Love languages

Was it Plato who said, "Know thyself"?  I probably studied that at some point, but the details have long ago been deleted.  Marriage and parenthood definitely cause one to hold a magnifying glass up to one's life and recognize details that might otherwise have escaped notice.  

I read The Five Love Languages several years back, and it came as no surprise that my love language is Quality Time.  I gave myself a lot of grace when I first got home on the whole attachment thing.  As I've mentioned, I had a bunch of adoptive moms reassure me that my feelings (and lack of feelings) were completely normal.  But now that we are starting to settle into our new normal, and life feels almost mundane again in a new and chaotic way, that wretched mommy guilt is rearing its ugly head.  My number one love language is quality time, and my number one spiritual gift is compassion, "to suffer with".  So yeah... where did that go?  What's with the numbness?  The secret favoritism that I recognize and loathe in my heart?  Some days, I actually feel like I'm ok.  Other days, I'm keenly aware of the fact that I have not recovered emotionally or mentally from last year.  But I sure am doing a lot of soul searching these days in the few quiet moments I can carve out.  And when I say searching, I mean both recognizing things that are there, and actually searching for things that feel lost.  Where is the woman who wept over a child she had never seen?  Where is the passionate activist for orphan care and anti-trafficking?  Where is the girl who felt so deeply?  She must be asleep... or passed out in the bed on a ventilator.  Sometimes feeling that deeply hurts so bad that you have to scab over for a while before you bleed out.

Sorry for the bunny trail.

Maybe I'm trying to justify my many shortcomings, but it occurred to me last night as I was talking to my husband, that quality time and communication are vital for me in feeling connected in any relationship.  Even with our bio four year old, we talk about things.  And I don't just mean eating vegetables and going potty.  She asks really good questions.  She tells me what she's thinking about and how she's feeling.  She tells me stories and listens to me do the same, as long as I keep it to 30 seconds or less.  I've spent four and a half years learning how to read her, growing in my love for her.  My communications with JP, at this point, are basically confined to daily requirements and activities.  While her English has come along very well, and we communicate mostly without a hitch throughout the day, conversation is not really in the mix yet.  I don't know who she is, and only a great deal of time and patience is even going to begin to tell me that story.  I serve her.  I take care of her.  I give her hugs and kisses, read her books, and kick the ball with her, but I don't know her.  That connection specific to my love language is not there yet, and won't be for a long time.  I can only guess at her love language.  

So maybe I'm justifying, grasping at straws here.  Maybe I should be feeling more after almost four months than I do.  Maybe I should just relax about it like I did in the beginning and remember that four years and four months are a totally different ballgame.  Maybe what I'm judging in my own heart as feelings of favoritism are really just the natural feelings that come along with a longer and deeper connection to someone with whom I spend nearly all my days and moments.  But I also know that there's that spark of compassion still in there, that even though it feels like someone outside of me right now, is longing to give what I don't yet have to give her... the deep, instictual, undeniable love of a mother to her children.  The kind of love that no matter how crazy they drive you makes you want to wrap your arms around them and hold them close when you're away from them for a while.  It's just there.  It's in you.  You don't have to manufacture it.  You can't, in fact, because I've been trying to for four months.  Every child should experience that.  And God picked me to give that to her.  I can only conclude, then, that at some point, He will enable me to do just that.