God's amazing and perfect plan for families

I've thought a lot this week about delays and how to overcome them.  I've wondered at how quickly Seth will be able to catch up or if he even will be able to catch up in all areas.  I've thought about what puts a child in this position, and what is the biggest reason for what he has to overcome.  We expected Seth to be delayed.  We knew orphanage life was not condusive to raising a healthy, well adjusted, well rounded, academically over achieving child.  :)  We expected him to be a somewhat typical 4 year old. 

What we were unprepared for is the results of institutionalization. We thought he'd know how to play with legos and color.  We assumed he'd know how to turn the pages of a book or cuddle a stuffed animal.  Not so.  But even more surprising and startling than that is that we've had to teach him basic things.  Things I never even realized we taught children.  Things like making eye contact, or even looking our way when we call his name, to visually track things, to respond to sounds.  We did not expect to have to teach him proper displays of emotion.  Specifically, how to trust enough to cry rather than laugh.  How to allow someone to hold you when you get an owie.  How to receive comfort.  Right now, when he gets hurt, he laughs and pushes me aside.  Receiving comfort takes trust.  Something he isn't prepared to give yet.  So he doesn't.  Right now, he laughs for any emotion he feels.  Heartbreaking that a little boy can't cry.  Because he can't trust.  I wasn't prepared for that.  I wasn't prepared for the emotional devastation that results from abandonment, orphanage life, transfer and institutionalization. 

I've spent some time considering life in healthy families.  Even moderately healthy families.  Even somewhat dysfuntional families.  In almost every scenario I can think of, children will get at least enough contact and attention, enough stimuli, to make the necessary steps to begin forming bonds, emotional connections and the building blocks to semi productive relationships.  It just happens.  We give our children so much, without even realizing what we do.  It's instinct.  We respond when they cry.  We cuddle them when they need it.  We provide appropriate toys and experiences to help them develop.  We talk to them.  We listen to them.  We don't even consider the foundation this is laying. 

So how bad does life have to be for those building blocks to not have been laid?  How neglectful must his childhood have been that I now have a sensory deprived, emotionally challenged, eye contact avoiding six year old on my hands?  And what could have been done to avoid this? 

God has a plan.  A plan for His children.  That plan includes a family for every child.  In His plan, children don't get abandoned.  Children are not rejected.  Children are cherished and loved and taught, and are given what they need to continue on and have a healthy family of their own.  In His perfect plan, that is the way it works.  And there is amazing wisdom in that plan.  We are now dealing with the ramifications of what happens when mothers, instead, choose abandment and rejection.  The children suffer.  And they suffer mightly.  They suffer more than I ever comprehended.  I always understood the Lord's plan for families.  I always knew of it's truthfulness.  But until I experienced, firsthand, what happens when that plan fails in such huge disasterous proportions such as this, I did not fully comprehend the beauty and the simplicity of the most basic builing block of the Lord's church- family. 

Parents, love your children.  Hold them close.  Cherish them.  Forgive them.  Whatever they require to be whole, be prepared to give them that, and more.  Jeremy and I are now in the business of healing a child.  A very traumatized and fragile child.  We are honored to be called upon to do this.  Seth is amazing.  The progress he's already made is astounding.  Love heals.  Love conquers.  Family is absolutely central to the Creator's plan.  My testimony of that has never, ever been stronger, because I've never before witnessed what happens to a child when that system has so completely failed.  Please continue to keep Seth in your prayers as we work so very hard to shower him with the love he's lacked his entire life, to heal a little boy.  To bring hope to a child's life.  Pray for him.