24 January MMXVII

Last week I received compliments on my middle school son that I will treasure eternally. Within an hour, I was contacted by two of his teachers who also happen to be my friends…one an old friend and one “new”. I have known the old friend for well over three decades. We attended the same Catholic school that my children attend now. I have known the “new” one nearly a decade now…I suppose she is no longer really a new friend after all. Our boys are close friends and their friendship has fostered the one we now share. Both of these people know my son well. They have both taught him and mentored him and shepherded his heart from young boyhood into adolescence. Hearing from either of them about my boy carries great weight with me.

They each contacted me during the school day shortly after they had attended church with him that morning. They reported that he had spoken on behalf of the school’s Junior St. Vincent DePaul Society which volunteers at our local homeless shelter feeding people and organizing school wide food drives. They each thought that I would want to know how my son had publicly addressed the issues of hunger and homelessness with his fellow students and how he had so clearly spoken from his heart. They both emphasized that his words were deeply heart-felt and authentic.

I thanked both of them for sharing this glimpse of my son with me. I was touched deeply to hear of him bearing his heart. His sharing it surprised me but what it held did not. I am well aware that, of all of my children, this middle son of mine has the most tender heart which he keeps closely guarded within the toughest shell. I spent the remainder of the school day reflecting on what could have moved his inside sentiments to the outside. And I knew. Because I know my boy better than he yet knows himself, I knew.

He has been involved with feeding the hungry in our hometown for over two years now. It has always resonated with him and made him feel warm and fuzzy. But now it breaks his heart

Until recently, the hungry and the homeless have been strangers he has encountered for fleeting, measured moments. He did not really have to let them into the tenderest part of his already tender heart. But now, when my son thinks of the hungry and the homeless, they have the face and the name of one he loves deeply. Now when he encounters hunger and homelessness, he sees the face of his sister.

Song-Felicity spent the majority of her life in an orphanage after being found abandoned by parents who desperately loved her but could not care for her needs. Her brother knows that her file reveals that she arrived there “malnourished”. He has witnessed how she rejoices at meal times, how her being hungry gives rise not only to feelings of mere physical discomfort, but to great fear within her as well. He has witnessed her repetitive inquiries of “Mama, my home?” “Baba, my home?” as she ceaselessly seeks reassurance from us that she is loved, that she belongs, that she is home to stay. Witnessing her heart healing has broken each of ours. A haunting history of hunger and homelessness now abides within our family. Once hungry and homeless. Now safe and secure. All the while treasured and beloved by parents on both sides of the sea. Song-Felicity’s history will forever be a part of her and, now, a part of us.

His tiny sister is teaching a lesson to my son and to his siblings that no amount of my teaching or preaching could have ever taught. In our family, hunger and homelessness are no longer tucked neatly into fleeting measured moments. Amongst us, a history of hunger and homelessness dwell behind the dark, deer-like eyes and silky black hair of a beloved part of us who still sucks her thumb when she is sleepy. The hungry and the homeless have seeped through every single crack of these hearts that have been forever broken by, and broken open for, them.

I witnessed unexpected and breathtaking beauty in the awareness that my son’s love for his sister has now spilled over into his love for mankind. Global hunger and homelessness have been intertwined with his love and affection for his once hungry and homeless sister. I can do nothing but quietly rejoice in my awareness that it was this sensitive and awakened heart of my boy that spoke and broke through his words that day.

“Simon son of John, do you love Me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus replied, “Feed My lambs.”    JOHN 21:15

30 November MMXVI

We recently celebrated a high school homecoming in our family. Our oldest children attend a very small Catholic high school and I have come to believe that these intimate atmospheres foster the most meaningful homecoming memories and traditions. We had a happy and hectic week full of corsage orders and football game preparations. All week, our home and our children were decked in our school’s beloved blue and gold.

Our homecoming dances are still in the school gym and the decorations are all made entirely by the students and faculty. It is a precious week. This year’s theme was “There’s No Place Like Homecoming” and centered on a nod toward the Wizard of Oz. For the week, each class was assigned a hallway to decorate within the Oz theme. At the end of the week, the hallways were judged by the faculty and a winning class was awarded. Saturday morning the grand transfer of the decorations from the school hallways to the gym occurred to decorate for the dance that night.

