Bind Us Together

When I was in medical school, I hated my surgery rotations with a passion. Standing still in a sterile field in the operating room for hours on end was just too much for my  ADD-self to handle. But, I remember how much I loved the end of each surgery, when medical students got to do more than just stand there and hold the retractor- we got to help "close up."  Layer by layer, the patient's body would be stitched back together from the inside out. Every layer required a different type of suture material and a different kind of stitch. 

This slow and careful sewing back together of a newly healed body is what I think about when I read verses like:

 "God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds," Psalm 147:3

Or 

 "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted," Isaiah 61:1

 I love this image of God as the healer of our broken hearts. It is intimate and organic and in it we see God as the Great Surgeon, the Mighty Healer, who knows our inner most wounds and WANTS TO HEAL THEM.  

He stitches us back together from the inside out and is not satisfied until His Spirit has healed the deepest, darkest places of our soul. The places we are afraid to acknowledge and don't want anyone else to see. Those are the deep hurts God is waiting to heal. Only then, once the shame, rejection, hurt, and pain have been opened up and taken out, can God begin to stitch us back together and heal our brokenness. 

 There is deliberateness and there is gentleness in this picture of God who wants to be the healer of our hearts. 

The promise that God is a healer of all our brokenness is an ancient one that is woven into the very fabric of our faith. This is the promise that I am claiming for myself but also for my son.  

I also know that there would be no hope for any of us, no promise to believe in, if it weren't for the beautiful, mysterious thing called grace. Grace that goes before us, always there, whether we see it or not. 

Grace was there, though not yet seen, in every event that led us to becoming Carter's parents. Grace was there with Carter when no one else was there with him.  Grace was there for all the moments we were not. Grace is even waiting for us on that hard, hard day a few years from now when we will have to start answering his questions about how he came to be Carter and who he was before that. 

       (Our first day together, exhausted from crying, keeping his bunny as a barrier between us.)

It is Grace that will bring healing to his heart. Layer by layer. Stitch by stitch.  

My job and Justin's job is to love and parent with our feet planted firmly in that promise.  To believe for Carter until he can believe for himself that because of grace, love will heal his wounded heart. 

While we are still rejoicing that Carter had a foster grandmother to love and dote on him, we are trying to learn how to get him to UN-learn some things. (Like don't yank your brother's hair when he makes you mad.) It is not as simple as saying, "He obviously was spoiled, so just stop spoiling him."  Before he was given so much love from his Nai Nai, we believe he was in a different foster home where he was not cared for nearly as well. Before that, he spent his first year in an orphanage. Before that, he was a baby who was abandoned by his birth mother at an age when he surely already knew his mother's face, voice, and smile. 

These are the layers we will be trying to unravel as we build our own bonds with Carter.  These are the layers that only time, love, and grace can heal. 

The one big word, the thing most people worry about when it comes to raising an adopted child is attachment. I have come to think of attachment as an invisible cord connecting us to Carter and Carter to us. 

It must be woven tighter and stronger....

day by day....

bit by bit.....

I say all this so that you will know that while we are bringing home a twenty-two month old toddler, Carter's attachment age is that of a newborn.  When he cries, we will respond.  Until we have signs that Carter's attachment is forming well, we will be the only ones caring for him. So, please don't be offended if we don't hand him over to you to hold and if we seem a little over protective when we are out and about.  He needs to know that we are his forever family and not just a group of new caregivers who are waiting to pass him over to the next group that comes along.  We may even look like we are "spoiling" him but there are reasons behind every "yes" and every "no" we decide to give.

We don't need your advice (unless we ask for it) but we do need your prayers,  your encouragement, and a whole lot of grace.