Giants Fall

Giants Fall by Francesca Batistelli

It Takes a Village

Dear Village,

Some of you reading this may someday be able to use the information in order to help friends who are adopting.  Some of you will be able to use the information to help US!  Some of you will be getting this in letter form because we count on you to be near while we go through the process of bringing our girls home, and we feel it only fair to equip you with the knowledge we’ve gained! 

It is going to be a PROCESS of ADJUSTMENT, let me tell you!  For all of us!  And our goal is to make it smooth and beneficial for our girls and our boys.  And above all, we want to honor God. 

So, I thought it would be fun to put together some silly paradoxes to help you remember what we need…and don’t need…as we go forward with this process! 

#1.  We need your help! … But we don’t need your help.

We do need your help.  Drastically.  It is going to be difficult to work and to cook and to clean and to run kids to school and to survive all while trying to assimilate these girls to our language, our lifestyle, our family dynamics, and our faith.  So bring us a meal.  Offer to help around the house.  Ask if the boys could use a ride to school.  Even offer to babysit!  And don’t be afraid to offer to help with the girls.  Those things would be so wonderful.  There aren’t words for how wonderful those would be! 

But please don’t be offended if we say no.  I doubt I’ll say no to meals or house cleaning, although my pride may get in the way in the beginning.  But there may be other things we need to say no to.  We believe very firmly that our girls need to bond with us (Marc and Becky) first, then with the boys, then with our family and friends.  The reason for this is because they have lived a life of constant flux when it comes to caregivers.  They feel comfortable taking assistance from anyone.  Even complete strangers. And that means that they don’t understand that Marc and I are here to STAY.  Forever.  They need to get that. 

So please don’t help by feeding our girls.  Or changing their diapers.  Or kissing their boo-boos.  If they ask you for these things, please refer them to Marc or me.  Also, please understand if we don’t ask you to babysit right away.  Marc and I are prepared to stay home (at least one of us here at all times) for the first six months in order to make life as normal and predictable and comforting for the girls as possible.  It will be hard!  But we feel it will be important.  Therefore, date night for us may be finding someone to come and sit on our couch for an hour or two after the kids have gone to bed.  And we might call home fifty-seven times.  Or it could be coming over and being here with our family while we work around the house.  Or take a nap.  It could be going with us to the grocery store to help wrangle the kids.  Know that not leaving you alone with our children while they are awake isn’t a sign that we don’t trust you.  It just means we want to be sure we have a firm bond with them before we say, “Mommy and Daddy are going away but we’ll be back.”  We want them to trust us enough to believe it. 

**Haha!  The girls weren’t even home yet, and we had to edit our plan!  Surprise, surprise!  Wonderful, caring, insightful friends pointed out to Marc and I how long six months would be.  And if Marc, as the President of the North Carolinian Collier family, and me, as the Executive Vice President, are going to stay connected and on point and together and sane, we are going to need to be able to have time away during those first six months.  So we have introduced a third person into our “one of us here at all times” strategy:  Carolyn Cerrito.**

#2.  Don’t be a stranger! … But be a stranger.

Please stay close, even if it is hard!  Our kids are going to be needy, so a good conversation may now be interrupted ninety-two times.   Phone calls might be hard.  But make them.  Visit.  Because chances are we won’t be going anywhere for a while.  So we can’t come to you.  Our girls have lived their entire lives in two buildings…one for six years and one for two years.  So our house alone will be overwhelming.  Our back yard will be intimidating.  Your house would be terrifying. We have to take it slow, but we want to take it slow WITH YOU!  

However, please call before you come.  There may be tough days, hard days, or good days that need to be just family.  Don’t call because you’re afraid you’ll interrupt, but call and be okay if we say not today, maybe next week. 

Also, please talk to our girls.  Smile at them, tease them, play with them.  But until Marc and I feel confident in the strength of our bond, please don’t hug them.  Please don’t hold them on your lap.  Please don’t tell them you love them.  This seems harsh, I know, but we want to make sure that they see a clear difference between Mama and Papa and everybody else.  They need to see us as their primary caregivers in order for us to form an appropriate parent-child bond.  That doesn’t mean you can’t show them affection.  High-five them.  Tickle them.  Swing them around.  Carry them on your shoulders.  Just be aware of getting too close too soon.  Another reason for this is because it may be awhile before we are able to tell just how much and in what ways our girls have been abused.  We want to make sure they don’t misinterpret actions and that they learn appropriateness with others, especially those of the opposite sex.  Also, they will most likely call you Mama and Papa.  Please correct them.  Just say, “That’s Mama! I’m _______!” 

#3.  Please listen!  … But don’t listen. 

This is going to be BEAUTIFUL!  But it is going to be HARD.  There may be days where Marc and I want to send them back.  There may be days where we don’t see how tomorrow is possible.  We may need to talk.  To cry.  To scream.  To wail.  To beg.  Please listen.  We need your ears and your arms and your love. 

But please don’t just listen.  We need you to keep us accountable.  Do our actions or words concern you?  Are we doing something that you feel is inappropriate?  Please come to us.  You are our village, and we need you to raise our children.  And this doesn’t just mean that we want you to approach us about our relationships with our girls.  This means with our relationships with our boys and with each other.  We give you full permission to confront us.  But we do ask this:  that before you approach us, you pray diligently and ask for wisdom both in words and in timing.  We know that we will be fragile, and we trust God to give you the knowledge to handle each situation appropriately. 

