September 2023 BLOG POST - Can I encourage you to try again?

I woke up to a text. “What community group are you in?”

“I don’t think I was assigned one”, I replied. That’s not entirely true. I know I wasn’t assigned one. I started filling out the application for a new community group and froze before I hit submit. Could we do it? Can I try again? The slogan for community groups at my church is “Life in the Round”. I’ll have to share my life… our journey with adoption… my struggle parenting children I didn’t birth with a new group of people. 

My thumb was frozen.

“Let’s skip church today”, I suggested… we can go to the beach instead. “Hooray!” came the cheers of our kids who routinely struggle in their classes. “No, I want to go”, came the reply of our teenager thriving in her youth group. My next strategy came straight from a nervous system locked into a freeze response. Stall. 

15 minutes before church started, I applied a face mask and laid back down in bed. My skin was dry… what can I say?

We walked into church 25 minutes late, my friend who’d sent me that text made space next to her and we hurried to a seat. “I’m feeling so vulnerable”, I said.

The voice in my head went into overdrive… This is so stupid. It’s a community group. You’re safe here. You’re a grown ass adult. You can do this. Hopefully I missed the deadline to register. RUN. I’m so tired of being the one walking through hard things. Even though my family isn’t in a season of intense hard… we’re just coming out of one. But it sure isn’t easy… and quite frankly, I’m just so tired of feeling like my life is “too much”. Like my family is too much. 

We’re 6 years in… the number of relational casualties at this point are too many to name. It includes the closest people in my life. Or, rather, who used to be the closest people in my life. Relationships that spanned decades didn’t make it through foster care and never even acknowledged adoption. 

It hurts.

Holy shit, it’s painful. 

I know the pain of deep loneliness, and I know that life is best lived in community with other people. I know that there are seasons where we intentionally shrink our circles to only the most trusted few - and there are seasons where we’re just hiding because it feels safer than trying again. I know that I’m a better person when I trust people enough to share not only the beautiful parts of my life, but the struggles. I know that the part of a community group that I love most - knowing the real, deep lives of people and actively encouraging each other and praying for each other makes me feel less alone in this great big world. I know that there will be times as we meet that I will really struggle with adoption… and that if I can be vulnerable in those moments… they’ll anchor me in the waves. I know, because even as I’ve lost the closest relationships in my life - I’ve gained new, beautiful ones. Friends that circle around me when I can’t take another step forward and remind me that I can keep going. Friends that stand their ground when my head and heart swirl in the chaos of the unknown, and pull me back to the present moment. These friends hold space for grief and loss, and help me find the beauty in the middle of the overwhelm I so often feel.

Better yet, I get a chance in these friendships to be a part of a story that doesn’t have anything to do with me or the chaos in my life! I get a front row seat to their lives and the story that’s unfolding for their family. I get to celebrate their wins, and sit with them in the corners of their hard. My life is so much richer with their friendship in it. 

So, I took a deep breath and walked over to sign up before I could run out of church. I smiled and used humor as a shield. There was a moment when I couldn’t breathe, a panic attack hovered just below the surface, and I couldn’t stop tears from flowing. I walked as quickly as I could - eyes to the ground - to the bathroom where I gave myself a pep talk and brushed my tears away. Shoulders square, chin up… back in the game.

If you’re wondering why I’m sharing this with you today… don’t worry, me too! I guess it's because I have this theory that I’m not really alone in the world. If I struggle trusting new relationships will be able to understand the life that we live… maybe somebody reading this does too. Maybe you’ve lost friends - or worse - family because you chose to foster or adopt. Because you keep choosing to foster when they tell you that it’s too hard and you should close your license. Maybe you lost them when you chose to adopt and they didn’t understand why you would choose these kids that “don’t even belong to you” over a nice, comfortable life. 

Maybe… Just maybe there’s another foster or adoptive parent out there who feels completely alone in a crowd of people. I know that feeling. Maybe you’re tired of getting rejected because your life is hard. I know that feeling… a little too well, if you ask me. 

Can I encourage you to try again?

And if you get hurt… try again, again. 

This is me, cheering you on as I type this from the safety of my bed, nestled underneath my cozy blanket, solidly reeling from vulnerability overload today - try again.

As painful as it can be, I believe with every fiber of my soul that life is better lived inside a community…I’m willing to bet a panic attack in a church bathroom on that truth.