At a loss for words...

Sorry for the delay in posting...I have intended to daily...but things have been a bit "off the rails" as they say...

This is a long post and not a light read...be warned.

I've entitled this post, "At a loss for words...", I can hear many of you snickering and thinking to yourself..."Right...like that woman is ever at a loss for words!"

But it's true.

It's happened twice in the past 5 days.

Last Friday we headed over to our new every-Friday hangout...we eat pizza at a local pizza joint and then go upstairs to a coffee house that is also an English conversation hub.

We've now determined that every Friday night at the coffee house, is "Kids night." So apparently the highest concentration of kids local and foreign are there on that evening.

Our kids were having a blast. They were busy working the room talking to kids and adults alike. Dad decided to take Bub home as it was past his bedtime (Bub's, that is) and I stayed with the gaggle of girls.

I settled down at a table and spoke first with a local man who just had returned from the US with his daughter after being a visiting scholar there for one year. He brought his 7 year old daughter to practice her English. She and The Bug got on well together.

Then a lady and her teenage (14) daughter came in. The were conspicuous, mainly due to the fact that they were in very trendy, funky clothes. The Mom had on purple glasses and some wild shoes with her super-modern, very expensive skirt and sweater. The daughter was also adorned in some really high-end fashion but she seemed a bit shy.

Within a few minutes the conversation immediately turned to the question "How many of these kids are yours?" I, as usual, inflicted a "dropped jaw in amazement" stare from her when I revealed that we had 7 children.

The daughter, I'll call her LuLu, looked over her glasses and said to me..."I'll tell you a secret. I'm Aspbergers."

I nodded, understanding a bit about Aspbergers and her mother said "You know Aspbergers? NO one here has ever heard of it."

The next ten minutes were full of LuLu and her Mother's painful retelling of life for them with the challenge of Aspbergers here. They told me how she'd been targeted by bullies at school. That she had to be taken out of school because of the discrimintion and finanly LuLu told me that her heart was "broken" because she longed for a friend.

Her mother began to well up with tears hearing her daughter's raw description of the pain she'd endured.

I shared with them about being the mother of a child with a special need (Bub's eye...it's funny, but I assume you would not be able to figure out what I could be referring to as a special need...I feel funny calling it that). The mother was sympathtic that we would have adopted a child that we didn't know was missing an eye. I quickly interrupted her and said "Oh, no...you don't understand, of course we knew he was missing an eye."

At that point she was at a loss for words. She said that she could not imagine anyone adopting a child with full knowledge of a special need. I laughed and told her that within my special needs adoption group we are certain that when a child has some sort of challenge that they also have a super power that will be revealed.

She was absolutely captivated with that mindset and enthusiastically talked about her daughter's giftedness with the piano and art.

She then wanted to speak about what our belief system was. She said that she knew Christians to be "honest and from a tradition of love...with kind hearts toward children." I was pleased to know that her limited interaction with Christians had been positive. I think that there may not be many, sadly, worldwide that would share that appraisal.

So there I was.

The moment arrived for me to share my heart with this woman who had already poured her heart out to me...and I was at a loss for words.

All of my words were locked up in complicated phrasing, church-ese dialect and western culture.

In our training we were warned to be prepared for just such opportunities as this. But to be prepared we needed to re-think the manner in which we would communicate the central truths of our lives to translate into the realm of relatability with our new relationships here.

But...I wasn't ready.

I was at a loss for words...

I offered up a quick plea for help so that I would give something of value. In spite of me, I believe something came out of my mouth that seemed to connect with my conversation pal.

I left stimulated by the honest, deep exchange and challenged to ready myself for the next opportunity.

Then Saturday we headed out with the young lady who has been helping translate for us, occaisionally babysitting for us and helping with the laundry as needed. We were going to show her how we shopped for Western-style food here...everything seemed delightful as we headed off in the rain.

During lunch our conversation turned to a discussion with the young lady, I'll call her Sally, of her family life. I asked her "how old are you?" She replied, "I don' t know." Assuming that I was encountering a translation error I restate the question, "How many years are you?" Sally replied "I know what you're asking, but, I don't know."

I said, thinking she was joking with me, "well what does your Mother say? She was there!"

She looked at me and said, "she says that she found me on a pile of trash."

She then deteriorated into a sobbing mess pouring forth many accusations about her parents (who she'd previously told me that she adored) including control, abuse and their hatred of her that she was born a daughter and not a son.

Within 45 minutes she began acting more strangely. Trying to change the subject after leaving the restaurant, I asked her what she thought we should get my colleague as a birthday gift. She gave me a vacant stare and then said..."I don't know. A wedding ring?"

I was, for the second time in as many days, at a loss for words.

Within 1 hour and 30 minutes she was scratching her face in a agitated fashion, she seemed unable to understand English anymore and she would periodically laugh hysterically with no catalyst for the laughter in sight.

I talked with Dad and said that I did not think I was over-dramatizing in the least to say that I thought our dear friend Sally had suffered some sort of psychotic break.

Within 2 hours I was forced to physically move her along by holding her hand and telling her what to do. She seemed totally disconnected and unable to make simple judgements like where to throw her dirty tissue away. She just threw it down on the floor. (This sort of behavior continued into the evening once she was back at our home. She opened some peanuts for the children then threw the shells on the middle of our living room floor. The next day, she finished drinking from a paper cup and she tossed in down on the floor in my colleague's office, without one word of explanation.)