Our son’s Senior Class was assigned a “Kansas” theme. Their decorations were all black and white like the Kansas portion of the film. There were giant black and white sunflowers and the most amazing tornado. Our daughter’s Junior class was assigned the “Emerald City” and spent all week painting fields of bright poppies and crafting an Emerald Castle. The other classes were assigned Munchkin Land and the Haunted Forrest. By the end of the week, when the transfer was complete, the foyer of the gym was transformed into the black and white Kansas and, after walking through a rainbow arch of balloons, the students found themselves in a technicolor Oz! It was amazing how much delight and ownership these high school students found in their homecoming!

For weeks ahead of time, I kept requesting a “plan” from my oldest two children who were going to be double dating. Who were their dates? Where were they eating? I kept getting the “we’re figuring it out, Mama” answer. By the week before Homecoming, I knew the “who” but was still waiting on the “where”. And I pushed for an answer. It was then that my 17 year old son said hesitantly, “Mama, we were thinking we could have our dates over here for dinner.” In that instant, I simultaneously smiled and choked. I was deeply touched that our teenagers wanted to be in our home and wanted their dates here with them. But my head was spinning as I imagined the miracle that needed to be worked in my house in the next few days to get it to a place where the dates did not suspect that their Kansas tornado had already been through here! With seven children in our house, there are many days when one could wonder if he arrived right after a tornado had departed!

The next few days were a flurry of miracle working. Table linens were washed and ironed. Silver was polished and place settings were prepared as the menu was planned by our children. I will probably continue to find things that I frantically shoved out of sight for the next few years.

After all of the cleaning and polishing and cooking were accomplished, the sweet dance day arrived with its precious rituals of hair appointments and flower pick ups and endless pictures capturing it all. By 8:00 that evening, our pilgrims to Oz were off over the rainbow and I began to blow out candles and soak dishes. As I stood in our kitchen washing and drying them, I could not help but reflect on this past year and how it has been a homecoming of its own.

It began in a whirlwind tornado of paperwork and immigration tangles that ultimately carried us over the rainbow and across the sea. There, we found ourselves in a foreign “Oz” very unlike our “Kansas” where we were received by a group of munchkins, one of them being our youngest daughter. During our time in “Oz”, we were met by dear new friends we would keep forever and journeyed together down a precise yellow brick road of governmental appointments and medical exams. Ultimately, we arrived in the “Emerald City” and got our meeting with the great and powerful “Oz”, The U.S. Consulate General, who told us we had all we needed to get home and granted us permission to head back over the rainbow.

After the dishes were dried and stacked, I curled up with my munchkin asleep on my shoulder and awaited her oldest siblings to tap their heels together and head home. As I felt my daughter’s sleeping breaths on my neck and listened to her smack her tiny thumb, I could not help but reflect on our journey to her. And as I breathed her in deeply I smiled and thought, “Oh Song-Felicity! There is NO place like homecoming!”

10 October MMXVI

Before leaving for China last June to bring Song-Felicity home, I was storming heaven with my prayers. I was both excited and anxious, fearful and faithful. My life those last days before travel was literally swimming in the prayerful petitions of a frightened and desperate mother who was aching to get to her China baby but deeply dreading leaving her other ones an ocean’s distance behind.

I am not a traveler. I have always been content to stay close to home. I live only a few miles and minutes from where I grew up and right next door to my grandmother’s home where my father did. I attend my same childhood church and my children go to the same school that I did at their age. I am more than content this way. Dorothy’s words upon returning from Oz have always resonated with me: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

So when God revealed to me that a precious part of my heart’s desire was not in my backyard but on the other side of the globe in a land both mysterious and unknown to me, I was more than a little uncomfortable. And I was torn. Every thing in me longed to get to my daughter but just as much of me was distressed at the thought of leaving her siblings so very far behind.

