6 Years.......

As I began writing this, I was thinking that this really isn’t part of our current adoption story, but the more I wrote the more I realized that it is.  This is the first time I have shared this complete story.  I feel it is time to share it because I need to remind myself that God showed up in the midst of a pain so great it could have crushed me, if not for His Hand.

          Six years ago today, I experienced one of the most painful moments of my life.  It was a beautiful day, much like this one.  It was cool, breezy and sunny.  Our family had just returned from a wonderful vacation to Disney World with my parents and my sister.  It had been an amazing trip.  My parents had returned back to our home in Alabama a few days after us, as they had stayed a couple extra days in Florida to see friends they had not seen in over 20 years. 

          Daddy had made his “famous” oatmeal for breakfast, and I had gotten the children started on their school work.  Momma was going to help them with it while Daddy and I worked on our van in the garage.  He headed out there before me, and I didn’t understand it then, but I remember having such a sense of urgency to get out there with him.  I have always loved working on cars, snowmobiles, dune buggies, etc. with my dad.  I have done it since I was a little girl.  I have always loved the smell of oil, gasoline, and engines.  But even more I have always loved working on stuff with my dad.  To just be with him and talk with him was such a treat.  I threw on my work clothes and headed out to the garage.

          We only worked about an hour and everything was good to go.  We chatted the entire time about everything under the sun.  As we started cleaning up Daddy walked around the far side of the van and I was standing on the opposite side near the front.  He said something funny, and I laughed and joked back, and he didn’t say anything else.  This struck me as odd so I looked over at him.  He had just bent over to pick up a wrench and as he stood back up, his eyes closed and he seemed to sway and loose his balance. I darted around the front of the van just in time to catch him as he fell.  As I lay him on the floor of the garage he was unconscious.  I flung open the door to the house and yelled for my mom to call 911, all the time thinking, “This is not happening.  It is not real.  I will wake up from this nightmare.”  But I didn’t. 

My nurse instincts kicked in.  I checked for a pulse, none. He wasn’t breathing.  I began CPR.  I could hear my mom standing in the doorway behind me on the phone talking to 911.  She was frantic.  All I could do was count chest compressions and breaths.  At one point I heard her say, let me have you talk to my daughter.  I took the phone for a second.  The lady on the other side was sweet, but was trying to ask me questions I didn’t have time to answer.  I had to keep counting and doing breaths and chest compressions.   I cut her off, told her I was a nurse, and told her we needed an ambulance NOW.  I gave her the address as I continued to work and slid the phone back across the garage floor to my mom.  I kept listening for sirens, praying someone was coming.  I was shaking from head to toe, but I kept working.  I shake with adrenaline even now as I type this.

Then it happened.  He opened his eyes.  Momma was sitting at his head still on the phone with the sweet 911 lady.  I stopped.  He looked into my eyes.  He stared so intently as if he wanted to say something important. Then he took one last deep, labored breath closed his eyes and relaxed.  I remember hearing someone scream, “NO! Not now, not today!  It’s not time!”

I went back to work, with a realization that that voice I had heard was mine, but I just kept working, counting breaths and compressions.  I was not going to lose my dad today.  I was going to fight! Thoughts began tumbling through my mind.  He was a boxer, a real fighter.  He had taught me to never give up.  He had taught me that the right thing to do was never the easy thing to do.  He had taught me that even though the odds are against you and the opponent has you out sized, you fight to the end and either win or go down swinging.  So I fought.  I worked harder than I ever had at any moment in my life.  So hard in fact that the next day I discovered that I had rubbed all the skin off both of my knees kneeling on the garage floor doing CPR.  I hadn’t felt a thing.

