Miracles

One of my new favorite songs, WHAT FAITH CAN DO by KUTLESS. Listen to it if you have not or just read the lyrics on-line. I cry just about every time. The just of the song is that GOD can do miracles but we must have faith. Faith is powerful. Many people I know do not believe in miracles. They believe in GOD, they have faith in GOD, but miracles do not happen in this day and time. They do not see them and GOD does not perform them. REALLY? If that is true, what is faith and why do we have it? I have seen them. I have seen miracles. I am not a nut, but a person who has witnessed miracles. Why can GOD not perform miracles today? Is that scripture? NOOOO! I have real stories to tell. REAL! I am going to share because I just want it on paper or cyberspace just in case nobody else knows about it and they need a belief in miracles boost. Here it goes. My precious AG was a miracle. She was conceived in a fertility lab in Atlanta with her twin brother. If you have not had experience with infertility then you won't really get this, but every child conceived in a fertility clinic is a miracle performed by GOD. Every child conceived period is a miracle performed by GOD if you look at the odds stacked against you for conceiving. Infertility is insane odds. Just the exhaustion should kill all hopes of conceiving, but it happens daily for one couple out of thousands. Not good odds. I never realized how lucky we were until my mother went with me to the clinic and relayed a story to me. She met a lady that had gone through the entire process ten plus times with no child conceived. Ten times and yet there she was once again on number eleven still faithful, still hoping. I wish I could run into her somewhere and see how it went or give her some details about adoption. She was a gift to my mom and me. She made us realize how extremely hard the process can be and how grateful I was that this was just my second time going through. Three months earlier, I had miscarried and still carried my scars on my sleeve. More like a backpack. I toted them around during the entire second run until the day my pregnancy test came back positive at the doctor's office. I left the backpack with the nurses along with the test. See that was my first real miracle ever. I got to carry two beautiful babies for nine long months. Second miracle. I was told at 20 weeks that my boy had a serious heart condition. Most of the doctors we dealt with told us it was serious but it could be corrected. Two told us it could be fatal. We prayed for our boy month after month. We watched his ekg and with each heart beat we had a sigh of relief. We looked at each sonogram while thinking GOD is so good to bless us this way and we know he will heal our boy. Each prayer we would always say, "Let it be your will." Did we believe this? Was our faith that strong? No. Late in my pregnancy I quit saying that when I prayed. I did not want GOD's will. I wanted my boy to be healed. I wanted a boy with a whole heart and his sister next to him to be healthy as well. I did not know GOD's will, but I wanted my WILL. That was his name. I wanted my WILL to be healthy. The closer we got to due date the more I insisted with my prayers that he was going to be fine. I took all of the doctor's comments and decided the vote was in my WILL is going to be fine. Two days before my c-section nobody was moving. I went to a pre-op appointment, told the nurse that nobody was moving and she insisted they are out of room very typical for twins. They simply run out of room. I felt very uncomfortable the next 15 hours. Something was not right. I had Princess and the Pea syndrome but what was not right happen to be in my womb. I prayed that night and the next morning. When I woke up, I looked scarry. I can not explain to anyone what my stomach looked like. Reality, one baby was on top of the other. Imagine what that stomach looked like now. The true reality would come later. We checked in at the hospital after my husband ate a chik-fil-a biscuit in front of a pregnant woman carrying twins that had not eaten since midnight. (BAD IDEA for husbands at home reading this.) Anyway, we got to the hospital and they were short on nurses. We waited 40 minutes on a nurse and the doctors were having a real hard time getting both heart beats. They decided to take me back and the nurse supervisor filled in for the MIA nurse. So, me, two nurses, my husband, two gyns, a neonatal doctor, and one extremely gifted anesthesiologist are in the OR. Baby number one comes out screaming at the top of her lungs. Wait, what. Girl is baby number 2, Boy is baby number 1. Always. Not this time. Something was not right. I just felt it all the way to my bones. Then, I could see it on faces. I could hear yelling, but I was not quite right. I felt dizzy and light-headed, but I knew something was really wrong. Then my screaming girl was rushed out of the room and then there was more yelling by a rude doctor that in other circumstances I would have recommended someone hit. Then, I was in panic mode and then I was very light-headed and dizzy. Then Mark told me WILL was gone. I hurt from the inside out and I lost it. Exposed. Cut open. Cut through the heart. How could such a wonderful day turn into such a nightmare? How? Why? I think I said Why like 80 times before the anesthesiologist pumped me full of light-headed and dizzy medicine. I felt like I was in a fog for the next two days. Reality was heart wrenching and at times delightful as I looked upon the face of my beautiful baby girl. I tried so heard to deal with my delight and not deal with my broken heart those three days in the hospital. It was strange. I