Five Fingerprints of God: Setback

Remember the last post? The one where I said Gracie was doing so well?

She is, really. . .for this short time into our transition, but . . .

We can so easily forget when we see her sweet little face beaming that she has still come from an extremely difficult place and still has miles and miles to go to get to a good place in her healing.

And so it was that we were reminded of that sad fact when our dear little Philip had his bone graft surgery this past week. When we were raising only Ted (or when Philip first came home which felt like raising an only child again), it was so easy to focus solely on one child's needs. Whatever Ted had going on, be it surgery, a concert, a sporting event, etc., Kevin and I were always there. When Philip came home, we only had to share our time with a toddler and a college guy. Pretty easy to do.

Now though, we have entered into the land of splitting our time and presence to help all of our children having a present need. This is not new territory to many families, but this has come to us rather later in life, and it is a transition for us as well! :)

Since Gracie came home, all of our attention and focus has had to be on her. She has so many needs right at this moment. But Philip - he needed us too as his surgery was a tough one. Ted graciously came and sat with our three little ones at home while Kevin and I spent the day with Philip. Then I spent the night at the hospital with him as well. Gracie's new normal was rocked. She loves Ted, and that presents a bit of a problem at times since she will easily transfer her beginning attachment from us to him. It seems at first that our children from difficult backgrounds can only focus on one attachment at a time. She goes back and forth between Kevin and me as it is.

So throw her into spending all day with Ted (who is just plain wonderful), and she retreats in her progress. Then throw into the mix that her new mama and brother aren't there at night and perhaps her new daddy is a bit worried about her missing brother's well being, and by morning she was a mess. On top of that, a loud and scary thunderstorm woke both Gracie and Elijah in terror in the morning. By the time Philip and I came home from the hospital, she had gone back into her "orphanage survival skill" mode and met us at the door stumbling and flailing her arms and legs around. Her gaze was glazed over for most of the day, and she just sat and stared out into space. Truly it was heartbreaking to see.

How easily life can take our precious broken children back to a bad place again. We have had a time getting her back as our Philip has needed a lot of attention. We are happy to say that Philip is healing well and getting back to his old self again, but our Gracie has taken a bit longer to feel a little more secure again. Getting glasses for the first time yesterday, you could just see her starting to slip away a little. Oh, the dance of attaching and bonding.

Steps forward, steps back. . .