One month

A topographical overview of our life from the last four weeks.

I've sat down to write this update a few different times. I've changed the whole thing each time because I've been in drastically different head spaces each time. Doubtful and deflated one day, encouraged and hopeful the next. This mirrors the flow of daily life since we welcomed a 6-year-old boy and 2-year-old girl into our home. Every 12 hours or so, the outlook, the sense of what's possible can swing drastically. I go from thinking, "I kinda wish the foster kids were coming with us on our Fourth of July vacation" (we have respite care set up), and then the next day, I'm thinking, "I don't know if I can do this anymore."

These ups and downs may be the defining reality one month into this adventure. Aside from the simple fact that spare time and energy and precious commodities, these elevation changes have been the primary impediment to me sharing an update sooner than this. I want to share these glimpses with you. I need to process what we're living through in order to help me make sense of it. It's a healthy, existentially stabilizing practice.

Then I sit down to write and I feel a bit paralyzed about what to say. There is, Westley, too much to explain, let alone sum up. Then I feel guilty that I haven't written, and all the posts that might have been pile up on top of each other even as they collapse into each other in my brain, and the very thought of sitting down to write something coherent out of this stacking, collapsing mess feels daunting.

And if I'm being honest there's also a bit of fear involved. I'm afraid of being honest about how hard things have been, and I'm afraid that if I admit it then it means that we made an unwise decision, that we misread "the signs," that we're not equipped for this, that we out-kicked God's coverage.

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A few years ago, I was elk hunting with my youngest brother. We parked at a trailhead early in the morning and we set out walking. We walked some more. We went off trail. We followed a ridge line for a handful of miles. And then we hiked down—way down into a valley to see if there was anything hiding away out of the unseasonably warm weather. Of course, there wasn't, and when we got back up to the ridge line, the sun was setting. We hiked out in the dark, crashing and hacking our way through the woods and scree. Even with headlamps, it was disorienting. I kept looking over my shoulder to check for cats. We hugged the shoulder of a mountain and, thanks to my brother's familiarity with the landscape (he lived near where we were hunting), found the trail and followed the moon back to thes truck. When we finally made it back to my brother's house, I sat in an epsom salt bath for an hour. I've never been so sore, so wiped out. We out-kicked our coverage. The topography won.

I feel something similar now. A growing unsettledness as "dusk" settles in and we're not exactly sure where the trailhead is. It can feel a little hopeless, even though we know that we are not without hope. "None get to God but through trouble," said Catherine of Aragon. If that's true, we're haeded in the right direction. So, consider the update below a topographical overview of the ground we've covered. It's not exhaustive, and but it is what I have for now.

1. The mountain top

"How you were written is how you will write—unless and until God intervenes and redeems." – Chris Bruno (Restoration Project founder / CEO)

I went into my father-son camping trip with James with uncertain expectations. This weekend excursion with roughly 30 other father-son pairs occurred a little less than two weeks after we said yes to the boy the girl. I felt unprepared and vulnerable, which is a good place to be to receive something from the Lord. I knew that I needed to cherish this one-on-one time with James. I knew that no matter what happened or what didn't happen, this focused time together would be a much-needed deposit in his heart.

This was absolutely the case. He received a true mountain-top experience: two-and-a-half days of paddle boarding, rock climbing, wrist rocketing, fishing, archery, pellet guns, a bevy of wild and wacky camp games, and late nights around bonfires. "I'll remember this to the end of my days," he said on our last morning.

But the camp was primarily for fathers. We were given instruction and space and writing prompts to do some deep heart work around the challenges of fatherhood—and to mine the story our fathers had written on our hearts.

The camp facilitators used the framework of story intentionally and repeatedly as a way to understand God's purposes for masculinity and fatherhood. They laid out a three-act play:

• Innocence (Genesis 1-2)

• Tragedy & Trauma (Genesis 3)

• Restoration (Revelation 21)

On the second morning, the founder of the ministry spoke to all the fathers, elaborating on the above outline in some detail. He said that tragedy comes in two forms: Big T tragedies (death, abuse, violence, etc.) and Little T tragedies (yelling, anger, and other "micro" moments).

Then he said something that I think I'll remember to the end of my days, because it was a word that I desperately needed to hear in the midst of my uncertainty and disorientation. Chris said, "Tragedy turns into trauma when kindness does not exist." And this "tidal wave of trauma," as he put it, is passed down from generation to generation "until someone feels it." Only here can trauma be transformed back into tragedy. Jesus, as the master healer, can restore and transform. And that transformation begets more transformation.

Chris concluded his talk by reading a quote from Curt Thompson, a psychiatrist and author, that went something like this: Secure attachment in children depends upon fathers making "coherent sense" of their own stories. I thought about James and the 6-year-old boy and what I'm giving them now that will help them make sense of their life story when they themselves are fathers.