During those last days before travelling to China my prayers were primarily consumed with pleas for my children on both sides of the sea. But one prayer repeatedly surfaced for Jimmy and me…that God would connect us with another adopting family in China with whom we could share this adoption pilgrimage. Somehow, I instinctively knew we would find comfort through companions in a foreign land and I repeatedly pleaded with God to both send and reveal them to us.

And He did. So very beautifully.

We were in China only hours before I recognized His gift. A family in our agency’s travel group was traveling with two of their older children. Their children were delightful and spending time with them was such a comfort to Jimmy and me as we were missing our older children so deeply. I remember knowing that they would make good and fast friends with our flock back home. And this family had adopted a child before which was so encouraging to us a we stepped into the adoption arena and all of its emotions for the first time. They had navigated it only three years ago and were choosing to navigate it again. God knew that nothing could have been as comforting or as encouraging to us in those last days and hours before our daughter was placed into our arms as witnessing a family who believed in what we were doing enough to do it again themselves while bringing their children to witness it!

We received our daughters in China on the same day, at the same time, and in the same room… forging an intimacy that can be approached only by being present in the delivery room for a birth. We were witnesses to the raw emotions of those first few moments with our daughters. Over the next two weeks we witnessed the anxiety and grief in our baby girls and in each other. We listened to each other and encouraged each other and prayed for each other. In civil affairs offices and in police stations and in medical appointments, in the office of the U.S. Consulate General and ultimately on an endless airplane flight, we were present to each other and supported each other, and, when necessary, found much needed humor in the emotions and frustrations that surfaced as we learned to read and comfort our children.

At the end of our two weeks in China, I ached to see my state-side children but I grieved being separated from these friends and their support. I did not know how we would have been brave enough in China without them.

As we returned to our homes and to our other children and began adjusting with our China babies, we continued to encourage and to check on each other. We prayed each other and our babies through appointments with physicians and surgeries. We sent photographed images of our children as they bonded with their siblings and we joyfully awaited the day that we could meet again with all of our (11!) children.

A little over a week ago, our heaven-sent friends came through town on their way to visit family. The visit could not have been more of a gift. We had a beautiful early Autumn picnic and, as we watched our children play together, we witnessed how miraculously far our families have come since our precious time in China. I felt like there was hardly time to breathe! I had so much I longed to tell them and ask them and share with them and petition them to pray for while we had those precious moments face to face again!

By the time they left and I reflected on our time together, I realized that this precious family was way more than our China friends. They were our forever friends who God had sent to us while we were in China…when we desperately needed them…and Him.

“Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.”

1 Thessalonians 5:11

20 September MMXVI

We have just weathered a storm. Literally. A few weeks ago, our North Florida home was hit by Hurricane Hermine. Our neighborhood was littered with huge fallen trees and dangling power lines for days. With no power in the midst of Florida’s late summer and Jimmy working the post-storm chaos, I left town with 5 of our children. Our older boys remained in town to assist Jimmy with the clean up of the storm debris and to keep an eye on our home.

A precious, saintly friend in south Georgia graciously welcomed us into her home and tended to our displaced children and to their very frazzled Mama. This sort of uprooting would always tend to rattle me but this time I was especially concerned. Since coming home from China with Song-Felicity, we have adhered rather strictly to the “cocooning” recommendations for children who are adopted internationally. We have kept her world very small and predictable, not often leaving our home with her. For the first six weeks that we were home our only outings were dropping children off at Vacation Bible School or at ballet lessons. Or when I really felt myself caving to cabin fever, I loaded the children up for a ride to a convenience store for the summertime treat of an icee. Even during these excursions, Song-Felicity and I remained in our van while her older siblings accomplished our errands. We had only recently begun to venture out a bit more by taking her to Church and along with us as we drop her sister off at kindergarten.

By the time we left town after the storm, Song-Felicity was already sensing my stress and was confused by the changes in our home routine which has now become quite familiar to her. She had heard the scary noises of Hurricane Hermine’s stormy winds and the crashing of trees in the dark around our home. And she had spent a day and a half witnessing us scurry around while we had daylight and then navigating the nighttime hours by flashlight and candles. This was a stressful dynamic to all of our little ones but most especially to Song-Felicity who had been home less than three months and was only beginning to acquire some English.

