Humbled Through Starbucks

“Venti iced chai with soy please.”  I press the straw to my lips and take a longing sip before heading back out onto the highway.

Alas, another road trip.  In as much as I wasn’t looking forward to spending hours upon hours in the van driving, I was equally antsy with excitement for the trip because I was going to meet up with Les.

On this trip, my mom kindly and lovingly let the boys take her portable dvd players with us.  This, coupled with a binder of movies and three sets of headphones, has made a predictable improvement in the noise level and harmony inside our van.  With the boys occupied with movies, I faded the radio to the front of the van and giddily pressed play to a list of podcasts silently waiting for ages in a folder on my iPhone.

A few podcasts have begun and ended when I hear from the backseat, “I think we’re going to stop again. I just saw a sign for Starbucks.” I chuckle and tell them, “No”, giving it no more thought.

We walk into our hotel room and one of my boys excitedly exclaims as he sees an advertisement on the desk, “Mom!  They have your favorite coffee – Starbucks – here!”

“Thanks for letting me know.”  No more thought dedicated to it.

We arrive the next day at our destination and anxiously wait to see Les.  It’s been a couple of weeks since the last time we saw him which is actually fantastic considering we expected to see each other only once a month for the next 10 months.  A few waking hours is all we had with Les before he had to fly the next morning.  But…they were cherished hours in a way I can’t even begin to explain with any real justice.

This period of our lives has made me realize just how much I took for granted – all the thanksgivings I left out of my prayers.  ”Thank you God for letting my husband have a job.  Thank you for letting him have a job 20 minutes from our home.  Thank you for only taking Les away from me for 3 – 5 days at a time while he goes to fly.  Thank you for the dinners we eat together as a family at our kitchen table. Thank you for my husband’s arms wrapped around me as I drift off to sleep.  Thank you for all the things my husband does for me that I never noticed before because I was too busy focusing on all the things he wasn’t.  Thank you for the support he is to me after I’ve had a long, difficult day with the kids.”

Les and I have been through some…adventures together – especially concerning the foster care years. I’d like to think that these situations have brought us closer and made us stronger.    You can’t go through the experiences we’ve gone through together as a family and not have some sort of huge impact left on your lives.  There are still some day to day struggles that have never gone away with our boys even long after the days of no longer having to worry about social workers randomly showing up out of the blue or wondering if birthdad made it out of jail and then if he will show up to the birthparent visit and finally what impact that will have on your boys when they get home from that visit.

Every person has a story about the impact life has made on their lives.  There are many days, despite my best effort, that I feel like not only am I banging my head on the wall – my whole body is being slammed against that wall.  Les is the one I talked to about all of it.  I purposely leave so many stories off my blog. It’s the same reason why I hesitate publishing the book about our foster care experience – I don’t want people judging my boys for a life they were innocently dealt and the impact it left on them.  Don’t get me wrong – my children are amazing.  They have taught me innumerable truths about myself and God. But…it’s hard when you give and give and give and what you get back is a child climbing onto the end of your bed while you’re still waking up one morning to tell you, “I’ve given this a lot of thought.  I want a new mommy and daddy.  Ones that won’t tell me no.”   Or when you’ve stayed up all night long multiple times with your son while he’s having fibril seizures only to have him give absolutely no regard to the terror and love you felt through it as he parent shops each and every time you’re out with other adults. Or the absolute lack of trust or affection given to you as a mom even after all the love you’ve poured into them day in and day out.  It’s nothing less than draining and heartbreaking.  It leaves you wondering if anything you do makes a difference. Will it ever make a difference?  Some days you see this little glimmer of hope or progress.  It can send you literally leaping for joy and talking ninety miles an hour to your husband as you explain detail by detail the small but equally enormous success because one of your sons actually gave you a semi-quasi hug of his own doing that day.

We say our goodbyes to Les at the hotel and we’re back on the road for some more driving.  I stopped at a Target to quickly pick something up and to let the boys stretch their legs a bit – helping to get out those long drive wiggles.  As we’re walking through the doors, one of my boys tells me, “They have Starbucks here.  Can we get a drink?”  Alright…this time I felt it.  The smack as I realize the impact my stops at Starbucks across several states have made on my sons.  I’ve unintentionally taught my boys that Starbucks holds a prominent importance in my life.  Far more importance than I ever gave it credit for. In the past two months, I’ve stopped at Starbucks far more times than I care to admit without being embarrassed.  Previously, I only went as a special treat – a handful of times throughout the entire year. My frequent stops to get a chai tea started when I was making road trips with the boys.  Without Les.  Without Niki.  The car had seemingly shrunk and the fighting was a bit more than my sanity could take.  Coffee sounded good.  Afterall, I used to tell Les that it was my cup-o-sanity.  That first sip seems to somehow magically take the edge off the “He took it out of my hands again!!!” in the backseat. It was my coping mechanism of choice.

I skipped the chai tea this time, in shock and revulsion with this realization, and only purchased the item I went into Target for to begin with.  We settle back into the van, all buckled and ready to continue our journey down the highway.  I started the next podcast by Fr. Thomas Hopko and became completely engrossed in it when I realized how much it spoke to my life personally.  I even listened to it a second…and a third time.  A mom had written him an email asking him if God plays favorites.  She writes how it seems that there are some people who seem to be dealt a silver spoon in their mouth concerning their ability to become a saint.  Aren’t we all called to become saints?  Then how does the average person who struggles with situations dealt to them beyond their control ever attain sainthood?  Fr. Thomas talks about how every person is called to a vocation – some to monasteries, others to the world around us.  Some to great things, some to struggle all their life.  We have no answers to why this is so.  Only God knows the reason.  No one has the same life circumstances and therefore we are not going to be judged the same way by God.  How do we handle the hand we’ve been personally dealt?  That’s the important aspect.

There are too many times where I find myself struggling with my circumstances.  Worrying and agonizing over my inability to overcome a certain situation.  I’ve fallen many times, over and over again, as I’ve made mistakes, lacked faith, or completely lost all hope.  I know that I’m not perfect.  I know I will make more mistakes BUT I need to continually get up and continue trying to do better.  I’ve discovered on this trip that in some of my weak moments of patience and love, I’ve been clinging to the wrong hem of garment as I clench and grasp hold of it to pull myself back up again.  I’ve turned to the hem of a coffee company for comfort when I should have been grasping at the hem of Christ’s garment as I pray for lasting comfort and guidance.  I’ve mistakenly taught my children that an object is where you find peace instead of God. How often do we, as a society, teach our children what we value most when we take extra care and time to ensure our program is recorded on the tv? How we lose all sense of time as we browse or play on the Internet day after day neglecting each other? How we move around our entire schedules for a ball game but can’t make it to church because we’re a little too worn out or busy?  How we engross ourselves in a hobby as the rest of our family finds something else to do? I don’t think that any of these things are bad in and of themselves.  Should I refuse to drink another cup of coffee or chai tea for the rest of my life?  No.  It’s about the level of importance I’ve placed on them.  My kids are watching me…learning.  Anything I’ve turned to in order to forget my problems or to find a sense of peace, has turned me away from the one person I needed to turn to most – God.

“The primary goal in the education of children is to teach, and to give the example of a virtuous life.”

Saint John Chrysostom