A little thing that is actually a big thing

This doesn't actually have anything to do with the post, but it is a flower in one of the pots by the pond. A flower that I grew from seed this spring. It's pretty so I thought I'd share it. 

Ever since R. has come home, her hair has been very thin and when it was washed, what seemed to be great handfuls would come out. J. made the observation the other day that R. hasn't been losing hair like she used to, just a normal amount. I'm hoping that her hair will actual thicken up a bit.

But the cosmetic thing is the minor piece. I think her hair loss and now her lack of hair loss tells us an important story. First, it tells us that she is physically more healthy. (Just to be clear, she was very well taken care of while she was in foster care the couple of years before she joined our family. She was well fed.) She has better balance, she moves more easily, she has better coordination. We were adding to the work already done by her foster family and all those people who helped care for her when she was brought out of the orphanage. This is good.

What I want to focus on, though, is emotional healing. We have known that she is gradually feeling safer and that her anxiety level is gradually dropping in the years she has been here. R.'s behavior is more predictable, we can help her to regulate, she is slowly learning things, she sleeps at night. All of these things are indications that her internal life is in much less turmoil. Realizing that she is losing far less hair tells me that not only are we seeing external proof that she is healing emotionally, but that her body is is also feeling less stress and anxiety. 

If you have ever been through a season of major stress and worry, you might have experienced hair loss. I know I have. When you run your hand through your hair and a large amount of hair comes with it, you know your stress level is off the charts. This was the time in my life when I took up running as a way of dealing with it all because when I ran, all I could focus on was not dying and how much I hated running. It was a pleasant change from all the other things my brain was perpetually perseverating about. It was not a good season and I lost a lot of hair. 

Things change as they always do, we all survived that brutal season, and my hair grew back. In the great scheme of things, while it seemed to last forever in the midst of it, it was only a couple of years. R. had been dealing with outrageously stressful situations for nearly her entire life when we met her and joining our family was yet another. For her to feel safe enough that her body is starting to heal after just six years is actually more than I could have hoped for given exactly how globally affected she was by her experiences. 

Time, felt safety, and connection... God's great healing agents. Everyone wants to see the big miracles and in spending all their time looking for them, they often miss the small miracles right before their eyes. The fact that healing can happen after great trauma is a miracle, don't discount it because it was slow and done in very tiny steps.