And I prayed!  I prayed like never before.  I declared life over my dad, in Jesus’s precious and powerful name.  Scriptures about life tumbled out of me as prayers.  Then the first responder arrived.  He seemed to be moving so slow.  I am sure he wasn’t, but I needed him to take charge, and he didn’t.  He handed me a bag and mask to blow breath into my dad’s lungs and attached an AED.  When he turned the AED on I heard it say, “Shockable Rhythm.”  I looked down to see my dad’s left hand and watch resting against a dog crate that was touching the freezer.  I heard the AED counting down and all I could imagine was the shock traveling though his body, into the metal dog crate, through the metal freezer, and into the outlet the freezer was plugged into.  I grabbed the crate and tossed it through the door into the entry way of the house.  I turned in time to see the AED shock my dad.  I prayed.  This was it.  It was all over.  He was going to be back.  I just knew it.

But then I heard it. “Shockable rhythm.  Recharging.”   I looked at the first responder in shock and dismay.  I think I mumbled, “This isn’t happening. Not today.”  He started compressions and I started breaths.

The AED again announce an impending shock.  We cleared away.  I watched and prayed.  Then I heard the words I was dreading, “Not a shockable rhythm.”  I prayed; I declared life over my dad and I worked.  I remember telling the first responder that his compressions needed to be deeper.  I wasn’t being mean or rude, but I was in this fight to win, and we were going to do this the best we could as long as I had anything to do with it.  He looked disgusted at me and I said, “You don’t understand.  This is my daddy!”  We kept working.  The AED never again said those hoped for words, “Shockable rhythm.”

The ambulance arrived, and I backed off.  The EMTs took their place over my dad, and I suddenly became the daughter, not the nurse.  The prayers poured from my heart.  Every cell of my body cried out to God.

They loaded him in the ambulance, but didn’t leave. My mind knew it was bad, but I wouldn’t stop fighting.  My dad would never have stopped fighting for me, so I was in this fight to the end.  I knelt on the driveway in front of the ambulance and prayed.  Then I felt it.  The breeze stopped and everything was quiet.  Time seemed to stand still.  I have felt the presence of God before, but not like this.  I still wrestle with words to adequately describe what I felt.  There was a warm peace that settled over me.  I was quiet.  I had no words.  It was a weighty presence, but it didn’t crush me.  It lifted me to my feet.  I quit trembling.

I felt God’s presence leave and the breeze seemed to return.  I knew deep in my heart He had taken Daddy home.  My mind said it couldn’t be, but deep in my heart I knew.  The peace stayed settled over me.  The ambulance driver climbed out of the back and came toward me.  He looked into my eyes and told me they were taking Daddy to Athens.  The final thing he said to me was, “Don’t try to keep up with me.”  As he jumped into the driver’s seat and backed out of the driveway, mom came from the house carrying her purse.  She must have run in when they put daddy in the ambulance.  I ran into the house.  There were my wide eyed children.  Looking to me for hope and peace, but my mind was a whirl wind.  I choked out the word, “Pray”.

As I jumped in the car I called Frank, and then my cousin Krista.  Krista headed over to be with my babies, and Frank left work calling on people to pray as he drove with his flashers on the usual 45 minutes from Huntsville to Athens.

I got behind the wheel of moms car and drove to Athens.  Mom looked at me and asked, “How bad is this?”  My nurse brain knew, my heart knew, but my daughter’s heart choked out the words, “It’s bad, but this is Daddy.  He is fighter.”  I tried telling myself that they will get meds in him.  His heart will come back. They will med-flight him to Huntsville, and Frank will have one of the cardiac interventionalists or surgeons ready to put in a stent or do bypass.   

I drove the 10 minutes to Athens Hospital, parked the car, and walked into the ER holding my sweet momma’s hand.  She sounded so strong as she gave the receptionist at the desk my dad’s name.  She sounded like a fighter.  They ushered us into an office in the back.  My nurse brain shouted silently, “NO! This is where you put families who lose a loved one.  Not on my watch!  Not today! This is my daddy we are talking about!  We will be at his side in no time.”

Mom and I looked silently at each other.  I opened my mouth to pray, but all that came from my lips was a soft cry.  It came from deep within me.  It brought me back to that peace that God had left with me.  The doctor walked in.  He was so kind.  I could see the pain in his face as he looked down into my momma’s hopeful face.  He offered to continue to work, but explained that there had been no response.  Deep within me I heard the Lord whisper, “He is already with me.  There is no life left in his body.”

