Burning Vapor

Back on the Crazy Train

John 12:25-26 – Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

I have been gone for the past couple of weeks on a business trip that took me to Spokane, Missoula, Salt Lake City, and then Lake Havasu.  I’ll update you more on all of that as I have been keeping notes in my handy dandy notebook.  But for now, well, for now I will ask you to continue to pray for our family.

We had a doctors appointment scheduled for Noah today.  (For those of you who have kept up with our family for the past couple of years know all about the huge issues that we have had.  If you haven’t kept up to speed or are new to my blog – feel free to go back and read the archives.)  It wasn’t just any doctors appointment, it was an appointment with a Behavioral Medicine Specialist.  We had seen a specialist in Spokane, but due to Noah’s broken English it wasn’t of much help.  We have high hopes for this time around.

Noah was very upset when he learned of our impending trip to the doctor.  He was nervous, fearful even, and all masked by proud masculinity.  This morning he was very quiet and told me again that he did not want to see the doctor.  I told him that we would face this together and we just wanted him to be able to control his anger.  He told me that he did not have an anger problem – “Nobody is perfect Dad”.  I affirmed this truth but asked him if he had ever seen anyone fly into a rage the way he did?  He just glared at me and I knew it wasn’t going to be a good day.

At the appointment he was asked to fill out some questionnaire type materials and he asked the technician with his glaring look – Why?  She explained that this would help them to get to know him better and he muttered – “whatever” – snatched the papers and flopped down.  He wouldn’t read the questions, so I had to read them for him.  His mood continued to sour.  At one point he was asked to draw a picture of his family doing something together – he flipped the paper on the floor and said – “nothing”.  Well, like watching TV together, driving together, working in the yard together…anything?  He started to draw a picture, stopped, erased it and said “I can remember nothing”.  The rest of the session went the same direction.

We were finally asked to come back and talk to the Dr. and we filled him in with the cliff notes of the past two years.  He took a lot of notes, asked some good questions and clarified some points.  It was then Noah’s turn to talk to the doctor.  The doctor assured us that it would not be invasive and very introductory.  Noah was storming out of the office within a few minutes with the doctor on his heels.  He apologized and said that he had asked him some questions about sports that Noah showed some interest in and then the Dr. asked him about some feelings related to sports.  At that Noah’s eyes went red, tears came and he stormed out.  Jennifer and I go back to read the doctors evaluation of him next week.

The ensuing conversation in the truck was much more insightful as Noah railed against the family, proclaimed that he wanted to live on the streets, and allowed has anger to rage through his words.  Noah never takes any blame and always looks for someone else to pin the blame on.  Today it was the fact that we had 7 children and simply couldn’t take care of him properly.  If we had fewer children then he would be totally fine.  You see, as Noah explained it, the doctors appointment was simply a way to make our lives easier and had nothing to do with him.  We shouldn’t have adopted so many children!  Ah the comments that could have come from me at that point.  But I genuinely love Noah, even when it is the hardest thing in the world to do.  I explained to him that the problem was not the fact that we had so many children.  The problem was actually all him.  We actually hope to adopt more children in the near future, and all of our other children have done fine with the transition.  It has only been Noah that has broken windows, threatened suicide, attacked me and Josiah with a knife and the litany of angry outbursts could go on.

He has pouted all day, no doubt cooking up other reasons why we are such terrible parents and why he is a poor victim in this life.  And while he has skipped lunch and now dinner, I have no doubt that tonight or tomorrow he will come back and say “I’m sorry Dad.  Please forgive me.”  And I will forgive him and we will have a few days of blah and then the cycle will begin over again.

I would close with this warning to any parent praying about adopting an older child.  Jesus came into this world to rescue a people and He paid with His life.  If you think God may be calling you to rescue a child, be ready to pay with your life…and yes, it could happen to you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Adoption, Family, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.