The anxiety I would have felt leaving Jimmy and our older children behind while fleeing with our younger ones was more than magnified by my concern for how our youngest daughter was perceiving all of this. I worried that she might think we were taking her to live in another home with new people. The only way I knew to communicate safety and stability to her was to snuggle her even more closely than usual and to make sure that I stayed very near to her.

I have a perpetual litmus test for Song-Felicity’s stress level. Her thumb. The more anxiety she is feeling, the harder and faster she sucks her thumb. It is actually calloused. When her stress is lower, she sucks her thumb as she falls asleep and, once she surrenders to slumber, it quietly slides out of her mouth. When her anxiety level is higher, her thumb stays in her mouth throughout the entire night and she sucks it so vigorously that I hear her in her crib which is on the other side of our room.

While we were away, I slept with Song-Felicity in bed with me. She clung to me with her left hand and sucked the thumb of her right one. All Night Long. She broke my heart as I imagined what was distressing her. Was she afraid the storm had blown our home away like Dorothy’s to Oz? Was she anxious that her Baba and brothers were never going to join us on this exodus of ours? And, perhaps most heartbreaking, was she frightened that she was going to be left in yet another home? That her “forever” family was not forever after all?

I snuggled her closely throughout our nights away, holding her tightly both in my arms and in my prayers. I prayed for her security to remain stable and for any fears of abandonment to be kept at bay. And through these nights I realized that while I was calling out and clinging to God in this physical and emotional storm, Song-Felicity was calling out and clinging to me. And I was humbled. To a level which is just incapable of being reduced to words.

Though I can keep my daughter and her siblings dry and get them to higher ground and keep their precious heads above the stormy waves, I will never be able to be their shelter in the storm…in any storm. I can only let Song-Felicity, and each of them, witness me as I look toward the One who can. I can merely provide her with an opportunity to witness her mother clinging to the only true Shelter until the time she grows to recognize Him as her Shelter too.

What a heavy and precious responsibility that has been entrusted to me…to reflect the Savior’s sheltering love back to this tiny girl until she can perceive the source of the reflection herself. He has entrusted me with something…with someone… so precious to His Heart. And I am aware, more than ever, that I can only hold her tightly through whatever storms surround us and rest in His sweet shelter as He holds tightly to us both.

“For You have been a defense for the helpless, A defense for the needy in his distress, A refuge from the storm…” Isaiah 25:4

19 July 2016

Last week, Song-Felicity had her first appointment with her pediatric cardiologist. Her oldest sister and I loaded her up in the morning and headed to his office. I was somewhat anxious…partly because I am not much of a medical mama and the language alone can overwhelm me. But also because I knew that Song-Felicity had not been seen by a cardiologist since she was released from the hospital in China following her open heart surgery nearly two years ago.

The “what ifs” had been haunting me. What if her heart needed more surgical attention? What if she was more fragile than she appears or than we know? Though I know the possibility of future open heart surgeries is a reality with her, what if I would be facing one way sooner than I could imagine? Thoughts hovered over me of my baby being removed from my embrace into an operating room while I labored to swallow fearful tears for hour after hour with medical people explaining to me what was happening in a sterile, medical language that I simply do not speak or understand. I did not know how I would pull myself together enough to endure this yet.

From the moment we entered the exam room, I recognized that Song-Felicity was uneasy. Maybe it was the crinkling of the crisp paper on the examining table. Perhaps it was the smell of rubbing alcohol. But I watched as the concern crept across her face and, within moments of entering the room, she was reaching for me to hold her and clinging tightly to me. I could feel the anxiety in the grasp of her tiny hands.

She would not let me put her down. She clung to me like a desperate spider monkey. The precious cardiologist agreed to examine her in my lap and when we went into a different room for her echocardiogram, the sweet lady conducting it let me hold her throughout that, too. I seated myself on the exam table and backed up to the wall. Song-Felicity was in my lap with her tiny back to my chest. I watched as numerous sticky circles were attached all over her small body covering the now fading scar from two years ago. I held my breath as the lights were turned off and the machine began to peer inside of my daughter’s chest.