Momma must have heard the same thing in her heart.  She squared her little shoulders, looked kindly into the doctors eyes, and said, “It’s ok.  He is gone.”  The doctor told us he would be right back to take us in to see daddy. 

When it was time, we went silently into his room with tears streaming down our faces.  Momma looked at Daddy’s work worn hands.  They were still greasy from working on the van.  A gentle smile softened her pained expression as she whispered, “Well Butch, you got what you wanted.  You died with greasy hands.”

Yes, Daddy died the way he lived.  Working hard.  Taking care of his girls.  He was a fighter.  We worked harder than any person I have ever known.  A furious love burned deep in his heart: a love that propelled him to always fight for the little guy, protect and care for his girls, help anyone that needed it, and do the right thing even though it may be the hardest thing to do. 

There was a flurry of amazing friends and family that supported us and helped us to stand as we walked out the gut wrenching weeks ahead.  They were God’s tangible hugs of support that carried us when we couldn’t stand.

As time passed that first year and the numbness of grief began to subside, we felt the seed of adoption that God had planted deep in our hearts years ago, when our precious niece Mackenzie had passed away, begin to grow.  It had been cultivated and watered in the grief and pain of losing Daddy.  We began to look at our lives and ask, “Are we living like he lived, consumed by the furious love of our Heavenly Father that would cause us to fight for the ones less fortunate, drop whatever we were doing to help someone out, fight for what was right even if it looked like we might lose, and do the right thing even if it was the most difficult choice?”  And so our adoption journey began.

Now today, as I am feeling battle weary from this adoption process and remembering how hard this day was 6 years ago, I am choosing to remember who my earthly Daddy was and who my Heavenly Daddy is.  I will love with a furious, passionate love that will cause me to fight for the weak ones, stop my plans for my life to help someone in need, and do the right thing even when it is painfully hard.  I will rest peacefully in the presence of my Mighty God who will never leave me in the midst of the raging storms of life. I will lean into Him and the perfect peace only He can bring.  I will hide in the shelter of His wings as He fights for me.  And in Christ alone, I will fight the battles set before me and love with a furious, all-consuming love.

From Insufficiency to a Handful of Rocks

            I have begun this blog post several times and then deleted it.  I struggle to express what is in my heart.  Sometimes there are not words. I wrote it several weeks ago and have been changing it each time I read it.  I am not sure if my words can adequately express all God is doing in my heart during this season.  Each day He is doing more and continuing to grow me.  I am sure once I post it, there will be things I will want to change the next day.

          Each adoption journey is unique and this one has been different from the last for me.  Some things have been easier, because I know what to expect, but there have been some unexpected things that have caused me to run after God like never before.  Being outside of my comfort zone will always do that! I think my Heavenly Father knows that, and that is right where He wants me to be!

A couple months ago, I found myself completely overwhelmed and crying out to God. Actually, I was beyond overwhelmed and sinking very quickly into the waves of “Oh my goodness, I can’t do this; this is so far beyond me it is going to swallow me whole, and I will never find my way out and back to any semblance of normal ever again!” 

Much like the Apostle Peter when he jumped out of the boat to walk on water when the Lord called to him, I had started this adoption journey with gusto.  I had jumped out of the boat of the normal routine of life and found myself once again out on the lake of the adoption journey.  I was familiar with the waves of paperwork and governmental red tape between two countries.  I was familiar with the winds of everyday chaos in a house with 4 homeschool children.  But then the big waves hit and the wind really picked up.

