Life After the Blue Box

This week marks four months of having Ellie home with us.  Four months since we stepped on that plane in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with a little wide-eyed bundle, who was, I’m sure, wondering what on earth was happening.  I think back to that day, and it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that I was holding the same child that I rocked to sleep tonight.  I didn’t know her at all, and I don’t think I really even understood that.  This was a child with a personality, with likes and dislikes, with a history.  I knew none of those things.  Now that she’s home and some of the initial emotional adrenaline has worn off, I’ve had some time to think about how much she’s changed since she’s come home.  It was inevitable that she would change, because EVERYTHING in her world changed. 

Before we were reunited with Ellie Claire, and before we loaded her up in the van and took her from the transition home, her world was a blue box.  Yes, her “crib” was a glorified wooden box painted bright blue.  There were no slats to look through, and other than an occasional bath, almost all of her time, every single day was spent in this blue box.  She shared her room with 6-8 other babies and a nanny.  When she was hungry, a bottle was propped on her belly, and she stared at the ceiling.  There was a window on one wall, but the curtains blocked out a good deal of the light.  The light bulb in the ceiling dimly lit the room at night before it was “bedtime.”  But is “bedtime” a fair phrase when you really haven’t left your bed all day? 

I remember the first few times we had Ellie outside she was kind of awestruck, looking around with an expression that said, “Ummmmm, what???”  While we were at the guesthouse, she fussed when we would lay her down in the crib, if even for a moment.  At the time, I enjoyed thinking she really liked us and just wanted our company.  Maybe that was true, but looking back, I can also see that perhaps she was just afraid of her world becoming another box.  She liked what she was seeing and experiencing- and I am so grateful.  I know to some children, their new world is a scary, sensory-overloading place, but it at least seemed, to our Ellie, to be exciting and interesting.  We took her from a blue box to a guesthouse, to an array of stinky airplanes and airports, and then to our home, in a matter of a week.  She adjusted relatively well, but it was not all a bowl of cherries- she still struggles with her share of sensory issues- but she quickly loved toys, her baths, and Mickey Mouse (an important trait for any Baker).

When we took her from the blue box, we didn’t just open her world, we blew it up.  You know that “shh-shh-shh” sound you make to a baby when she cries?- The one that’s supposed to calm her?  Um, yeah, before I held her at nine months old, she had never heard that sound.  “Shh-shh-shh” is not a familiar, comforting sound to a child who’s listened to a “Ts-ts-ts” sound her entire life.  The familiar sounds of children laughing, singing, playing, and shouting in Amharic, the sounds of huge, rickety trucks on a poorly paved highway, the sounds of random donkeys walking down the street- were all replaced with the sounds of our relatively quiet home in rural Kentucky.  One day, I had a really hard time getting her to sleep.  I laid her in the floor of the den with a couple toys and went to the kitchen to clean up lunch and load the dishwasher.  I was clanking away, singing, and busy getting the chore done, when I peeked over the sink into the den, where Ellie lay, fast asleep in the middle of the floor.  The noise I was making had finally lulled her to sleep.

The smells of Ethiopian spices, coffee roasting, air pollution, and a room full of babies (just use your imagination), were replaced with the scents of her daddy’s grill, various cleaning products, and my favorite apple room spray.  The beautiful dark skin that she saw each day was replaced with my own pale, peachy skin.  There was nothing familiar to her.  Even her inner clock was completely flipped, as she figured out the eight hour time difference.  I’ll never forget Billy looking at her on one of her first nights home and saying, “Go. To. Sleep.”  She just grinned and laughed.  Nothing familiar- not even the time of day.  So many people, with kind intentions, told me “Babies adjust so quickly.”  They said, “She’ll do great with you all, after all, she’s so young.”

Let me ask you to consider something for just a moment.  Many of you reading are mothers or grandmothers.  Many of you have your babies and toddlers on pretty rigid routines.  The thought of missing a nap-time makes your head spin.  We did more than miss a nap-time.  We turned her schedule upside down and inside out.  Now, imagine leaving a baby all day in her bed.  Imagine never holding her while you feed her.  Imagine letting her lie in a soiled crib while you tend to six other children who also need you.  Imagine having only a toy or two to pass around to those same kids, and having no time to play with that toy with the kids.  Imagine no heater or air conditioner to keep the temperature the same in a baby’s room.  Imagine a baby goes many, many hours a day with no diaper on for the first nine months of life, only to wake up one day to a world where diapers are always worn, with the exception of bath time.- Bath time- imagine a baby lives in a room where seven babies need to be bathed, so an assembly line of sorts is made to get the job done.  Imagine this baby, after she’s bathed, is put back in to that blue box.  She’s not rocked, she’s not sung to sleep.   She doesn’t lie down and look at pretty painted walls with pictures framed above her crib.  Above her crib is simply a yellow sheet with her height and weight, both of which are way too low for her age, and a big ominous blank by “family name.”  A sheet that just serves as a reminder that before this blue box, there was just horrible, painful tragedy in this sweet baby’s life.

If this description is the day of your sweet baby- asleep in the beautiful nursery in your nice, clean, warm house, the baby whose schedule you kept perfectly today, the baby who received the very best of your time and love- if that baby described above is your baby, are you okay with how her day went?  Are you okay with the blue box? 

