Five Years

What is five years?

Half a decade?  Time for kindergarten?  Not yet the Seven-Year-Itch?  Out of high school and into real life?

January marked the five year anniversary of Keziah coming home! 

(Three years for Peiwu.)

Though we celebrated and recalled precious, treasured memories of those "newborn" days with our six-year-old Princess Keziah (or seven-year-old Princess Pewiu), we still haven't reached the half-way point.

Half-way?

Okay, since we still haven't reached it with either of our little girls, I can't tell you from experience.  However, I have read that the half-way point is VERY SIGNIFICANT in the life of an adoptive family.  It is the dividing line in an adoptive child's life when you pass the point in time marking half of their life before joining your family equal to the other half of their life after adoption.

HUGE!!!

When our girls first came home, I held fast to promises from my adoptive mentor network that there would be a light at the end of the dark tunnel of the first six months.  They were so right!  With both girls, that first six months was so HARD!!!  Lonely and isolating.  Then you wake up six months later, and life has taken on its new normal.  Things don't magically become perfect, but something has slowly been changing during that time.  Suddenly, a glimmer of hope lights the journey that seemed pitch black.

So this half-way event?  Uhm...when your little ones come home at 6 1/2 and 7 years old…well…we won't be reaching half-way until we hit TEENAGE at 13 and 14 years old!  Ugh!  Right into the thick of emotional, hormonal, girl drama.  Did I mention that I'm really looking forward to this?

So what about five years?

It didn't hit me at first.  January came and went.  Life just keeps moving forward.  Busy, busy days.  (Note - limited blogging)

Then I was chatting with some of my kiddos as we celebrated the arrival of a new washer and dryer.

(Another Note - My less than four year old pair had been taking turns for the past year braking down every few months.  After the dryer needed to be totally rebuilt and was asking for its third heating element in this fun year of extra time at the laundromat, the extended warranty company agreed that we needed a new one.  Yay!)

We were discussing how our family had changed recently and was about to change some more.  Caleb is now married and living in his own apartment.  Miranda will be graduating in May and heading to college in just a few short months.  Our 6-pack is no longer all under one roof.  They are beginning to separate and fly away from the nest.

Then we projected out five more years…

In just three years, Josiah will be the one preparing to graduate and leave for college.  Five years, it will be Elijah our senior.

Then, with love in my heart, I turned to face Keziah, sitting by Peiwu at the table, and smiled as I informed her that meant that the two little girls would have my full attention.  (Cue devious laughter)  Her jaw dropped, eyes bugged out, and face turned pale.

Just five years, and our home will feel so empty and so quiet (relatively speaking since the decibel level dropped significantly five years ago for China).  Just the two girls?  Honestly, I can't imagine what life will be like!  In the same way, I would never have imagined life as it is now five years ago when we boarded a plane to bring our daughter home.

But the number five, kept rattling around in my brain.  Five…five years…hmmmm?  Then it hit me!

Keziah had lived with her foster family in China for FIVE YEARS!!!

We may not have reached the big half-way marker yet, but we have now surpassed the time Keziah lived with her foster family.

So?

I can't say that anything magical or miraculous has happened.  My precious girl is STRUGGLING with her identity.  She's not even waiting for the real teenage years.  Adoption/attachment/anxiety issues are HARD work.  Building trust and learning about unconditional love don't come easily.

However, the pendulum is swinging.  Our CHINESE-American girl who hated everything American at first (Guess you didn't know just how yucky our flag is compared to the beauty of the Chinese flag?) now longs to become 100% AMERICAN and erase all that makes her Chinese.

NO!  This is not good!  

It is part of her journey, part of the long winding path of discovery we are privileged and challenged to help her navigate as her parents and her family.

Five years later, she can now see that by American standards her foster home was an abusive place and that her foster parents did not demonstrate positive conflict resolution for her in their relationship with each other.  As happy as I am for her to come to this place on her own, it is also heartbreaking to see her distance herself from the people who took care of my little girl for five years before she came home.

As her family, we get to help and guide our princess as she puts the puzzle pieces of her life together.  We get to be the mirror that reflects back her beauty.  And this girl is GORGEOUS!  At the same time we need to fill up her love tank to overflowing, so that she doesn't need boys telling her how beautiful she is.  She needs to feel the love of her daddy so strongly that silly boys don't turn her head.  We get to encourage her gifts and talents as she blossoms and grows.  And this girl is TALENTED!  Artist potential!  We get to help her embrace all the beauty of her Chinese heritage as well as the blessings of her new home in America.

Five more years?  No idea where we will be on this journey!

Eight more years, and it will be Keziah's graduation we are preparing to celebrate.  Oh!  That almost makes me cry just thinking about it!

Time with our first four homegrown has flown by too fast!  But with our two little Made in China princesses…time seems to move in hyper-speed.

Teach me to treasure each day, Lord!  Help me and guide me in the moments when I have no more to give.