As the school year began to come to a close and the graduation of our oldest loomed right before me, things began to get stirred up big time.  I had no idea that his impending graduation required me to act not only as adoring parent but as high school counselor as well.  I would never have made it without our amazing homeschool director, Michele, and my dear friend Laurel, who had bravely walked through graduating two of her children in recent years and made it appear as though anyone could do it.  These ladies are truly two of my heroes. On top of these unexpected demands, for some reason my girls needed more time and academic attention, and everyone in the house seemed to need more emotional attention from mom.  I have no idea why! Maybe it was just all the craziness in the house and that my attention seemed to always be on adoption stuff or graduation stuff.  Either way they needed me.  My days spiraled out of control and I felt like I could never get all the “have to’s” done or give any of my children what they really needed.  I just was not enough.  I couldn’t do it.  And then the big waves hit. 

We began to get some updates on our sweet Hayden and his special needs.  The autism, sensory issues, speech issues, and some other things that we weren’t really expecting hit me in one big wave.  I took one look at myself, all the craziness around me, all the things currently being demanded of me, and all the what ifs of what Hayden was going to need of me when he comes home, and I started to sink.  Yep, I was going down.  There was just no way I could do it. Period.

That’s where I was one morning a few months ago, alone in the early morning quiet of a house still full of sleeping children.  Sinking and sobbing and crying out to God as I felt the wind and waves of life engulf me.  I slowly began to flip back through the pages of my journal.  My tears were making it hard to read at times, but then I started to see it.  Over and over again I had written this prayer, “God let there be more of YOU and less of me.”  Then I heard the whisper of my gentle, loving, and patient Heavenly Father, “Sweetheart, for there to be more of ME and less of you, I have to take you beyond you.” For the first time in months, I had peace. It filled my soul and mind and wrapped around me like a blanket.

His voice was not condemning or judging me.  He did not ask me why I couldn’t do it all or chastise me for running on ahead into what if’s of the future, and not holding His hand in today.  No, He lovingly reminded me that He had called me out of the boat fully aware of the storm to come.  He knew of the wind and waves to come way back at the beginning of my journey out onto the water to meet Him. And He alone knows of all the future wind, waves, and storms.  He had not stopped walking toward me even when I got distracted and disoriented and began to think I had to manage this storm of life on my own.  Even though I had lost sight of Him behind the waves of the awareness of my insufficiency, He had not lost sight of me.  He was with me the whole time!  I didn’t have to be sufficient for this storm or any other that might come, because HE IS!  He had called me out here to walk with Him, because I had asked Him too.  I wanted, and still want, to know life that is all Him and far beyond me.  I just got confused and somehow started to think I had to manage it on my own.  I am not sure how I got distracted, or how I came to that place.  I intended to walk out to Him on the water, completely focused on Him.  I really did!  I didn’t even realize my focus had shifted until that morning when I sank into the tears of my insufficiency. 

Then He began to show me how He had been there all along.  All my life my Heavenly Father has been with me preparing me for this now moment.  He wastes nothing.  Just as these moments are not just for today, they are preparing me for moments in the future, moments that thankfully I cannot begin to imagine or comprehend now, when I will be able to look back and say, “God was in this.  Look what He has done!”  

So the last few months the Lord has lead me on a pondering journey.  One where He has been showing me moments from my past that He has ordained or walked with me through to bring me to now, so that I could become more aware of His sufficiency.  For example, the years during nursing school that both Frank and I worked at a respite center for special needs children and adults.  It was not just coincidence that I saw the help wanted sign on the bulletin board in the nursing building at Grand Valley State University. It was God.  I have no idea how long it was posted, but I was the only one to reply to it.  Once I started working there I fell in love with the children and adults there and convinced Frank he needed to work their too! They were thrilled to have a guy to help with some of the adult guests.  And then God did this amazing thing in both of our hearts.  We both fell in love with the guests that frequented the respite center!  We really loved working there!  The money wasn’t great, and it was in an “interesting” part of town, but we loved it!  Another example is when we have struggled by our children’s sides, and continue to struggle some days, with dyslexia and learning difficulties.  Through those experiences and years of occupational therapy we have gained not only insight but an amazing OT friend, Denise, who also happens to specialize in autism and sensory issues.  There are so many more moments, but you get the idea.  All God!  Every moment! So that in this moment, He could point me back and say, “See, I have never left.  I have been orchestrating each moment to bring you to now.  Each moment is a gift with my fingerprint on it so that in this moment when you feel so far beyond yourself, you can see I have been there, and I always will be, preparing you and equipping you for the destiny I have planned for you and the battles you will need to fight to get there.”

