked by your thorns. I count them on each stem and notice how they grow larger and more in number. I distance myself to avoid the pain of being stuck again. For so long, I have ignored your buds forming slowly, mysteriously. They are so delicate and cannot be forced to bloom before their time. Seeing them gives me hope to search for reasons to be thankful that you came to us. I have discovered far more reasons than I thought there would be. I began looking, petal by petal, to find the beauty of knowing you………
The one area in my life, which has grown the most, is my spiritual life. I owe that to the two of you. That in and of itself, is truly worth all the tears I've shed and all the pain I've felt over these last years. I have pondered these past years over how incredibly strong your essence is tied to your birth-parents. No matter how good we are to you, and how poor they were to you…….. that tie seems unbreakable. You grow to look more like them everyday.…………. It makes me think about God…………..God created us……..He is our birth-father. No matter how far away from God I get, there is something deep within me that tells me I am His. There is a void in me only He can fill, no matter how good the world is to me. The goodness in me is from my Heavenly Father, not from myself, or the world around me. It is part of my birthright.
So often, you are stuck, unable to heal and grow. I see such anger. You are angry that your birth-family did this to you, you are angry that God let it happen, and you are angry that we are willing to love you when your birth-family wouldn’t. It is this anger and unforgiveness that keeps you stuck. It teaches me why God says that if we do not forgive those who have sinned against us, He will turn us over to the tormentors. You are tormented by life. You do not believe that you deserve love, you do not believe that we will not give up on you, you believe that all that's happened to you is your fault…………………………. Because of you, I can see why it is so important to forgive others. It has to happen in order to begin healing. You must forgive the past and I must forgive you, so that we can heal together.
Lies………… The lies you tell……….. The lies you believe……….. Like Alice in Wonderland, you have been sucked into a different world with a different reality. You view this world through the looking-glass of lies. It shows me so clearly what Christ meant when He says, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." I can see how I sometimes tell myself lies too, which push me into depression. I tell myself I am not worthy of your love, I must not be a good mother, or that you will never heal. These lies will not only destroy me, but they will hurt you as well. If you can grasp God's truth, that you are worthy and deserving of love, that what your birth-family did to you was their own sin, and that God and others want to help you heal………And, if I can believe that I am a good mom, that you can heal, and your feelings towards me are not truth, we will soon find ourselves walking down the road towards freedom………… maybe even doing it together.
Another thing you have taught me, is through your incredible ability to act. For the world, you portray such sweet, innocent, precious children, while the family has to live with the real you………….. gross, disrespectful, rebellious. As much as I hate it, I must admit it is something we all do. Jesus confronted the Pharisees about their hypocritical lives. They paraded around acting holy and righteous while their hearts were very ungodly. I, too, fall into that trap as I try to live out my faith, switching between my selfish, sinful, self and the person I truly want to be. You have helped me to see why God hates it so much.
Often, you view your consequences as abuse and undeserved. You only want good things from us and don't want boundaries placed around you, or have any accountability. I am often very much like that with God. I only want His blessings. I don't want to be disciplined. I don't believe that He should ever allow me to suffer. I justify going against His laws which were given to me for my own good. I get angry at Him when things do not go my way. When I decide to do what is right, I think that God should remove all past consequences from my earlier behaviors. Once again I see, we are very much alike.
I tire so much of the constant discipline. Instead, I want to do fun things with you. I want to feel good being with you. I get so sick of having to constantly correct you. I get frustrated when I don't see you growing and maturing, and making better choices……….. That is how God is with me!! He wants to have a loving, giving relationship with me. He doesn't want to be the big, bad, heavy hand. He wants to love on me and bless me, comfort me and be with me. How He must grieve when I get rebellious and reject Him. It must sadden Him, when year after year, some of us only become more ungodly, more stubborn, and even blame Him for our plight. So, when I see you behaving that way towards me, it reminds me to make sure that things are right between God and myself.
