No One is Coming for Us

Recently LLM has been playing a game he call “The Mommy T Game” (not her real initial.) This game involves LLM pretending he is a baby and asking me to pretend I am Mommy T.  In the “game” he cries and I am supposed to ignore him. He asks for a bottle, I am supposed to tell him we have no milk. He asks to get out of his “crib” (he makes a pile of blankets) and I’m supposed to say “No!” This game also involves a lot of pretending to drive around in a car.

It’s hard for me to play. I hate pretending to neglect him, and I struggle with the reality that this is what he chooses to do when we have one-on-one playtime. I realize I am incredibly lucky to get this glimpse into his past experiences or perceived past experiences, but honestly, it bleeds me dry.

Many days, I feel like at a very base level he doesn’t trust me.  When we play this game, I am reminded that he has good reasons not to.  There was a time in his life that I couldn’t protect him.

Some days I can’t help but feel like I’m paying for someone else’s mistakes. Some days I have so much anger towards the people who failed him that I want to scream.  Some days I do scream.  

Some days I feel like I am absorbing the generations of pain that had set out to manifest in my little boy.  The Lord saw fit to change the direction of his life, but all that crap still has to go somewhere.

And I wish I could just absorb all the crap for him with a smile but instead it feels like now I’m rotting too… And I just don’t know how much longer we can keep doing this when we don’t seem to be getting any better.

We have sought help many places, and we continue to do so. And I am thankful that we have adopted during a time when parents and professionals are learning so much about how trauma affects the brain. I am so lucky compared to the legions of loving parents who have gone before me, trying to heal invisible wounds that had no name.  I cannot imagine doing this type of parenting without the support and resources that I have at my disposal.

And yet many days it is so very lonely and bleak…

We visited the pediatrician last week about an issue I’m unsure is physiological, behavioral or both.  The doctor offered little help, saying we needed to resolve another issue before addressing this one…Yeah, I know…that’s why I’M HERE! sigh…

As my son’s play therapist left this morning her last words to me were “He is very perplexing.”  Gee thanks…  

We saw a psychologist who, after hearing LLM’s story responded, “Haven’t we all had trauma?” Yeah I suppose we have, but we aren’t all diagnosed with PTSD before we’re out of diapers….

When no one’s offering solutions, only more referrals and I only have enough hope to struggle through the next moment, and I know that I’m the only one losing sleep, getting fatter and feeling myself fade, frantic for guidance about what our next step should be the realization hits me…

No one is coming for us.  

No doctor. No counselor. There’s not an essential oil or perfect diet that is going heal these particular hurts.

No one is coming for us.  

And that’s ok.

Because He already came. 

He who made the mountains, watched over my sweet boy crying for milk. He who created coral and octopi, sunsets and Redwoods, who owns eternity forwards and back, has not missed one second of our pain. And while I can’t fathom why He has allowed it, I choose to defer to His great plans for our lives. I believe He set aside his glory to suffer for my sins, for all sins, and that means I’m fighting a battle that has already been won. 

I’m forgiven, so I can forgive. 

My pain has been absorbed, so I can absorb LLM’s.

I may feel like the bottom line, but I am not.  I couldn’t be if I wanted to.