Honestly, I have been processing and pondering all this for months.  I am still working on wrapping my brain around it all, but a month ago, I feel as though God began to open the floodgates of understanding for me.  As I attended our church’s annual women’s conference, I drew in what several speakers had to say and, you might say, the light bulb came on.  One dynamic woman of God shared about the widow who had only a little flour and oil left and was going to make some bread for her and her son and then die because of the famine.  When Elijah asked her to make him some bread she had a choice.  She could eat what she had and die, or she could hold it with an open hand, sow it into the call of God on her life, and never run out, always have enough, and not just survive, but thrive! Now, she didn’t know in advance the effect her obedience would have.  She had to step out in faith and give all that she had to the Lord first before she became completely aware of all the blessings God had in store for her.  She could have missed it.  If she had held on tight and focused more on the little she had in her hand than on how big her God was.   Light Bulb! I was doing that.  I was so focused on how little there was of me, I had missed out on giving all of me and the moments of my life that had brought me to now to God and letting Him make it enough.  Again, I hadn’t meant to.  That wasn’t my intention, but when the storm of life howled, I mistakenly thought that holding on to the little I had was going to save me.  Nope.  I am definitely not enough to get through this storm or any other with the little I have to offer. I need God to make it more.

Another speaker made a seemingly simple statement but one that rocked my world, “God doesn’t respond to whining, He responds to faith.”  She shared how finally Hannah got out of her self-pity and remembered who her God was.  When she got out of her pity and into the power of God, her prayer became one of faith and power.  God wove this message together with a song he had been using to minister to my spirit, Giants Fall.  Again, I was looking at only the small things in my hand that I possessed. I believed that what I had wasn’t enough.  I wasn’t looking at them in faith, I was looking at them and whining, “God it’s not enough.  I am not enough. Oh, woe is me!”   What if David had looked at the stones God had had him gather and said, “God this isn’t enough.  I am not equipped. I give up.”  Light bulb!  Yep, that’s what I was doing.  I was looking at the stones, all those moments of preparation that God was in, all the “weapons” God had given me, and I was whining and saying they weren’t enough.  And guess what! On my own, the way I was trying to use them, they were definitely not enough, but anointed and empowered in prayers of faith, not whining, but remembering who my God is, how awesome He is, and how He has orchestrated each moment to bring me here, wasting nothing, those little things I held in my hand became giant slayers! 

So here I am in this moment. Focusing my eyes on my Lord, offering Him back all the moments of my life that have brought me here, for Him to use through me to bring destiny into my life and my son’s life and to take down the giants of medical diagnosis, sensory issues, and many other things trying to rob Hayden of his destiny and me of mine.  What amazes me is that once my focus shifted back to how great my God is, and to how He has placed things in my hand to offer back to Him, filled with faith, I no longer feel like I am drowning.  I feel ready to walk on water, holding His hand of course, and ready to fight the giants with the stones He has given me. 

Another wonderful speaker made this statement, “We are not fighting for victory; we are fighting FROM victory! HE HAS ALREADY WON!”  I am not exactly sure how I ended up drowning in the pity of my own insufficiency.  Lies of the enemy perhaps, or my own pride maybe (ouch, that hurts).  But I am so thankful my loving Heavenly Father didn’t leave me there.  He reached down, met me where I was, lovingly picked me up and dusted me off and is helping me start again with the understanding that HE IS ALL-SUFFICIENT and HE HAS ALREADY WON! All I need to do is focus on Him, not me, and surrender all He has given me, back to Him and He will provide beyond my comprehension and take down any giant who dares to come against the one and only true God and the destiny He has planned for His children.  HE HAS ALREADY WON AND HE IS SUFFICIENT!