You would cry to......

........if it happened to you!

Why? Why does Maya cry all the time? It is for reasons that probably no one reading this blog, nor Staci and I could fully understand. It is a perfect storm really and something that has been reinforced almost her whole life. Let me see if I can outline the situation for you from the beginning.

Lets put ourselves in the same situation. First, your life starts out in the womb. I think that we can all agree about that. However, in the womb, the parent may or may not even know that she was pregnant with you. There is a possibility that there was smoking, drinking, or even drugs pulsing through her body while she carried you. And, there is almost a certainty that the woman carrying you was substantially under nourished making it a high possibility that you too are under nourished. Yet you grow and continue to develop. You have a heartbeat and fingers and toes. Lets not look past the fact that God knows your name and everything about you.

It is finally time for you to be born. Maybe you are in some kind of prehistoric hospital, maybe you are in a room, maybe too cold, or too hot. Maybe you are outside under a shack, or in a riverside tent. Whatever your situation, it's not like being born in the USA! Let the storm continue. Your birther (no mother) doesn't want you, and doesn't love you. You don't get the love and bonding that you desperately need and seek as an infant. You have no skills, no tools to survive on your own, yet you desperately try to sooth yourself to no avail.

Within 12 days, you are abandon all together. You are left by your birther and any family that you may have had.......left at less than two weeks of age by a river to die. No food, no love, and no hope. Only God himself could have kept you alive. Maybe those were the best two days of your little 15 month old life. Can anyone imagine what it would be like to be a helpless infant held by God and comforted by the Holy Spirit?

The hope comes when you are found by the river, by God only knows who (this is not a figure of speech, it is the truth). You were taken to an orphanage for care. You are starving, sick, and you have never known the warm loving embrace of a mother. You don't think that made a lasting impact on your life? Don't think that you remember such things and that there is no trace of that left with you? I would ask anyone who is thinking this to kindly reconsider. Your abandonment is imprinted in your being.

Finally you are someplace warm, and have the nourishment you need. Someone to hold you and care for your needs. You still lack the love that you so desperately need and seek.

Lets shift gears for a moment. In this orphanage, you have your immediate physical needs met on a daily basis - shelter, food, and care. Everything is okay right? Well, consider the fact that your caretaker's main goal is to keep the peace with all of the children under her care. This is good for you in the short term. Each time you cry, she is prompted to do whatever it takes to get you to stop. However, over the long term, you learn that you can prompt appeasement by crying, and that you can manipulate your care taker and others through fit throwing. You fight for attention and food as you grow older. You learn how to get what you want and that you can get your way by crying or throwing fits. This is a temporary fix for what you really seek - love and ownership. It is no different than what every human seeks no matter what our age may be.

Appeasement becomes your substitute for love. You seek it everyday and everyday it becomes more and more reinforced as you cling to and attach to what you know - your caretaker and your environment. You don't want to become attached to the other children around you because they are your competition, but you become attached anyway. Then on some unsuspecting day, two people who look and sound different than anyone that you have ever known come into this world that you have made for yourself. They take an interest in you and give you attention, disrupting your system. You cling to your caretaker even more now. Eventually, they become part of your daily routine.....not so bad as long as your caretaker is nearby. After all, they leave after a few hours and bring you treats and toys when they come. What is not to like? You wake up the next morning and you are taken to a different place, away from your caretaker and with these two people. Remember, one of them is a rather beastly man and men are not something that you have ever been around much either. They take you to doctors and offices and then eventually to a strange hotel room with things that you have never seen - beds, a crib, and TV!
You are in shock.....no really, not clinical shock, but mental shock. Exhausted, you go to sleep that night. The next morning is when the terror starts. This was not a dream. You are in a strange land with strange people, and once again, you have been abandoned and left to your own devices. You don't know which emotion to express first: sadness, anger, frustration, fear, terror, you are overwhelmed by your situation and so you cry and cry and cry. There is nothing to console you, because there is no consolation in your mind. You are old enough that you know and are aware that you had, you loved, and now you have lost....and are lost......and have been abandoned. On top of that, you are sick, you have a fever and are congested....tummy is upset, ears ache, body aches. At only 15 mos old, you tell me how to get past this. These strangers try to help and you turn to them for your immediate needs, but there is no way for them to manage your sadness, grief and pain. A child might touch a hot flame once and get burned - they might touch it twice and get burned again, but that child isn't going to willingly and knowingly immediately go down the same path that caused them pain! Why would Maya latch onto us and trust that she was not going to just get burned again? The answer is she won't, and she isn't!

So, why does Maya cry? THAT is why she cries. That and a hundred other nightmares that we will never know. She has scars on her body, and there are probably scars on heart that we will never see or know. Yes, little miss Maya cries and sometimes we cry with her, but it is okay. There is a day on the horizon when her cries will cease and her heart will heal, and trust will make way for joy and happiness. It is a long road with bumps and setbacks. Staci and I are just so very thankful that we are traveling down this path with the love and support from all of you. God bless you all and thank you so much for your encouraging posts and most of all, your prayers.