Please, don’t tell me, “She’s so young- she’ll do great.”  First of all, to say that, is to (although I’m sure unintentionally) take her history and turn it into just “not that big of a deal.”  Again, I ask, if her history was your child’s history, would it be “not that big of a deal?”  Secondly, let me reiterate, we are talking HUGE changes for her.  HUGE.  Changes to EVERYTHING.  Thirdly, there is a reason you have that routine with your baby.  There is a reason you snuggle her close and rock her.  There is a reason you hold her while you feed her a bottle.  A reason for those rattles you place in her hand.  A reason for the songs you sing to her.  A baby learns healthy attachment and security so very early in life.  A baby’s brain develops so rapidly in the first year, it’s hard to keep up with all the ways she grows.  Children in orphanages miss out on all those things.  My sweet Ellie was loved and cared for by saintly women at her transition house- women to whom I am forever indebted- but they were not her mommy.  No matter how kind they were, they did not love her with the love only a mother, whether biological, foster, or adoptive, can give.  They could not protect her from or prepare her for the changes that were coming her way.  They could not get her ready for the world beyond the blue box. 

Here is the thing though, Ellie was quite content in her blue box.  Compared to where she was prior to the blue box, it was actually pretty cozy and warm.  It was secure.  It was safe and familiar.  She had no desire to leave that blue box- until she experienced the world outside. 

Now that she has seen the great big world our Father created, she is a completely different girl.  It has been absolutely amazing to see her personality blossom.  She is giggly and dramatic.  She has more facial expressions than a cartoon character and is always on the go.  I look back at our first pictures of her at home, and I’m a bit saddened- she is so passive and just there… along for the ride, but not really enjoying any of it.  Now, I see a baby soaking up every bit of every minute she’s awake.   Sometimes that means she is passionately letting me know she is unhappy.  Sometimes that means she is laughing hysterically at her big sister.  She is no longer content with a blue box.  She knows there is more.

When I write “more,” I’m not referring to the new foods she’s trying each week.  I’m not speaking of the cute clothes she’s inherited from her sister and cousin.  I’m not talking about the shelves filled with toys in her room.  Those are good things, but they are not what make her a happy, personality-filled baby girl.  Nope, that’s her family that's changed her.  She has a family.  She has a mommy and a daddy and a sister that all adore her.  We kiss her a thousand times a day.  We tickle her and sing to her.  We- okay, one of us- tries to pick her up and scares the mess out of her.  She belongs, and we are beginning to see that she knows that. 

Her once rigid body in my arms now conforms to my shape as I rock her.  She looks in our eyes.  She “kisses” our faces.  She no longer sucks her middle fingers constantly or shakes her head feverishly in an attempt to comfort herself.  She lets us comfort her- in fact, she seeks us for comfort.  She actually laid her head on my chest three times today.  Ahhh.  That was the best ever.  It was as if she was saying, “Yes, I know.  You’re my mommy.”  She was expressing a kind of contentment- not one that came from ignorance that there was more, but one that came from the express opposite- there was more,  she knew it, and she found it.  

I am not naïve enough to believe that all of the “stuff” that comes along with adoption is over.  I know that there may be days in the future when Ellie subconsciously considers that maybe the blue box wasn’t so bad.  But, there have been huge steps to us molding into what the Baker family should look like.  We are finding our new normal and we’ve actually arrived at a place where it’s hard for me to remember what life was like without her.  The baby I brought home four months ago couldn't even sit up, and she is now walking holding on to my hands.  She is experiencing freedom.  She is experiencing life!  I am so thankful that she never has to go back to that blue box.    

Here’s my question for you.  Are you in a blue box?  If you don’t know Jesus as your personal savior, you are in a figurative blue box.  You may feel like you’re doing pretty darn well, but my Jesus came and died and rose again so that you could have abundant, full life- more than pretty darn well.  You’ve already seen through our story that He doesn’t promise easy or happy.  He promises that when life’s not easy, when it’s everything but happy, it has purpose.  Please, don’t be content in life without Jesus- life in a blue box.  There is a huge plan for your life outside that box!  When you ask Him to forgive you of the sin in your life and choose to live for him, your eyes are opened, and it’s like the walls of that box are blown off-  Blown off to reveal peace, joy, hope,  and never-ending love.  Life with Jesus is about the King of Creation walking through each and every day before you and with you.  Life with Jesus is about realizing that everything you chase in this life fades- everything but Him. 

One year ago today, a baby girl named Mihret was made a Baker, legally by the Ethiopian court.  She was ours.  She was Adelaide “Addie” Mihret Baker, but now, she is no longer legally ours.  That dream was taken away.  There are days, like today, when the questions of “why?’ tempt me to doubt my Jesus, and search for my blue box… But then, that different kind of contentment comes- contentment like Ellie laying her head on my chest… contentment that happens when you know that a sovereign God orders your days and gives reason and purpose to everything in your life- even the big huge question marks.  That is a contentment I would not trade for anything.  That’s not a blue box contentment- that’s a family contentment.  After all, I am His child.  He is my Father- the source of every ounce of peace and contentment possible.  I am content because I know the Source of true contentment.  I hope with all that I am that you know him too.

"...I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of." 

 John 10:10, The Message