don't wish it upon anyone. Hormones are on overload and add in a tragedy you have a crazy woman on your hands. Two hours after the announcement of the death of my son. I demanded that our wonderful priest give my boy last rites. The whole time he is saying you don't have to do this. He is a baby, you don't have to do this. The mother in me is insisting, HE HAS NOT BEEN BAPTIZED. GOD gives priests and pastors patience. I think after my second or third crazed request he just did it. Reasoning with a hormonal woman on an emotional overload was I think more than anyone could handle. I gave my husband the job of planning an entire funeral without me. I think I picked some songs, priest, and location. Mark and my dad did the rest. Two men. It was the most beautiful funeral you could ever witness. My family and friends were just weird. What do you say? Congratulations on your new baby and I am so sorry your baby died. It was weird. They came in crying and left crying. AG was covered in tears and they were not happy tears. They would look at her, talk about how beautiful she was and you could see them crying. I have to say that every person that came to that hospital deserves the best friends and family in the world award. I can not imagine what was going through their minds. I am not in the least bit hurt or upset by those that did not show. I don't know what I would have done either. They love you, they want to be there for you , but they don't know how to love you. They want to see the new baby, but they don't know if they can handle the crazy woman next to the new baby. I think I was mostly calm for the first two days and then I had a little melt down. My sister cleared the seen and let me have my moment. She is the greatest. She stayed with me for a week or so after the funeral so I could sleep. She rocks. So crazy mom makes it through the funeral. We insisted on a closed casket and we never looked at WILL again after the hospital. It was what we decided. Do I regret it? Not really. At the funeral I wanted to see him one last time before they put him in the ground and I just could not say it out loud. I just left. A week later I insisted that my poor patient priest baptized my baby girl before the end of the month. I was so worried that something else could happen and I wanted it done. He did it. WHERE IS THE MIRACLE IN ALL OF THIS? Get ready for this. I carried a miracle in my womb. Prepare people. This is a glimpse into the power of our GOD. At the hospital I barked orders and made requests on a whim. I was just in fog city. The head nurse that had been in the OR with us brought a bereavement counselor to see us. She asked us all kinds of questions. She cleaned WILL up for us and brought him to us in the recovery room. She came and got clothes for him to wear. She also brought us a consent form to have an autopsy done. Why would we do that? It just seemed like a good idea at the time. We knew he had a heart condition, but we just said yes. About a month after AGs birth we got a big thick envelope in the mail. It was the autopsy report. I opened it and realized what it was and cried. Later I read it. Okay this is miracle time. Our boy had a heart condition. With this heart condition he could not pump blood to the lungs to get the oxygen he needed to live. In the womb this is done by the mother. All babies in the womb have a little open valve in the heart that allows the mother to do this job for the baby. Boy baby's who have this heart condition usually die when they are circumcised because this is the point when they take their first deep breathe. In our situation, the goal was to give WILL a drug that would keep the valve open allowing machines to do my work until a repair could be done three days after he was born. MIRACLE time. WILL did not have this valve. The autopsy report states that the valve could not be found. His condition was extremely severe and his heart was so malformed that the valve was not even recognizable or nonexistent. He should have died early on. Way early on. First trimester or Early second trimester. He lived for his sister. If he had died any earlier, many complications could have occurred and we could have lost them both. GOD gave me a miracle. I got to carry it in my womb people. It is not anything other than a real live true to GOD's word miracle. I got to touch it. LIVE it. Why? I don't know why? Why did GOD choose me for this miracle? I have no idea. I do know that he answered my prayer also. He healed my boy. He is in Heaven and watches over his sisters daily. He also makes me thankful for them each day especially when I am not in the thankful mood. I miss him and I dream of someday bringing a boy home not to replace him, but to know him even more. I have this vision of him as a baby, but I would love to know what my boy would be like now day-to-day. I think having a boy would make me love him even more. I think it is hard to explain without it sounding weird, but that is what I think. Every time MA does some really boy thing like chase a frog I think of my boy. I think of how he would be chasing it with her. Every time MA spends time with her daddy discussing fire trucks, sirens, etc I think of WILL. I know he is up there looking down just having a good old time. MA is not a boy in so many ways, but sometimes I see a little bit of my boy there. Everyone says boys love their mommas I so want to experience that. I do know that he loved me because he knew how much I loved his sister and he kept his little broken heart pumping as long as he could. He and GOD had a plan and he worked very hard to keep his sister alive. I love him so much for that. Mark and