Pain Points of Joy: A Story About Love in a Broken World

By Madeline Kim

Pain Points of Joy is the story about the dramatic life change Madeline Kim goes through when she marries a man with seven kids, including five who are adopted and two with special needs. She herself has one son to complete the family, thus begins the incredible ride of learning to navigate family life with eight kids. At times, it is crazy and complex, even chaotic, yet the times of stillness and joy peak inexplicably amidst it all. Each family member has their own history and struggles as they sort out the new normal. Madelines story will resonate with anyone who believes in new beginnings while overcoming the fear of the unknown. Anyone who has gone through the adoption experience or has experienced loss and the pain of abandonment will gain insight as Madeline weaves the impact of her own adoption journey into the present day. If you have ever wondered how to turn a messy life into something meaningful, Pain Points of Joy will clarify how the author found peace, joy, and most importantly, purpose, after choosing Gods standards versus the worlds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512793147

Madeline Kim

Madeline Kim is a homemaker who lives in St. Paul, MN. She is passionate about the struggles many women face today, including marriage, family integration, parenting and adoption. Her writing captures her experiences with grace, humor and compassion. She believes that a glass of wine and good conversation can cure most things and that modern day families are hard. However, even among the most difficult and painful days in life, hope springs up unexpectedly.

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Copyright © 2017 Madeline Kim.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

verse 1: Isaiah 43:19, ESV

verse 2: Jeremiah 29:11, NIV

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-9313-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-9315-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-9314-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017910431

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/20/2017

Contents

Chapter 1 As I Ponder These Things

Chapter 2 Our Faces Did Not Match

Chapter 3 Our Hearts Were Not Known

Chapter 4 As Silence Drowns the Noise

Chapter 5 Say What You Mean to Say

Chapter 6 When Darkness Precedes Light

Chapter 7 There, I Will Sit With You

Chapter 8 When Pain Expands Our Space

Chapter 9 The Children Come to Play

Chapter 10 Trading Flaws for Freedom

Chapter 11 Beauty For Ashes

Chapter 12 Joy Comes in the Morning

Chapter 13 The Night Turns into Day

Chapter 14 Finally, Return to Love

Bibliography

Love the people God gave you because he will need them back someday.

—UNKNOWN

CHAPTER 1

As I Ponder These Things

June 2016

Today is the first day of summer. Now, I know I’m not the only parent in America to welcome (or dread) the looming summer ahead, but this summer feels different; it feels new and exciting. I have never stayed at home and not worked in my entire adult life, much less stayed home to take care of kids. In my mind, taking care of kids meant keeping them productive and busy, and looking back, I had a lot to learn. Here’s the thing. These not-so-little kids—Stella, Winston, Charlie, and Emily—are like my own. In fact, I call them my own and love them dearly. I have also known them less than a year. Did I mention they are not the only ones? They are the four youngest of eight. Yep, eight as in Eight Is Enough or Party of Crazy 8, which is what I would call my life if it were a T.V. show sometimes. So, how did I, a single mom of one, end up with eight kids?

Well, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start with the whole crew and their ages at the time of this writing: Gabriel is twenty-five, Roman is twenty-three, Jack is twenty-one, Marissa is nineteen, Stella is sixteen, Winston is fifteen, Charlie is twelve, and Emily is eleven. I brought Gabriel into the mix, and the rest were Robert’s when I met him. Robert is my best friend and partner in life, and we are getting married this August. He continually amazes me with his big-hearted kindness; life with him has been an adventure from day one. Surprisingly, we both jumped in right away even though we had been through the kinds of relationships that change and desecrate your world into something unrecognizable, leaving pieces of your heart so scattered that picking up the pieces again seems impossible. Thus, surviving and finding normalcy again is the new way of life. The new normal. Or, perhaps it is not so surprising that we both jumped in right away because we both have a fearless streak that has served us (mostly) well. And at our ages, time is not a luxury to waste. A few nice changes do come with age and maturity. We prefer experiences over things, the quality of our time versus spreading ourselves too thin, and loving someone without holding back—these are some of the wonderful shifts that happen when you meet someone who has been through deep waters too. You will take the risk to make life that much sweeter this time around.

