And then something snapped

A friend was telling me about his daughter's involvement in a crazy strength training program.  He said that recently she was lifting weights at the gym and another young woman sustained a compound fracture while lifting an obscene amount of weight.  Everyone in the gym heard a loud pop, and the young woman started screaming in terror as she saw her arm bone sticking out of her skin. Since then, my friend's daughter hasn't been lifting those super heavy weights.  She's a little gun shy.
This post isn't meant to make you gun shy.
But: we sustained a compound fracture of our own a year ago.  We (figuratively) screamed in terror as though we were having an out-of-body experience.  Things are better now.
A year ago on the 5th, we first locked eyes with our sons.  That gotcha day is forever cemented in my memory.  There was so much sweetness, and it was the fulfillment of a looongtime dream coming true.  Some of the things I didn't blog about a year ago include Dave and I remarking at what a sweet/compliant/mild-mannered little boy Joseph seemed to be.  He just stared at us with these deep, serious eyes, and did whatever he understood us to be asking him to do. All the reports we had received (there hadn't been more than a few) all described him in vague, non-complimentary, terms.  But meeting him, and holding him, made our hearts swoon.  Those first two days ~ he was tentative, and careful, and quiet, and sweet.
And then something snapped.  It was a loud pop.  Everyone in our guest house heard it.  Even some of our friends back in the U.S. heard it.  Something snapped.
It happened on Day Two.  I left Dave with the boys at the guest house, while I rode across town to meet with our lawyer in preparation for our court date.  Dave spent an hour and 45 minutes trying to get the boys down for a nap.  Joseph arched his back and refused to put his head down to sleep.  He screamed a "primal" scream Dave had never heard before.  And he didn't stop.  And Dave, jet-lagged, homesick, confused, and overwhelmed, snapped too.  His heart didn't melt while trying to comfort this child; instead it went numb.
Meanwhile I was meeting with the lawyer, and hearing some very unsettling things about the state of adoptions from Uganda.  Our lawyer was known to be amongst the most ethical, and competent attorneys in the country.  But even our attorney was concerned that, on paper, our case might not be clear cut enough for the judge and the attorney explained that many things would need to fall into place that week to prove the validity of our case.  So, I traveled back across town to our guest house expecting to meet a husband and two boys who would be just waking from naps, and instead I found three weary souls.
And over the next few days, something in me snapped too.  The cord from a mother's heart to her precious/vulnerable child hadn't been established strong enough yet, and didn't hold under the strain of our situation.  I was racked with guilt.  How could I not be head over heels for this poor kid?  I was supposed to be his advocate, and I pledged to be in my actions, but the feelings weren't there.
By the time we flew home, that's when they'd kick in, I reassured myself.  Nope, not then.
By the time we get over jet-lag and get him to fall asleep on his own, I'd tell myself.  Nope, not then either.
Fast forward six months.  Whatever snapped in Joseph that day in the guest house in Uganda was healing, and his daddy had grown bonds with him, and I was growing some too.  I liked the kid.  I knew I'd miss him if he wasn't here.  But that heart-level-maternal-instinct-love?  I didn't feel it yet.
I questioned myself.  Is all of the love I give conditional?  Do I love my other kids conditionally too, but the conditions happen to meet my expectations, so I can trick myself into thinking it's a love that's free from conditions?  Or is my slow attachment process with this particular child also impacted by the trauma surrounding our time in his birth country, and the emotional roller coaster it was to navigate thru those weeks?
Probably both.
And then sometime this fall -I can't even pinpoint when - God patched my leaks, and then poured His love in.  That's gotta be what happened.  'Cuz for over nine months I was faced with the reality that my love is not enough, and the grace I give to myself, and that others give to me, isn't enough to comfort me in the face of my own short comings.  Instead it's all God's: God's love for my kids; God's grace for me.  And God's mercies that are new every day.
And God, in His kindness to me, snapped that false perception that my abilities were enough to pull this thing off.
Compound fractures are nasty.  That's what heavy lifting does, I guess.
But I'm not cancelling my gym membership quite yet  =-)