We are going to be very close to the situation, so there’s a good chance we won’t always be able to be objective.  We count on you to be our eyes and ears.  If you see a behavior in any of our children that is concerning, and you don’t see us confront it or hear us mention it, please let us know gently.  That goes for patterns of behavior as well.  If you see something in the girls that you think may be a clue to something from their past or that may be a clue to what they are thinking or feeling, let us know!  We want to become experts in understanding how they think and respond so that we can accurately read their hearts. 

Ask questions!  Anything!  We are new at this…too new to know when to be embarrassed or offended.  So we really can’t be embarrassed or offended.  If you have a desire to know, ASK!  And, though I am sure it goes without saying, be ready to accept our answer with an open mind.  We may have to say, “Gee, we haven’t thought about that yet.”  Or “We aren’t okay with that, but we would be okay with this.”  Understand that, as parents, we are primarily responsible for the well being of our kids.  We are also going to screw up.  We need your grace and your guidance. 

Also, give us encouragement!  Pray WITH us!  Send us Bible verses!  Every day!  Ten times a day!  You can’t do these things enough.  We need you to be loud in our ears, to be the voice of Christ drowning out the lies of Satan and the sinful self doubt that will creep in when we least expect it. 

#4.  Be Flexible! …But don’t be Flexible. 

As you can see above in point #1, our plans and methods are going to be constantly in flux!  We are going to be adapting to our girls, in a lot of ways, and so it may feel, especially at the beginning, like a whirl wind of “don’t!”  but “do!”  but “don’t again!”  WE ARE SORRY!  Please roll with us.  Give us lots of grace.

But don’t let us lose sight of our purpose.  We are to glorify God.  We are to honor him with our words and our actions.  Call us on it if you hear us talk negatively about our girls.  That kind of attitude will get us nowhere.  Call us on it if we talk negatively about our boys or about each other.  Don’t let us get away with taking shortcuts or being selfish.  We are going to need breaks sometimes, but we can’t “check out” when our kids need us.  Hold us to that. 

There are a billion things I could probably add that would be helpful, but I think for starters, these are most important. 

We have been learning that we are not saving or fixing or changing Leily and Lilly.  That is not our purpose or our mission.  That is God’s purpose, and God’s mission.  We are merely weak and empty vessels.  The work that must be done is work within us.  We are to be sanctified.  Changed.  Made raw and ground down and built up new, so that we may be worthy to walk the journey with Leily and Lilly.  Their lives may never get easy.  And we understand that in order to walk with them, our lives may never get easy again, either.  Same for Will and Mike.  That’s okay.  Because we are walking the path to God, and when viewed through the lens of eternity, this earthly path will last but a moment. 

God did a beautiful thing when he designed the body of Christ.  He made all parts to work together and to support and help and encourage one another.  He also made it so that suffering is shared, which is quite possibly the only thing that makes it possible to endure.  For each of you receiving this letter, the arrival of our girls may mean that in some way, your life and the lives of your children may never be the same.  Please understand that Marc and I are aware of the weight that we are laying on your shoulders.  And please understand that we could never proceed unless we were 100% confident that this is God’s will for our lives.  And for your life. 

Take a time out if you need to.  Find someone who will be your support.  Or a group of people.  Make sure that you are being held up and encouraged so that you have strength to help us when we need it. 

Lastly, know that WE LOVE YOU.  We cherish your friendship.  We value your wisdom.  And we are so thankful that you are walking this road with us. 

1 Corinthians 12:  12-28   The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ.  Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.

Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part.  If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?

 But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it.  How strange a body would be if it had only one part!  Yes, there are many parts, but only one body.  The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”

In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary.  And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen,  while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity.  This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.

 All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it. 

Thank you for loving us so well. 

Love,

Marc, Becky, Will, Mike, Leily, and Lilly

Legacy Part 3: Grandma-Granny: A Lesson in Kindness

My great-grandmother, Cora Lee Fox-Ogle, could not wait to be a great-grandmother.  In her culture, being a great-grandma meant being a granny.  And she wanted that badly.

The problem was, my sister and I could never remember to call her granny; it always came out grandma.  So we invented the name Grandma-granny.

Trips to her apartment meant listening to her birds sing and playing with her underwater rings game.  Later, when she was in the nursing home, visiting her meant bouquets of purple flowers that we shared with all in attendance.  My cousin Mary, whose kind heart would make Grandma-granny proud, once divided a single stalk in two so she would have enough for everyone.

My grandma-granny was no stranger to adoption.  When family was unable to care for her young niece, Grandma-granny took her in and raised her as one of her own.  Grandma-granny didn't do it because it was easy; she had quite a few children of her own, including my grandpa Ogle and his twin brother, and life was hard work.  Kids were hard work.  But Grandma-granny knew that God's law is one of kindness.

It is something I have seen my grandpa Ogle practice every day of my life.

Quite possibly my favorite story about my grandpa Ogle I just heard recently.  When they were young, they ran across a couple who had run out of gas.  My grandpa and grandma Ogle didn't just stop and help them with gas; they invited them to come and stay at their house.  Complete strangers.  Strangers who were dirty, poor, with nothing to offer in return.  Strangers who could have taken my grandpa and grandma for everything they had.  But they did it anyways.

When I heard the story, I can't say I was surprised.  Because this is the kind of heart with which my grandpa Ogle has led his family his entire life.

He and my husband love to sit and talk, and I am so pleased to say that their biggest commonality is their open hearts.  And I am so thankful to say that I found a man who will lead our family just like my grandpa does his, a man who understands the value of kindness.

Luke 10:25-37:   One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?” The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”  The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road. “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by.  A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side. “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.  Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’ “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.  The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”