The images were another foreign language to me. I could not make sense of any of the shadowy pictures but I watched the face of the woman conducting the procedure paying close attention to whether or not she seemed concerned. She seemed comfortable and that comforted me.

Song-Felicity sucked the thumb of one of her hands and reached back to hold onto me with the other one. She kept looking up at my face as if to make sure I was still there. She began to pucker her lips to kiss me and I returned her kisses with air ones since the way she was situated in my lap prevented me from bending down far enough to actually kiss her tiny lips.

This continued for nearly 20 minutes…the desperate thumb sucking, the repetitive upward glance to make sure I was still there and the sweet air kisses between a mother and her toddler.

And then it hit me.This was the very first time Song-Felicity had been to a heart doctor with a mother….with her mother.

Her heart defect had been discovered shortly after she arrived at the orphanage.She underwent open heart surgery only weeks later. She may have had an orphanage nanny with her, but never her mother. 18 days in a hospital with no mother to comfort her or to worry about her or to study her tiny face for hints of pain or distress. No mother to hold onto with one hand while she sucked the thumb of her other one and no mother to return her precious air kisses.

I knew it then. Deeply. No matter the verdict the shadowy images were waiting to give me, my daughter’s heart was indeed healing…in the way that only the affectionate presence of a mother could heal it. We might be told in moments that her tiny heart needed more surgery but she was beginning to glimpse that she was never going to go into another operating room without her mother keeping prayerful vigil right outside. She was never going to awaken from the grogginess of anesthesia again without my eyes looking into hers and awaiting her sleepy air kisses.

Emotional healing of her heart was happening in that small dark room. I had been gifted with a front row seat to witness it. And I knew deeply that any physical healing that still needed to happen would pale in the presence of the holy and spiritual and emotional healing that was happening right in front of my eyes.

The lights came on and, as my oldest daughter and I dressed Song-Felicity, the verdict of the shadows was delivered. Her doctor reported that her heart looked perfect…for us to return for another check-up next year and to “treat her like a normal kid.” His voice sounded like that of an angel to me!

And he spoke a lovely, lovely language that I CAN understand.
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3

22 June MMXVI

16 June 2014: Song-Felicity was lovingly surrendered by her China family in a painfully deep hope that her medical needs could be met by another another family who would have the means and the desire to care for her.

16 June 2015: Song-Felicity was born into my heart. I saw a picture of her sweet face for the first time and recognized her as mine on a deep and spiritual level. When I reviewed her file, I recognized instantly that I had found her on the exact anniversary of the day she had been left in a desperate hope that she would be found. I spent the night in prayer asking God to affirm what I was feeling if it was from Him. In the next hours and days, He made it abundantly clear that it was.

16 June 2016: The first day we were cleared to leave China after finalizing Song-Felicity’s adoption and receiving her passport and visa. Our flight left Hong Kong early June 16th. And because our home is twelve hours behind Song-Felicity’s home province, we said farewell to China AND arrived home on June 16th.
What are the chances of this same date resurrecting again and again at such significant times? God has winked at me and reassured me with June 16th love pats through this entire sacred journey to my daughter. The date has been quietly woven into the whole tapestry of our separate journeys that are now eternally intertwined.

And June 16ths remain intertwined with her China family’s June 16th too. It did not escape me as we left our hotel for the Hong Kong airport in the early morning hours of June 16th that another family, likely not too far from us then, may have been awake in those early hours, too, and remembering the June 16th that broke their hearts two years ago. Their broken hearts and our joyful ones will now be joined for all eternity through this tiny child who will always connect us.

This child who just fell asleep in my arms a few minutes ago.

24 May MMXVI
Feast Day of Our Lady of China

I am in labor. I have labored for hours and hours on end before awaiting the birth of a child and I recognize this feeling…not in my body this time…but in my entire being.

This labor sensation is familiar to a mother of six children already. This cornucopia of emotions. This tangle of anticipation and anxiety. This panic over the checklist of have I packed enough? Have I prepared enough? Have I prayed enough?

Yesterday we received notice from our adoption agency that China has granted us travel approval to journey there and to bring Song-Felicity home. Jimmy happened to be home for lunch when we received the news. He received the notice first and, this time, he is the one who informed me that I was entering into this final phase of laboring for our child.

