Blog

He is a miracle. He is a blessing.

Posted November 1, 2010 by Shannon Suda

Categories: Success Stories, International Adoption

An adoptive mom writes a powerful story about the adoption of her 13 year old boy, nine months after being home.  She is candid and the love she has shows through the words she writes.

My son was abandoned by his mother when he was 3 years old. He was beaten repeatedly by his father.  One day when he was 5 or 6 he couldn’t endure one more beating and ran away and he hopped on a bus.  He was rescued and placed in an orphanage where he was given a chance at an education and many other opportunities for growth. Over the years, he suffered many types of abuse.

All of these experiences happened to my son. He is about 13 years old. My son has a history that I can’t do anything about. As much as I would like to do it, I can’t go back in time and trade places with him to protect him. All I can do is help him to heal and to understand what normal looks like.

My son is gentle. He is kind. He is loving. He is funny. He is a good student. He has many friends. He has bonded closely with our family. He has a very strong faith in God. I don’t know how he survived everything he has gone through, much less how he managed to be so resilient that he can function normally in the world. But he does. He is a miracle. He is a blessing. I don’t know how we lived without him.

He loves me, but he’s not quite sure what to do with me. After all he only had a mom for 3 years. He is not sure what to do when I tuck him in bed at night and give him a kiss. That is beyond the scope of his experience. He hugs everyone else in the world, but is not sure about hugging me so only does it at church on Sundays. He and I try to find common ground. He wants my love, he’s just not sure how he wants that love for him manifested. We cook together, we play video games, we play basketball, we go swimming, we watch movies. I watch him do tae kwon do. I try to meet his needs the same way I did my biological children when they were babies. When they cried I fed them, or held them, or changed their diapers.

With him, I make his favorite foods, I rub his back, or buy him socks or other things he needs. I also write him letters where I pour out my love for him so he can read again and again how important he is, and what a blessing he is in our lives. Slowly he and I are building a rock solid relationship. He is more non-verbal and more body language communicating than my other two boys. We can communicate a huge amount of information just with eye contact now. I can give him the reassurance that it’s ok without even saying a word.

Are these kids damaged? Yes. But so am I. So are you. We need to communicate to them a little differently than we might be used to. But they understand love. They crave love. They want unconditional love. That is the way I reached my son. When he was being a brat, I finally told him exactly what he was doing that was hurting me, then I told him if he wanted to keep hurting me that would be his choice, but that there was nothing he could do that would ever stop me from loving him.  Once he realized that, there was a fundamental shift in our relationship. He trusts me now. It will be ok.