Six months ago, we made the decision to adopt Victoria. She had been in the Foster Care system in the State of Missouri for a couple of years. She is someone I've known since she was 4 years old. She's now 15.
At the age of 14 months, Vic was removed from her birth mother's home in the Novosibirsk region of Russia and placed in an orphanage. By the time a family from America adopted her at the age of 4, she'd lived in 2 different orphanages.
She was adopted by a family I attended church with. One of our first clues that things wouldn't go right was the fact that when this sweet baby girl spoke Russian, she would get punished. No Russian language was allowed. I remember what a time of struggle it was for this family. They felt compelled by God to adopt 2 children from Russia. I know for a fact that these parents loved this child and the little boy that they adopted at the same time, from the same orphanage. They had such dreams of helping these children live a better life than what they would have had in Russia, perhaps.
Fast forward several years. Vic's parents enrolled her in my choir ministry. She and her brother participated in the KCC for several years. Vic was a charming little girl, and I grew very close to her. Things seemed to be going well, but there was an undercurrent in this family that was not good.
I understand that there are many problems, i.e. difficulties in raising a child who has been taken from everything she's known and thrust into a whole new lifestyle and culture. There will be behavioral problems associated with feelings of loss and abandonment. This is a normal consequence of being taken away from what you've known. The problem lies with the fact that the parents were unable to psychologically deal with these issues and chose a way to handle the behavioral problems in such a manner as to not help the situation. Because of the inability to be a cohesive family unit, the parents decided that the best thing for these two kids was to have them removed from the home. They felt that the children were a threat to not only them, but to their other two children.
Vic was placed in a group home for troubled kids of the worst kind. Most kids live there for 3 months while attending family therapy. Vic was there for a year and 9 months. Her adopted brother has not been seen and was placed in a facility out of state.
While at this facility, Vic was exposed to horrible things, and subsequently, her behavior did not improve, but ideas and ideologies that are NOT of God were allowed to invade her soul. Vic did not want to go home nor try to repair the relationship between her and her mother. After living in this facility for a year, Vic found out at one of her court hearings that the adoptive parents consented to give up their parental rights. NO ONE told Vic about this prior to the court appearance. She heard it from the Judge. Not a good thing.
Fast forward two years. Vic was placed into another facility in a different city, one which housed only teenage girls. Still, people who worked with Vic said that she needed a HOME with loving parents, and that there was not any psychosis involved with her.
Vic reached out to me. I accepted the call to be her mother. The Lord's hand has been evident in all aspects of having Vic become a member of our family. That is another long story. Don & I are very happy to have her be a part of our family unit.
Because of the past life she lived at the first facility, and the experiences she had there, and her experiences in her life with the first adoptive family, Vic feels unworthy of being in a loving family. This has been a struggle to try to teach her that she IS worthy and DOES deserve the good things in life. She bears the brunt of the responsibility of what went wrong in her first family. She wants to "be bad." She wants to be on her own without anyone telling her what to do. She said she wants to drink, smoke and have sex. This is a 15 year old girl with the social maturity of a 12 year old, a young lady who was exposed to the gay & lesbian lifestyle, and exposed to a lot of violence aimed towards her at this first facility. She had to learn to be a "badass". She had to learn to fight. She felt safe in lockup, which was a concrete cell block with no furnishings in it. She wanted to hurt herself. The hurts and pains run so very deep within this child, yet God sees through all of this and He wants her to be able to overcome this.
And for some reason, he chose me and my husband to help her. I don't know if I have the strength. I know I do not. When I am weak, HE is strong.
The other day, for some reason, I was compelled to log onto her facebook account after she'd gone to bed and I was in for the shock of my life. She had been in contact with 3 kids that she'd known from the first facility and had been planning her escape from our home. She dropped the F-bomb frequently, as it was an appropriate adjective to use when talking about her parents or Christianity in general. She plotted to run away once Don & I were gone on Saturday night, to have a night for ourselves and see our favorite band in concert. She'd been planning this for weeks, and yet, she had all appearances of loving her life and being so compliant. She'd been so happy, laughing, giggling, silly, crazy, and generally such a happy child. Then I found out what she'd been planning. We intervened.
That evening, Don & I confronted her and we had it out / talked until after 1 in the morning. At the end of all of this, she felt relieved that we found out. Consequences were a complete lack of trust in her again, removal of her facebook account, removal of her laptop, her cell phone, and our computers all have passwords on them now. She realizes that we had to take those measures in order to insure that she would be safe.
Do I have the strength to carry on? I do not know....
I feel so angry. We have given up EVERYTHING for this child. We've given up our church. I've given up my children's choir ministry. We've changed our lifestyle. We've poured our love into this child. Does she appreciate it? She says she does 99.9% of the time, but that 1% where she was plotting her escape is enough to throw me into extreme doubt. Lord, I don't know what to do.
Last night, I had myself some retail therapy. Spent a couple hundred bucks at Old Navy on ME. Bought 2 new pair of shoes at DSW. Bought body soap & spray for ME. Had some sorbet at our favorite place. Talked on the phone to Mary, her first foster mom. I didn't want to come home. That scared me. I stayed away until almost 9 PM. I think that Vic realizes the mistake she's made. I hope so. "Lord, cover her mind with your Spirit."
Plans:
1) Call her therapist Monday and see if I can get in to see her.
2) Read the book that Susan recommended. It deals with such things.
3) Get Vic into a therapy appointment, where for once, the whole truth will come out.
4) Plan our trip to Texas to visit my cousin at her ranch. We may stay there forever.... JUST KIDDING!
5) Finish getting Vic ready for Kamp Kanakuk. Order her trunk. Inform the staff of what's happened. Have them be prepared for anything.
6) Love her.
7) Read The Word daily.
8) Help Vic get a job.
9) Get ready to home school.
10) Get her involved in sports groups.
Lord, lead me and guide me and my husband as we venture forth on this journey. Lead us. Guide us. Help us. Help us to be the parents who can help Vic overcome her past, deal with it, and move on. Help her to trust us with ALL of her feelings. Lord, give us the strength to endure. Amen.
This blog is therapy. Cheap, yet good therapy.
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And that's my life so far....