I don't talk much about him anymore. Mark visits his grave on holidays, but mostly I don't. He still does not have tombstone. We ordered two and started to order a third one and we just gave up. You can only go through that so many times. Plus it was my last motherly duty for him and I still have it there. Once the tombstone is there all of the important stuff is over. At first I was embarrassed that we did not a have tombstone by his fifth birthday, but now I am good with it. I just don't go down there because it is too hard for me to go with the girls. MA has a million questions and they are very painful for me. They are painful for her too. Many times out of the blue she will say, I miss my baby brother. She was born three years after him, but in her mind since he died as a baby he is her baby "brudder". I would love to live in that brain of hers for one day. I really would. She brings me hope, peace, and faith each day. She is a miracle herself and I guess it takes one to know one. Her sister, the fertility baby, a miracle. WILL, a heart baby with missing heart parts, miracle. MA found in a box by a guard shack thin and sickly, in need of food, miracle. My kids have survival skills. They have been given that gift by GOD. All three of them had to use that gift in their very early stages of life. I am blessed to have been given the opportunity by GOD to know them. I am not sad about what GOD has given me, I am BLESSED. A child born to Heaven, a child born in my womb, and a child born in my heart. Why GOD chose Mark and I to be responsible for such blessings is beyond me? Mark and I are just ordinary middle class people struggling to make it through, but GOD gave us so much more. Most days are ordinary, but some days I am just amazed that he chose us to have such wonderful kids. I don't know at times what I did to deserve them. I am just glad that when GOD created them He thought of Mark and I. We will never be millionaires, but we are rich in so many ways. Sometimes I forget this, but most days I remember how miraculous GOD is.

The Day after Mother's Day

As I ponder this Mother's Day and how lucky I am to be mom to two great girls, I also think what did I do to deserve such wonderful girls. Each gift I opened made me love them more. AG gave me this wonderful card about why she is glad that I am her mother. It just made me cry. I cried reading it and I will cry today when I read it again. She mentions line by line how I help her and what I do for her. She wrote in her own little crooked cursive handwriting and I just think a short time ago I held that little hand in mine to help her walk. Today, my sweet little girl is writing in cursive. As I gazed upon the paper jewelry box and the hand made picture card of my youngest, I remember the first time I saw her. I just remember thinking how beautiful she is and why has no one taken her file. She would have been my first choice, but fortunately for us she was still there in a computer file waiting. China brings many happy memories, but also sad ones. I remember the first video we got from another family of our MA. I thought how beautiful she was sitting in her crib. Then I remember how she was screaming and everyone in the room could hear her. She had her hands up basically begging the mother with the video camera to pick her up. She wanted someone to notice her and pick her up. Finally, the mother with the video camera could not take it anymore. She had to pick her up. She put down the camera and grabbed her. She told me later that she kissed her for me. She hated leaving her there. She knew we were at home waiting to go get her. It is disturbing to think that you have to leave these children. I did the same thing when I went to China. We call it paying it forward. I took photos of all the children on my list that moms sent me. I remember touching several of the kids and thinking your mom will be here soon. Later, I thought what about the ones that have no mom. I went to a room with twenty little girls in it. They were all dressed the same. I took some photos for a mommy and I touched the little princess behind the bars of the baby gate. I thought how wonderful your mommy is coming soon and just as quickly I thought 19 of you may never have a mommy or daddy. It breaks you. Those are the real memories I have of China. The ones that I can't erase from my heart. These are the ones that keep me up at night. Yesterday, as I sat in church praying, I thanked GOD for my girls and my boy in Heaven, but I also cried for those children who don't have a mother. I cried for two young children in our church who buried their mother spring break and their father who is trying to deal with a new life for his smaller family. This family settling in for life without their loving mother and then on this day having that wound ripped open once again. I also cried for those children that have no mother. See I am ruined. On a day filled with love and peace I was reminded of the pain in my heart for a child lost and the thousands that are looking to be found. My heart is ruined forever. I continue to advocate for them, but my heart wants me to do more. My FATHER IN HEAVEN wants me to do more. What is it I am supposed to do? I just don't know what that is. We are so blessed by our girls, but my heart feels there should be more. Only our LORD can make this happen and I pray this day and forever for the children looking for their forever mother and father. I weep for them and I pray for them. HOPE is all they have and I pray that they continue to have hope. Every mother out there kiss and hug your children tonight and be thankful that GOD chose you to be their mom.

