He calls me "Mom"

Early in Feb. Charity came to live with us. By the end of February, her older brother joined our family as well. We fully intended to be their forever family. Our whole hearts in love with them instantly. Just the same way we instantly fell in love with Blessing. The ghost's time with us was fairly short, he left our home at the end of May. It was our decision for him to leave, a decision that tore our hearts to pieces, and left us broken like never before. I cried. For months. Still do, at times.

His visit with us this weekend brought a wide range of feelings, each feeling an overwhelming rush, and each bringing with it a cycle of thought that only goes around and around and never really ends. Were we right? Were we wrong? Could we have done something different? Yet knowing it's impossible to pray harder, or to love more than I did... and still do.

He still calls me "mom". Yet, I can't be that to him. Does he still wish for that? Do I still wish for that? It was also obvious, though we enjoyed our visit with him, that we cannot be his forever family. We simply can not meet his needs as well as the needs of the rest of our children. It sounds so cruel. Saying those words is oh so painful.

His time living and then leaving us has taught me more than any other circumstance in my whole life. He taught me what I could handle. Actually, that's not true, he taught me what God's empowerment can allow me to handle. He taught me what I can't handle, a lesson that was much harder to learn. He taught me love isn't enough. He taught me that though my plan seemed much more magnificent, that God and I don't think alike. He taught me that the deepest desire, belief, and faith in healing doesn't mean it will come. He taught me that God's grace is, indeed, sufficient. That God is absolutely He who gives.... and He who takes away. He taught me that I will choose to follow with my life and say, "And if not....".

And it's most ironic that he dressed as, and is referred to in this post as "the ghost". Because his memory is much like that... I remember him with love and joy. The bike ramps and boots and dirty jeans and swinging from rafters were all things foreign. For a time, tutus and skirts and twirling girls were not the only things in my home. There was a boy. A loud boy who made me laugh, those full belly laughs, as he ran through the house in his batman pajamas, a sheet as his cape. A boy whose socks were never clean, and who left a rank smell in the van and his room and everywhere else he visited. A smell he was proud of. He was rambunctious and full of life and his smile could make my heart skip a beat. Yes, I loved being a mother to a boy. And yet his memory also brings sadness, and a pain that is haunting, allowing guilt and questions and anger to rise again. And I throw up my feelings all over my God and again, grace is sufficient.