getting off the roller coaster ride

damon said the same things he’d been saying since day one.  he always acknowledged how hard it was for me and also the fact that he couldn’t truly relate.  i would cry to him about how miserable i was and how this isn’t how my life was supposed to be, and the answers he consoled me with have both comforted and angered me throughout the years.  they have brought comfort in times when i am humble and ready to learn and they have angered me in those moments when i have been defensive and selfish.  there were three things he always said to me:

1.  “what if this wasn’t just something that happened to you, some accident, something that was put in your way to screw your life up?  what if this was all part of the plan?”

2.  “amy, if you can overcome this, think of the person you’ll have become.  think of all the life lessons you’ll have been willing to learn.  your greatest weaknesses will become strengths through this one huge trial.  this is an opportunity for tremendous growth, for you to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.”

3.  “you can’t be successful if you’re making decisions as a parent based out of fear.  you have to base them out of love or it’s never going to work.”

and then he would ask me if i believed and trusted in the atonement of Jesus Christ.  and he would reassure me that Christ had experienced all that i was experiencing.  every hurt, every disappointment, every shade of anger and resentment that was churning in my heart.  and at the end, he would always put the ball back in my court.  he would always leave the decision up to me:  “if you really think that’s what we should do (give savannah to another family), then i will support you.”

i begged my Heavenly Father to be patient with me. 
i hoped my dad wasn’t watching me from heaven with severe disappointment. 
and i pleaded with damon to not give up on me. 

but the list of resentments was growing.  before i knew it or could stop it, i was blaming every hurt, every personal imperfection, every trial in my life on her.  among those resentments:

1. first and foremost, she had changed my relationship with damon.  never before had we disagreed on the parenting of one of our children.  never before had a child come between us.  i felt like every time damon gave in to savannah, he was choosing her over me.  and that was painful.
2. i blamed her for bringing out weaknesses in me that were just fine tucked away inside myself before she came along. weaknesses i didn’t even realize were there:  the ridiculous levels of impatience, the rage that came out of nowhere, the insecurities i felt as a parent, the unwillingness to love somebody unconditionally.
3. i blamed her for “turning me into a mean mom”.  because in order to justify my behaviors towards savannah, i became a meaner mom towards my other kids instead of tempering myself towards savannah
4. all of my relationships with my friends, my kids, and especially my family were severely affected. 
5. i blamed her for me missing out on years of carefree times with my children
6. i even blamed her for my infertility because my body was so tense and stressed out for those years
7. and don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind more than a few times that the reason calvin died was to punish me for all the mistakes i’ve made with savannah.

it was a roller coaster ride.  at the end of every day, i would recount the day’s events and my thinking and resentfulness seemed completely illogical.  i KNEW that all of these things weren’t savannah’s fault, that she was an innocent child and i shed many tears because my actions never seemed to measure up to what i knew in my heart:  savannah didn’t deserve to be blamed for any of those things. 
after all the kids were in bed and i was decompressing, it would seem ridiculous that i held onto to so many things.  and i would promise myself that i would do better tomorrow.  but, in the moment, i would crack again.  and it just kept piling up, one resentment on top of another.  even my body was reacting physically to the anger i felt inside.  when savannah would do something that i deemed unacceptable, my heart would race, my ears would ring, and my vision would be warped.  sometimes, i had to take a time-out to get control of myself.  other times, i wished i would have taken a time-out for myself. i would look back on the day’s events and try and learn from my mistakes.  i would re-commit myself to being a better parent every single day.  i would pray for patience and love to enter my heart and for the ability to see a situation for what it really was.  i would set goals for myself and set physical boundaries for savannah, boundaries that she would understand. 

my emotions were up and down, up and down.  savannah’s love bank was barely in the positive.  every time she disobeyed, every time she went behind my back, every time she would steal candy or food, it would set me back.  i had a hard time letting go of all the wrongs she was doing.    all the little things piled up.  we could be making decent progress and then bam, she’d rip her sheet in half when she was supposed to be sleeping.  and it would take me days to recover from that.  i couldn’t let things go.  and just when i would be making progress again and building that love bank back up, she would strike again:  this time peeing into the vent in her bedroom and making the entire house wreak of urine for  days.  and the wrongs didn’t even have to be that severe for it to set me back.  it could be something as innocent as talking in her bed when she was supposed to be sleeping or saying that she cleaned up her mess when she really didn’t.  everything was personal.  everything she did screamed to me that she didn’t respect me as her parent, that she was in charge and not me. 

there were some days that everything seemed normal and easy.  savannah listened to me and meshed well with everybody.  there didn’t seem to be any difference between how she reacted to things and how the other kids reacted to things.  she was just another member of our family, as simple as that.  those days would come out of nowhere.  i would rack my brain trying to figure out what i did differently to create that easygoing, simple, normal savannah, but the only thing i ever came up with was that it was a tender mercy from my Heavenly Father.  something to give me hope and something to motivate me to keep trying because it was so lovely and stress-free on those days.  

there came a breaking point.  i had to get off that roller coaster ride.  to benefit both of us.  i knew that she was supposed to be with our family.  i knew that i had something to offer her, that she had something to offer me.  but i wasn’t in the state of mind to learn just yet.  and so the only alternative to putting her back into the foster care system was to shut down from her emotionally.  if i wasn’t so emotionally invested in her, then i couldn’t lose my temper over things she did- and i couldn’t be hurt by her actions against me.  i couldn’t take things so personally.  never in my life had i ever felt like quitting so bad.  shutting down seemed like a neutral option for myself while i figured out a way to make this work.  a win/win for everybody.  the anger and resentment on my end was just as bad for her as it was for me.  it was my only hope:  to shut down from her emotionally. 

and that was the choice i made in year four instead of giving her back.