Throughout this journey I have frequently rested in the prayer of a particularly precious heavenly friend, St. Teresa of Avila. She is credited with prayers that are both plentiful and profound and I love many of them. But through this journey, the one that has resonated with me most is her prayerful plea, “Hover over me, God.”

Perhaps because it is so concise that I could manage to utter it all of those late evenings that I was up and sleepless with anxiety over the fact that my heart was completely captured by a baby that I have no legal right to mother yet. And perhaps because the image this prayer invokes is so comforting and lovely…one of a concerned parent being summoned to comfort His uncomfortable child.

Whatever the reason, I am clinging to it even more during this last stretch of my “expecting”.

“Hover over me, God.”

Hover over Jimmy and me and our precious uncle who is joining us on this journey across the sea to our daughter…to Your daughter.

Hover over our children who will remain home awaiting us to return with their sister. Hover over their days and their nights, over their waking and their slumber. Tuck them into your cloak of Paternal protection. Surround them with safety, happiness and holiness during this time that we are apart from one another.

And, yes, hover over the hearts of our four legged children, too, God…the ones who will least comprehend that Daddy and Mama will return to them.

Hover over the sea that has separated us from our China baby…the sea that we will be traversing toward her soon.

Hover over the orphanage where Song-Felicity has returned to await us. Hover over the nannies and the health care workers and the director and the children who are there waiting with her. Especially hover over the parents You are calling to these children who have not recognized Your still, peaceful prompting yet.

Hover over our daughter’s China family. Console them in a way that only You can in their selflessly loving decision to surrender her.

Hover over her foster family who has cared for her during the time and the space that it has taken for us to get to her.Hover over their selfless hearts that are certainly grieving her absence from them now.

And, mostly, hover over Song-Felicity as she awaits our arrival, God. Fill her with a spirit of anticipation that surpasses any anxiety and protect her from any feelings of abandonment. Hover over her heart as You prepare it to receive us.

Hover over Song-Felicity and over me, God…hover over this mother and this daughter who are both Your children, as we finalize our labor toward each other.

Please, Hover very closely. God.

28 April MMXVI

This week has been such a significant one in Song-Felicity’s journey home to us. Last weekend we received immigration approval to bring her home as our child. The last few days have been consumed with applying for our visas to enter China and for her visa to come home to the U.S. With monumental encouragement and cheer leading from our sweet Goddaughter, we completed Song-Felicity’s visa application yesterday. It should be the final complicated document we are required to navigate before bringing her home. One of the questions it asked was the name she was going to be given by us.

Seeing the name we have chosen for her on a legal document was very striking to me. Maybe because I am a lawyer and witnessing it on something legal makes it “official” to me somehow. But it was palpably profound seeing both the name she has in China and the name she will have with us on the same document. Seeing them together made me increasingly aware that, when she finally comes home to us, she will also be leaving a part of herself in China. The changing of her name concretely symbolizes the changing of her life. The name that was chosen for her by the orphanage is being replaced by the one that has been chosen for her by her family. And seeing this in type-faced letters on a screen caused me to contemplate the gravity of other name changes.

When my last name changed on my wedding day, I left a part of my life behind to enter into a new chapter of it…a new calling for it. When I was Confirmed in the Church, I took a new name…one I had chosen for myself to bind me to a heavenly hero I had personally connected with. It was added to the names my parents had chosen for me…concretely symbolizing my faith crossing the threshold from the one chosen for me by my parents and Godparents into the one I was choosing for myself.

When nuns and religious sisters take their vows, their names often change to symbolize the new life they are saying “yes” to. And Christ, Himself, changed the names of some of His most intimate followers before He called them to something especially significant. Simon became Peter and Saul became Paul. The Lord changed their names Himself to signify that they would need to take on a new identity in Him to accomplish all He was calling them to.

Song-Felicity is keeping part of her China name and taking on some others. The meaning attached to each was discerned with a profoundly prayerful and purposeful intent:

SONG: The name chosen for her by her doctor when she arrived at the orphanage. I pray that it always anchors her to her Chinese identity and reminds her of the joy that her precious identity gives to us. Within hours of knowing I was her mother, I was perpetually praying the psalm, “My heart leaps for joy and with my song I praise Him.”