He said all of this in front of a small wooden platform and a cross, half-burned by the High Park Fire in 2012. Behind him, green foothills thick with new-growth conifers rolled into high mountains still shedding their winter coats.

I walked up to Chris after his session and told him about our situation. I cried. He told me that Lindsey and I are in the business of kindness. And that even if these kiddos don't retain any explicit memories of our time with us, that the Lord can still use implicit memories of the kindness they received, by God's grace, to help turn the tide of trauma.

I don't mean to suggest by any stretch of the imagination that we are perfectly kind parents all the time, especially given some of the challenges we’re up against. We have been stretched by this growth in our household. But with so much weight and uncertainty about our situation, I needed to hear that God can hold back the waves of generational trauma through kindness. This is what we're trying to do, by the grace of God. This is the work he has called and equipped us for. Even when I'd rather be doing something else. Even when it feels deeply, uncomfortably too much.

I came back down the mountain still tired (I used muscles I hadn't used in a long time) but also encouraged about and re-oriented to the story God is writing.

2. The valley of utter darkness

This sounds hyperbolic. But stay with me. First, the valley. I'll let Oswald Chambers take this one. From My Utmost for His Highest:

The true test of our spiritual life is in exhibiting the power to descend from the mountain. If we only have the power to go up, something is wrong. It is a wonderful thing to be on the mountain with God, but a person only gets there so that he may later go down and lift up the demon-possessed people in the valley (see Mark 9:14-18). We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life—those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life, and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength.

So we descended, back into the real world. And the biggest test of my stamina has been with the sleeping habits of the 6-year-old boy. And this is where the second part of the sub-head factors in.

The phrase "shadow of the valley of death" could also be translated as "deep or utter darkness." The valley in, say, Psalm 23 is dark. So dark you can't see your hand in front of your face. This is the kind of darkness that brings all fears to life. This is the kind of darkness the boy has about and at bedtime.

Wendell Berry wrote, "Sleep is the prayer the body prays." If this is true, then the boy is an agnostic.

He is scared of the dark on a literal and metaphorical level. He is scared of sleeping by himself and gets out of bed multiple times a night. Even though his baby sister sleeps in the same room. Even when James slept in their room for a spell. Even when Lindsey or I have slept in the room. We've tried several sleeping arrangements. Nothing has really worked, and so Lindsey and I have been up multiple times most nights in the last couple weeks. It is bordering on unsustainable, though there are a couple things (and more time) that we hope will help.

Our assumption is that this is due to more than a disruption to his normal sleep habits and bedtime rituals, such as they were. There is likely something that has gone bump in the existential night in this young boy's life, some tragedies that have turned to traumas and they are manifesting themselves in this big change.

3. The sea of chaos

God’s people are called into chaotic places.

This is what the visiting pastor at our church said a couple Sundays ago as he preached on Mark 4:35-41 and 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. Christians and the church are given by Christ the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18), and this ministry will take us into the stormy and chaotic seas of this world. In the Hebrew worldview, the sea is a place of chaos and despair. So when Jesus calms the storm from the boat, he does so from a place of rest—rest in the knowledge that he can only do what the Father is doing.

We are called into chaotic places.

I feel this. Multiple case workers and multiple attorneys and a messy family tree and a struggling, single mom (who bounced from foster home to foster home in her teen years) and a traumatized 6-year-old and a needy 2-year-old who knows how to say "fuck" and mealtimes with five kids and interrupted sleep and our own kids' activity schedules and all the other mundane demands of everyday life and, yeah—chaos.

Sometimes it is joyful and rich. Sometimes it is hard. This month has felt impossibly long and unbelievably short at the same time. The waves of these days lap at the side of our household boat. And in the chaos, and even in the moments of stillness, Jesus asks if we're open to being surprised by this ministry of reconciliation and restoration; if I'm open to being surprised by his love for me.

It's true that surprises can be stressful. And maybe "adjustment" is another word for "surprise." In this season, there are adjustments on adjustments. Change on change. There's this Flannery O'Connor quote that goes something like, "Grace changes us and the change is painful." I've always kind of wondered about that. But in this season of change, of adjustment, of showing grace (or not), of feeling utterly exposed to the existential elements, I can testify to the pain of grace. Of saying yes to hard things.

And it may not make sense, but isn't this work of restoration in the midst of chaos what the church is for? I am so proud of my family and how we've given love and care, however imperfectly, over the last month. I don't know what's next. There's so much we don't know. But I do know God is merciful and active and capable of speaking into any storm.

I need to bring this to a close. It's gotten overly long. Thank you, as for reading and for your prayers. Peace, dear reader.