Once we got home, she went into our bathroom, without a word and got into our shower. Then retired to one of our beds. After a rest she appeared in our living room and sat in front of the tv. One of the cats walked in front of her face, only cms away from her nose and it stood there. I watched in amazement from accross the room as she seemed not to see the cat for several minutes. Finally she brushed the cat away.

I was growing more and more concerned. She was in our home, I didn't know what had caused this state of confusion in her and all of the kids were carrying on as if nothing was amiss. She indicated that she did not, under any circumstances, want to go home.

I was constantly asking DAD for help, wisdom and peace in the midst of a scenario that was growing increasingly tense.

While Brownie was holding one of the cats, without warning, Sally reached over and pulled, quite agressively, the cat's tail. I said, "wait a minute, Sally, please don' t do that." She looked at me and then said "I think she likes it." The comment was accompanied by an erie, inappropriate smile. My discomfort increased.

To the rescue came Ms. Yang who quickly arrived and took an "Official school position" by telling Sally she could not stay in our home and that she was calling a private car to take her home.

Very reluctantly, Sally left.

I was extremely preoccupied all Sunday with wondering what would come of Sally on Monday when she was due to be at our home at 2 PM.

At 11 AM Monday she arrived at our school and went to see Ms Yang. She told Ms Yang that her parents had stolen the keys to our apartment and so she was unable to get in to work on the laundry.

Ms Yang told her that in fact Sally had left the keys behind on Saturday evening when she left for the private car.

Dad saw Sally in the hallway of the school when he delivered her keys to her. He inquired as to how she was doing and he said to me later..."the lights were on, but I'm not sure who's home."

When we arrived home from school we found Sally sitting on the couch. She had showered, I think multiple times, and had fixed two dozen eggs from our refridgerator for herself. Pieces of the eggs were strewn around our living room. The couches had been moved around into a strange configuration. She had left toilet paper, used toilet paper, all over our bathroom floor. Her socks were wadded up in the other bathroom. The kitchen was a disaster and the back door was open, no screened door closed and she was totally oblivious to any of it.

We had planned on Ms Yang as well as another brother from our building here to come over and "have a talk" with Sally. The children were finally shuttled off to our fellow teacher's place and Dad made dinner. While we waited to settle down for our dinner and talk I observed Sally dancing to some music, awkwardly, dramatically while even the children watched in facination.

I have a degree in psychology. I spent most of my time focusing on abnormal psychology. With every new behavior I was saying to myself "I know what this is, I've studied it." But I was still incredulous that we were witnessing this distressing scene.

Dad and I wanted to show compassion, to help in any way possible and at the same time we were conflicted with concern for the safety of the children. There had been a dozen other little items that had shown poor judgement and processing on her part...we didn't want any dangerous situations to develop.

We sat down with the local friends here and with Sally and we began to ask her how she was feeling. She reported that she was confused. She said that a few days before (Saturday) she began to get confused about time and direction.

We were so thankful that the topic was acknowledged by her immediately so that we didn't have to give our observations.

Then what followed was 1 hour of the most disturbing conversation. We would ask questions and she would answer with incomplete and disconnected responses. When we asked about her friends, if we could get in contact with them she replied, "I don't know where they are." When we asked what their names were she said, "I can't remember. I just remember the love. I like peace and a good earth." Then periodically she shouted about her parents, that she couldn't stand to look in their eyes, that they had no love in them. That her home with them was a cage and they had bars on her windows (a common thing here for safety reasons.)

She didn't remember some items that I asked her about. When I asked which friend of hers got married two weeks ago (she'd had a day away from our home so that she could be in the wedding and have her final dress fitting) she replied "I don't know. Who got married?" When I gave her more background based on the conversation we'd had two weeks ago she said "I think it's not good to try dresses on alone. People are the most important things."

The she told us about a memory she had with her parents (one of our local friends had asked her if she had any happy memories with her parents) she told a story about food and chopsticks and then laughed uproariously at what was supposed to be the punch line. The story was incoherent, none of us understood what was comical.

She told us that they were always forcing drugs into her...

...then a lightbulb went on in my mind.

I thought, "this is not new, she's been medicated and she's gone off of her meds."

We had to tell her that she couldn't stay in our home. It seemed to not register. Then she said she was going to a hotel to stay the night.

We helped her gather her things, discussed many more items that resulted in random responses from her and showed her out.

She said to me, "okay, see you later." Then as the elevator doors closed she made a double peace sign with her hands and stuck her tongue out at me shaking her head and rolling her eyes up in her head.

I felt so sad for her.

Today she returned to our LQ. She no longer had a key as we'd taken in from her last night. When I saw her, from a distance, she was walking down the middle of the road, weaving. When I called out to her she finally turned around and walked back to me. Her face looked drawn and distressed. Her eyes, so dark.

She told me that she'd gone home to see her parents and that she'd taken some medication. She was certainly more coherent, but still, not as we'd known her before.

I asked her, as I'd now formulated an hypothesis, "when you stayed over at our home on Thursday and Friday, you didn't take your medicine, did you?"

She said, "no."

I then told her that it was important for her take her medication every day. That she does well when she's on it and that she was confused because she'd stopped taking it. She nodded in apparent agreement.

Then she left.

We've organized our two local friends to do further follow-up with her. We have been told, and we know it to be true, that we cannot go deeper as we are "foreigners." But we will be, and we ask you earnestly to lift her up.

In fact, we ask you to lift both Sally, LuLu and her mother up. We will be in contact with all of them in the days to come and we hope to offer each of them a ministry of compassion and gentleness in this world that is so often harsh.

May our light so shine before men that they will see our good works and praise our Father above...