FELICITY: Having a double first name is a bond she will always share with her mother and each of her sisters. All Williams girls have double names. And Felicity honors her China mother by honoring Saint Felicity of Carthage who is the patron saint of mothers who are separated from their children.

THERESE: The name I chose for myself when I was confirmed in honor of the heavenly hero I had loved since I was only 9 years old. It does not escape me that St. Therese longed deeply to be a missionary in China during her earthly life but was prevented from going by her poor health. And though I have three daughters older than Song-Felicity, none of them have ever had my name. It feels right that she is the first one who does. Her sisters have my genetics. She has my name…the name I chose for myself.

WILLIAMS: She is one of us! She is eternally part of our family and part of its heartbeat.

 
The call of a name…such a concretely powerful and beautiful symbol! May Song-Felicity’s concrete call to her new life eternally remind her of her enduring heritage as a daughter of China, of the love of both of her mothers and of the saints who intercede for them, and of the family who has so joyfully awaited for her to come home.

14 April MMXVI

Last Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I found ourselves in Urgent Care with our then four-year-old. She had been repeatedly vomiting for over 24 hours and we were getting concerned.

For several hours, the life was frightened out of us. X rays were done looking for “abdominal masses” and there was mention of brain tumors causing uncontrolled vomiting. I held my tiny sick girl in a gurney with Jimmy in a small chair next to us for what seemed like an eternity. I kept vigil watching the door to the room we were in that was not much larger than a closet… hyper aware that each time it cracked open we might receive news that would jerk the rug out from under us and change our lives forever. I clearly remember that swallowing was an effort during those hours and that I had to consciously remember to breathe.

By the very early morning hours a doctor who ended up looking a lot like an angel to me entered the room to tell us that none of the scary things they were looking for had been found…that our girl was going to be fine after some rest and a lot of fluids.

Within no time our baby was chomping chips with her Godmother and enjoying the fuss that was being made over her. Once she was snuggled in to rest in front of “Frozen” with a tiara on her head, I fell apart.

This was not unexpected. I typically navigate crisis with a perhaps too- stoic calm. But when its threat passes, I collapse.

The tears came the morning after our urgent care trip. And they came and they came and they did not stop. For days they did not stop.

In an attempt to comfort me, Jimmy reminded and re-reminded me that our baby girl was FINE. He did not understand my ceaseless tears. I did not understand them either.

It took several days before I could somewhat begin to put their source into words. I attempted to explain them to one who rarely needs me to explain myself. I confided in a dear, maternal friend that what my husband did not understand was that my tears were no longer only for our baby who was okay. They were for the babies who weren’t and for their Mamas who had to helplessly witness them suffer knowing there was nothing in the world they could do about it. Something deep within me was grieving for sick children I did not even know and my heart was breaking over and over again for their mothers. I could not get past the heart break and I did not know why.

Until a few weeks later when Song-Felicity’s file showed up in my email in box. Until I learned her story…how she had a heart that was too sick for her China family to fix with their resources and how she had been left when she was nine months old out of a desperate hope that someone could give her the medical care that they could not. I was beginning to glimpse that God had allowed me to taste the anguish of watching my daughter briefly suffer so that He could break my heart open enough to receive her sister into it from across the world.

The part of my heart that broke open that frightening night will now perpetually break some. A space was cracked open within it that cannot be closed this side of eternity. And the font of tears that springs up from that break within me will always remain just beneath my surface leaking out due to nothing more than a thought of Song-Felicity’s China family or the multitudes of families so very much like them.

I suspect that I may never cease contemplating how my heart was broken open for one daughter so that it could receive another one…how in a single evening in a sterile closet of a room God prepared me to recognize and receive the daughter He had already chosen for me across the world…the one He was only days away from revealing to me. And it makes me ponder what remains within me that needs to break open so that I can recognize all that He still desires me to.

Tomorrow is the deadline to order t-shirts. This fundraiser will close at midnight.