Once in a while, I wonder how I ended up here, especially when I see other people’s polite but incredulous faces (Um, yeah, that many kids sounds about as much fun as running naked through bear-infested woods). But the answer is quite simple. I ended up here because I said an unequivocal yes to a grace and love that had been waiting for me to believe such things existed for me. I also thought, What do I have to lose? Especially when the alternative was living in the mire of my continual self-doubt, past failures, and perfectionistic control—and, of course, living with the withholding and bargaining of my authentic self because of a fear that if I was truly seen, people would recoil and see the darkest and ugliest parts of me that I couldn’t even face. It was fear that was, well, a fear masking itself as preservation. Against all reasoning, except that the choice of staying still was scarier than not, I blindly and freely jumped. Free fall—how exhilarating.

Behind every family, there is a love story. Usually, it’s the traditional one—two people fall in love, get married, and have babies. But sometimes—maybe even oftentimes—the pregnancy is unplanned or unwelcomed, and mothers are unable to cope. Sometimes the mom has a nonexistent support system or perhaps experiences the ravages of war, resulting in the unrequited hopes and dreams of a derailed life. Poverty and not being able to feed your kids has a way of doing that. In my case, I was born during the aftermath of the Korean War, a time of unwanted pregnancies with the influx of soldiers, babies being born in hard circumstances, and moms without a support system making desperate, hard choices. Fear, shame, and poverty led to babies being abandoned and too many orphans. Even though the Korean War (sometimes called the Forgotten War) ceased fire in 1953 when an armistice was signed, technically the war has never officially ended; there is still not a peaceful resolution between North and South Korea. According to the Korean Herald, The war left about 5 million people dead, wounded or missing, more than half of them civilians. It also left more than 10 million people separated from their families, 300,000 war widows and 100,000 war orphans (Korean Herald, June 20, 2000).

In 1955, a man named Henry Holt was so moved by the plight of these orphans that he and his wife, Bertha, adopted eight children. This sparked national interest, and what followed was the creation of the largest agency to specialize in Korean adoptions: Holt International Children’s Services. The adoptions continue today, though not with the same desperation and high numbers that characterized its early days. The agency has since expanded to adoptions from other countries around the world. Another phenomenon Korea has grappled with as a result of the war is the number of biracial children fathered by American soldiers. Though many children were adopted, uncountable children wandered and were shunned by society. Korean society is traditionally patriarchal and tends to be insular and proud of pure Korean bloodlines. Though Korea has become quite Westernized, attitudes have been slow to change, and it was, especially then, the social norm to be unkind to single mothers or kids of mixed races. However, for mothers even in seemingly impossible situations, there is still a love story.

The love story is between the mom and child—even if she chooses to give the baby up out of desperation for a better life for her child. This raises the question—how does familial or societal pressure influence a pregnant woman in choices that will forever affect her life? Love cannot begin to describe the strength of the maternal, instinctual, and fierce bond the umbilical cord produces. Love arises from the protective, nurturing shell of encompassing warmth—heartbeats echoing one another, creating the desire to protect and hold a baby close and forever. The knowledge that your baby will be born to unwelcome circumstances must be one of the cruelest realities of life. It’s an injustice of the basic and natural order of things. The love story then becomes broken—a story of abandonment the child will always keenly feel, though it may ebb and flow like dormant seasons only to crop up when life rustles with emotional change. To reconcile the love story, however, is imperative; it is the only way the mom or child can survive after such a connection is broken. But how do you reconcile heartbreak when the other person is absent? Instead of the warm and vital touch of a mom, in its place is an empty space, rife with pain, longing, and the void of the unknown. To face this void, we must bring the pain and heartache to the only place it can be healed: the cross. God wants to create something new; God wants to fill in the holes in your heart and knit together the gaps. I promise, if he can do that for me, he can do that for you. God says, See, I am doing a new thing; now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland (Isaiah 43:19 NIV). If you bring him your pain and brokenness, he will reconcile the past with a brand-new beginning and an abundant life.

I have never lost a child, but I imagine it must feel like an amputated limb. Flesh and blood that once was is no longer there. The muscle memory of love and its ache does not go away, but is sorely felt in its absence. As a parent, I would want to possess a powerful potion to break the nightmare spell—to take the potion if it meant that I could die so my child could live. Though I have never lost or given up a child, my abandonment as a child reflects the flipside. I was left at a police station when I was only two, and then I spent the next couple years in an orphanage before being adopted and flown to the flat and wintery Midwest landscapes of the United States. My birth mom’s story with me was broken the day I was given up. It was the broken bond that bled with painful loss, essentially a phantom limb and an unrealized love story. A young child will feel abandonment in an emotional place that is raw and cavernous, but he or she will not be able to comprehend its narrative. I had no words when I came to America; I only had my Korean language. And I especially