There are those times when you completely rebel at all your rules. Then, there are times when you try to follow your rules, but resent it. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you seem to keep messing up. I can tell that you still hate me but only want the rewards of being good. You easily get frustrated and revert to full rebellion………….. The best times, however, are those short-lived moments when you are soft and pliable. There is a sense that you love us and care. It is then that you do a great job following rules. It's almost as if you are not even trying to be good. Your desire to please us and do good is enough; you do not even need rules because your desire to please is genuine, therefore your actions just coincide with what you know we want from you……………. That is how it is with God. Some people do not want anything to do with God and hate His laws. Some people go to church to look good and try not to break any of the Ten Commandments. Often, these people easily fall into temptations and sin. Then there are those that love God, long to be with Him, strive to please Him and do good. Doing right comes easier, because of our relationship with Him. We naturally are repulsed by bad things and hunger for the good things. You have made the difference in these attitudes so clear to me…….. thank you.
When I look at your bare empty bedrooms, it makes me sad. I remember how beautiful they once were. They were filled with precious possessions, things to bring you joy and comfort, things pleasing to the eye and to remind you of our love for you. I long for you to accept all the good things I want to give you, even when you behave poorly. That is how God is with us as well. I know there are times I have disobeyed God or have done my own thing without seeking His will. I find myself without. Who knows how many blessings I've robbed myself of through my disobedience to Him. You have also shown me what true friendship is. A friend is not someone in your life that agrees with you all the time, understands everything that is going on, leaves when the going gets rough, or judges you unfairly. You have ran off all of our "friends" and family who are like that, leaving only our true friends. They are the ones who don't judge us, try to encourage us, help us when we need it, try to understand even if they can't, and give us constructive criticism without shaming. One true friend is a very valuable find. Thank you for showing me the true gems in my life. This has also helped me not to be so quick to judge others. Now, I consider that maybe I do not see the whole picture in a given situation and give people the benefit of doubt. Thank you.
When you give your best to everyone but me, I get so jealous. I see you, or hear how you have been sweet, loving, funny, pleasant, and helpful. I want that part of you. I hate when you share it with anyone and everyone, as long as it's not me. God says, "I am a jealous God. You shall have no other god's before me." The pain He must feel when we give so much of ourselves to other gods. How many hours do we sacrifice to reading, watching tv, computing, playing, listening to the radio? It must hurt God so much when at the end of the day we've only given Him minutes of ourselves or less. You have taught me what that feels like. Now, I am careful to save quality time for Him.
And most importantly, what you have shown me is why God would send His Son to die for us and what it does to Him when we reject that. Many RAD-families have sacrificed so much for you kids. We have given until it hurts. Our other children have suffered, and so has our finances, our peace and stability. We have given it because we love you. We gave it even before we knew you very well. We did it even while you hated and rejected us. We did it because we wanted you free. We wanted you to feel loved and be able to give love. It could not happen without sacrifice. So God, too, knew there must be sacrifice in order for us to truly know we were loved. And, when we reject the sacrifice He made for us, I cannot imagine how that must grieve Him, when it hurts so incredibly bad when you reject all that we have done for you out of love.
So, my precious RADs, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making God's word and His work come so alive. Thank you for showing me how I must make my Heavenly Father feel at times. It has made me far more sensitive to Him. It has helped me understand His unconditional love for me. It helps me to understand how it all works and what I must do to have a relationship with Him, because it is exactly what you must do to have a relationship with me. And, if
I can model that for you by my relationship with Him, maybe it will help you as well. So, like God, I will be patient. You can push me away, but like God, I will keep loving you. You can reject all we have to give you, but we will keep offering it to you. You can keep walking the path of destruction, but we will try and protect you as the angels of God protect us. You can keep trying to do it alone and we will keep praying that you will see your need for us, and more importantly, for God. Without you and all we have been through together, I would never truly know how to please my Heavenly Father, how to have a meaningful relationship with Him, and in what ways I withhold myself from Him. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Love,
The tender of a rose garden, your mom, not the one who bore you, but the one that bears you everyday
