Dreams and Realities

This week has been one of many emotions. It's our one year anniversary of being home with Libby. And while that is certainly reason for happiness and celebration, it's also a sad time for Libby as she still grieves and misses her family in Ethiopia.

While we have had a few rough patches this year, for the most part we have been really blessed when it comes to bonding and attachment. I feel really good about where we are now. Really good. But with that being said, we still have moments like this...

Saturday night I was in Libby's room helping her lay out her clothes for church the next morning. And out of the blue she got an attitude like you wouldn't believe! Picking a fight really. Well, children don't argue with parents in this house. I refuse to get sucked into a power struggle. So I chose her dress for Sunday and laid it out for her to wear. End of story. Or so I thought. I was on my way out of her room, when I heard her mumble, "I want to go back to Ethiopia. In Ethiopia there is none of this fussin' over clothes. Someone else picks your clothes and you wear it. In Ethiopia, nobody cares what you wear."

So I turned around, scooped her up off the floor (which is getting more difficult now that she's about 55 lbs) , held her in my lap and addressed the real problem. This week we received 3 new books in the mail about Ethiopia. They're bilingual and she loves them! She read them in Tigrinya and Amharic and I read them in English. She was so happy to get these. We also had been looking at pictures from Ethiopia earlier in the day, and she's been busy writing a letter to one of her friends who was also from the same orphanage in Ethiopia but now lives in America. Plus, we had been talking a lot about our trip planned for next weekend to her favorite Ethiopian restaurant in Nashville. It was Ethiopia overload this weekend and understandably had triggered an emotional response.

We then talked for a long time - about her sisters mainly, especially her oldest sister that took care of her after her parents' died. She misses them so much and worries about them too. But after we had talked for a while, the tears dried as quickly as they came and she hugged me unprompted and said, "Thank you, Mom."

Then as I helped her straighten up her room, she said, "Sometimes when we're playing and having fun, I think I am dreaming. I think I'm still in Ethiopia and I'm havin' a dream."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

And Libby replied with a huge smile, "Because no place could be really like this."