I was six or seven years old and shopping at a local department store with my Mom.  Although I was plenty old enough to know better, I climbed into the middle of a round clothes rack and crouched down by the floor.  My sister and I had decided to play hide-and-seek while my Mom shopped.  I can still hear the panic in my Mom’s voice as screamed out my first, middle, AND last name.  Eventually I decided that making my Mom calm down was more important than not being found my sister.  I recall a very tight grip on my arm as I was dragged walked out the door and across the parking lot.

The first time the reality of what my Mom experienced that day hit me was when my oldest daughter was three years old.  She had walked out the back door, across the common area behind our house, and was playing on a swing in a neighbor’s yard when I found her.  She also happened to be naked.  I had put her in the bathtub and went to the kitchen to work on dinner. As I gripped her arm tightly for the walk home she explained to me that she “couldn’t stay in the tub because that swing was so fun.”

In the brief moments between finding the bathtub empty and the backdoor open and then hearing her laugh from a hundred yards away, I could barely breathe.  My heart was in my stomach.  Or my throat.  I really can’t remember which.  It was just a horrible, horrible feeling.

What I did not know that day, is that a few years later I would be parenting two children with autism.  Children with autism wander.  Maybe not all of them, but many do.  Including mine.

In the last twelve years I have experienced the kind of panic that I was quite certain would stop  my heart.  I have lost my children for more than a few brief moments.  Sofija doesn’t just wander.  She runs.  Fast.  And… she doesn’t look back.

Every time I hear of a missing autistic child, it’s really hard for me to breathe.  Seriously.  REALLY HARD for me to breathe.  I feel the panic that mother is feeling.  I hug my babies tight and I pray hard that they never wander away from me again.

Last week a little girl named Mikaela wandered away from home.  Mikaela did not come home.  She will never come home.  My friend Lexi wrote an amazing post today that contains a link to a place to show some love to Mikaela’s family.  Please read it and pay attention.  Statistics say that there is a child in your life with autism.  They might be your neighbor, your niece, your nephew, a child at your church, or simply someone you see at the grocery store.  I’m asking you to keep your eyes open.  We live in a society where technology consumes our attention and makes it really easy to ignore what’s going on around us.  I’m just asking that you pay a little more attention and intervene if you see someone wandering.  Your action might just be the difference between life and death.

As I requested, my hubby and kiddos took me to the Chesapeake Bay for Mother’s Day.  The shoreline at the Bay was made up large table-like rocks… The kind of rocks that beg to be walked on.  As I hopped along the rocks in search of one worthy of bringing home, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks drowned out the sounds of my family.  I did not notice that Sofija was running along the rocks towards me until I heard her carton-a-day voice yell out, “Hey, Girl! Whatcha doin’?”  Between her new lingo and her recent demand for nachos for breakfast I think it’s safe to say she’s fully Americanized.

Without pausing to hear my answer to her question, she moved down to a rock that gave her access to the water.  As she bent and splashed her face I heard her say, “It’s okay, Sofija.  If you go in too deep, Tata will save you.”  And there it was.  My Mother’s Day gift.  A little girl with a broken beginning, who rarely shows trust or feels safe, gave me a gift I never thought to ask for.  “If you go in too deep, Tata will save you.”

I think I may have laughed out loud over the beauty in that one simple sentence.  And then I remembered what God did for the Israelites in Joshua chapter 3.  He told them to walk into a deep powerful river and then promised that once they got wet, He would hold the waters back and allow them to cross the river on dry ground.  After they stepped in and got wet, He dried out the riverbed and kept the water from overtaking them.  They went in deep and He rescued them. He then told them to gather stones from the riverbed to serve as a memorial to what He had done for them.

Between Summit and my Serbian stimmer, special needs adoption has been at the forefront of my mind.  I do not believe that everybody should adopt.  In fact, I don’t think anyone should adopt unless they know that they know that they are supposed to.  But that doesn’t excuse anyone who calls themselves a Christian from caring for orphans.  There are many ways to answer the Biblical mandate to “care for orphans who need help”.

Be it finances, clothing, furniture, or prayer, families who are in the process of adopting always need something.  Once they bring the child home, they need your time and energy.  Make a meal.  Buy a bag of groceries.  Offer to babysit so they can have a date night.  Take the other kids in the house out on a Slurpee, ice cream, bowling, or movie date.  Stop by and do a load of laundry or dishes (this is totally my love language).  Send the adoptive family a card of encouragement… they need encouragement more than you could imagine.  Just ask.  I have met or been in contact with more adoptive Moms than I can count who say that they feel completely isolated.  We just need to know that there are people in our lives who care and we need human interaction with someone other than our adopted child/ren.

If you’re saying, “All of those suggestions involve caring for orphans who are no longer orphans and their adoptive families.  What about caring for orphans while they are still orphans?”, there are sooo many ways to do just that.  I’m not going to endorse any particular organization, but a simple Google search will lead you to countless  ways to provide food, clothing, medical care, dental care, and education for orphans.  Call your local foster care office and see what their needs are.  Locally I found that there is a need for baby items and people who are willing to sponsor foster children who are going to college.  Sending a couple of care packages a year and including an older teen in your holiday plans could change a life.  Become a mentor.   Just find something to do and do it.

