Unmarked Keys

One of my fellow blog Moms, Kari of Coffee Catharsis just wrote a very important piece that I want all of you who stop by here to read too.  In fact, her piece is so eloquent and so heart-altering that I am copying the whole thing here, just in case you might not click on the link and read it on her blog.  Kari and her husband have four older bio children and two younger adopted, nicknamed Java and Bean.  Java and Bean both have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), which means their fetal brains were damaged by alcohol, and so they don't process information the same way neuro-typical brains do.  FASD is not well known in our culture, and so it is hard for a parent like Kari to see her children struggle in a world that does not know how to be compassionate to what it does not understand. 

Unmarked Keys

I read one of the best descriptions of FASD recently. It was from a mom who belongs to an email list I am on. She has a son with FASD whose IQ tests at 120 but his functional / adaptive skills are at 60. She wrote...

He is a great library of knowledge with all the doors locked and the keys unmarked.

Yesterday morning, just as we were preparing to leave for church, Java had a "can't find the keys" moment. I had asked her to hurry up and finish her breakfast and I walked to the next room to find my purse. Suddenly Java screamed like she had just been attacked so I went to the doorway to see what had happened. I saw Java with a large blob of ketchup on her bottom lip and it was about to drip to her dress or the floor. (We often have leftover supper food for breakfast in case you're wondering about the ketchup thing.)

Her face showed sheer panic and her body was initially frozen but before I could say anything she started flapping her arms, and her wooden sandal, which had been on her right foot, came whizzing by my head.

Java has wiped her mouth with a napkin thousands of times in her lifetime. We, her parents, taught her that skill, thankyouverymuch. However, when she needed the information most, when she was most distraught about a situation involving food on her face, she couldn't find the key for the door in her brain where that information was locked!

(*Java and Bean were both casein exposed on Saturday because of my stupidity and I know that this negatively affects her brain's processing ability. I'll write more about that another time.)

What the world sees: a child without even basic table manners who reacts with violence.

What the world concludes: brat- created by poor parenting.

It is easy for parents of neuro-typical children who have organized, unlocked libraries in their brains to judge others in their hearts. I should know. I once prayed that Pharisee prayer for parents:

Lord, I thank thee that my children do not behave as those children do. I taught my children manners. I taught them to obey. I raised them up in the way they should go and now they are fine, upstanding little Christians.

It was only after I became a mother to other people's children, people who had struggles in life far beyond any I had ever faced and whose burdens I now helped carry, that I learned how to pray from my heart instead of my ego.

When you walk with children and in and among families who have endured generations of abuse, neglect, mental illness and substance use, it changes your heart. It changes everything.

You no longer have the answers that once seemed so simple.

So yesterday as we sat in church right after the shoe incident, I found myself praying for mercy as the broken, sinful Publican. My prayer didn't even have words because at that moment I was like my daughter...standing with the keys in my hands but no clue how to open that door. Thankfully my Savior opened it for me.