Hopelessly Ruined?

I have been reading a book by Kay Warren. It is called Dangerous Surrender. She discusses the moment she became completely surrendered to GOD. Like just give it all up to him. It started with reading a magazine article and ended up a life changing moment in her life. As I read the pages I wonder what my moment in this life is and what is it that has shaken me more than anything else. Was it the moment that I miscarried my child in a cold hospital room while praying the Hail Mary for three hours? Was it the moment that I looked up at Mark in an operating room and realized my son was dead? Was it the moment that I walked into an orphanage and realized that my child was one of hundreds that needed a mommy and daddy? Which one could it have been? They are all so life changing, but I still feel that I am the same. I sit in the same place almost ten years later and nothing shows for the pain, joy, and love that I have found in my hometown and across the world. I feel that I am at a crossroads in my life. I continue down this road or I actually do something that is truly life changing. Kay Warren takes the path of action. She takes up the plight of AIDS not only at home, but she travels to Africa and Asia. She looks at it and then she touches it. She takes her hand in the hand of the afflicted and suffering and she prays for them. Not in her living room still looking at the photo on the magazine, but in Africa and Asia. In the book she talks about how the suffering she has witnessed. Things that she has seen with the naked eye have ruined her. Her heart is now ruined to the point that she never ever forgets what she has seen with her naked eye. It is like a scar on her heart and she continues to battle for the suffering and the afflicted because she has seen them up close. She has touched it. As I think of this I think that is me. I can't erase the hundreds of orphans I saw that one day. They were all in the same room celebrating children's day of all things. As I looked across that room I thought how many will have a home to go to 20 maybe 30 at the most. As those 20 or 30 leave another 20 or 30 will take their place. Who will bring them home and how many of the 500 will call this home forever? It broke my heart in the same moment that I should have been filled with such joy of bringing my little girl home. It was like the day AG was born. Strange how your life collides the same way but differently. There I was looking at life and death at the same time. How is that possible to hold one alive and vibrant child in one hand and next to her one dead lifeless little boy. How does your heart know heartache and joy in the same instant? How does it take it all in and not just explode? It has happened to me twice. Why is that GOD? Why would I have such a split heart at these moments in my life not once but twice? What are you preparing me for? What does it all mean? How does it all play out? As I wait for GOD's plan for me I spend countless hours looking at pictures of orphans needing a home, yet I don't do anything. I sit and hope that someday I will be able to go back. I will be able to bring another orphaned child home. Mostly, I think of the boy I lost and the thousands of boys that are left at orphanages. They are lost. They are lost to a world of plenty. They are always the last to leave. They are the last to be chosen. Many do not even know they exist. China is known for its girls available for adoption, but most never consider the special needs boys who sit and wait for someone to bring them home. An entire generation of boys will soon age out of the system. That means they will be homeless in the very near future. What will happen to this group of young men? How will they survive? This is what haunts my heart and makes me long to bring a boy or two home. This is what breaks me and keeps me up night. I hurt for them in China and around the globe. Boys that have met this same plight live in the streets of Russia, India, many nations of Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. They are the forgotten. Teenage girls find themselves in the streets as well and their lives are just as painful. Child slavery, prostitution, and worse. Why does our society forget these children? We forget our own as well. There are thousands of teenagers on the available list here in the United States. Why? Why do they endure the foster care system for so long? Why have we as a country forsaken them? What would Jesus think of us? What does he see as he looks down upon us? What can I do? Scream in the night. Pray for them all. Sit and look at their sweet faces all hours of the night. What is it I am supposed to do? Help me LORD!