And for those of you who DO feel called to special needs adoption, don’t be afraid.  Step into the water.  Your Father WILL take care of you. You’re not going to drown.  As scary as it may seem, you will look at the water all around you and realize that you are walking on dry ground.  Who knows? Maybe you’ll soon find yourself gathering your own stones.  http://vimeo.com/65652954# http://vimeo.com/65652954#

Throughout the evening the words, “This has been my favorite Mother’s Day.” have escaped my lips more than once.  As I speak those words, they are true.  In between the times they’ve been spoken, this has been my most painful Mother’s Day.

This is my 7th Mother’s Day without a mother.  The pain has come in waves.  I look at pictures of my Mom and listen to recordings of her voice, but the teasers are not enough.  I long to feel her arms wrapped around me.  To feel her cheek pressed against my own.  To feel the warmth of her breath and to inhale her scent.  I want to hold her hands and look into her eyes and thank her for all the things she did right.  Thank you, Suzi, for the voice in my head.  Thank you for blue-green eyes, the no-gray-hair gene, and mad cooking skills.  Thank you for instilling in me compassion for every human being and the passion to make this world a little kinder towards every human being.  Thank you for loving God and His Word and always encouraging me to do the same.  Thank you for my foundation.

Aside from the pain of missing my mother, today has been incredible!  My hubby and kiddos asked what I’d like to do for Mother’s Day.  Without hesitation I said, “Go fishing.”  I also added that I didn’t want any cards or notes and that I didn’t want them to cook for me at home.  Cleaning out my grandmother’s house last summer gave me some very strong opinions on cards and notes and personalized thingies.  When my sister and I cleaned out my Mom’s things we moved the bulk of her sentimental stuff to my grandmother’s.  Which means that last summer we had the painful responsibility pleasure of deciding what to do with two lifetimes of personal stuff.  The majority of the stuff ended up in the trash.  Every anniversary card from my grandfather’s second cousin once removed and birth announcement from someone who worked with my Mom at a temp job she held in 1976, was tossed in a trash bag as I swallowed a capsule full of guilt.

So… I requested that all Mother’s Day sentiments be made out loud.  In a world where the majority of communication happens via text, email, and instant messaging, I personally think we should all try to say a few more things out loud.  I tell my kids all the time that they shouldn’t type anything in a message that they wouldn’t say to a person face to face.  Be it a character assault or a proclamation of love, I firmly believe that it should never be typed if you would not have the backbone to look someone in the eyes and say it.  Guess what?  My kids actually like me.  They told me so.  Their words made me happy and nobody will experience an ounce of guilt over throwing those words in the trash forty years from now.

Breakfast in bed.  Missing my Mom.  Two bags of chocolate.  Hugs.  Kisses.  Church.  Roses.  New fishing license.  Perfect weather.  Several hours of tossing lines (and a teenager’s iphone) into the Chesapeake Bay.  Missing my Mom.  Amazing seafood dinner.  Mint chip ice cream.  Bitter-Sweetness.  Blessed.

In 1990, on the Saturday before Mothers’ Day, a group of birth mothers established a day to celebrate the fact that they had given birth to children who are being mothered by someone else.  I am fortunate to have many birth mothers in my life who deserve to be honored today… Women who chose life…  Women who made the choice to give Mothers’ Day to someone else.

In 2005, a woman in Belgrade, Serbia, joined the ranks of these women.  A lady named Zorka who had previously given birth to three sons and a daughter, chose life for a little girl who would become my daughter.  My hope is that some day I will have the opportunity to thank her for that choice, that we will share a weekend of celebrating motherhood.

Thank you, Zorka, for the gift of our daughter.  Thank you for giving her life.  Thank you for choosing to let someone else mother her.

To Zorka and all the other brave birth moms in my life, Happy Birth Mother’s Day.

Ellen Stumbo is another special needs adoptive Mama.  She is an amazing writer and her blog is definitely worth following.  Today she wrote a simple post called Ten things I want my kids to remember. 

To my four amazing children who are growing up so quickly that it is often hard for me to breathe…. What she said.

It has been nearly four years since I got the call from my doctor telling me that I am cancer-free.  In that four years, A LOT of living has happened.  Living is good.  God gave me life to be lived.  He healed me so that I could get busy doing the things He put me on this planet to do.  In all my living, I sometimes forget just what a big deal it is that I am healed.  I sometimes forget all that I have to be thankful for.

And then… I open my laptop and see that Roger Ebert has lost his battle with the exact same kind of cancer that I had.  And suddenly I remember.  I remember the exact moment in 2010 when I learned about his cancer and then I remember the brokenness and gratitude I experienced in the wake of that realization.  I remember that on March 10, 2010 I had a very real awakening to the gift that is my life.  So I open my blog and search.  There it is…

https://bringinganahome.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/gratitude/

Thank you, God, for occasionally bringing me to my knees in remembrance of what you’ve done for me.