Another Hero!!!!!!

God has such a way of putting the right people in the right place at the right time! There is something about the bond that adoptive families have, but I have to say that there is one person that I am extremely thankful for in my life. Stacy and I met at church several years ago and we attended MOPS together when we each had one biological preschool age child. When we decided to adopt Reagan from China, I gave a testimony about it and I remember Stacy saying to me that she would love to adopt but her husband thought he was too old. I immediately commented that people adopt well into their 50's! Anyway, long story short, Stacy has been blessed by two beautiful little girls from Kazakhstan and she has dedicated much of her life to helping orphans all over the world. She is an amazing person and friend! She is also the person who asked me to pray for two girls from Latvia that she was going to host back in the summer of 2009. I am blessed to call those two girls my daughters now! When everything fell apart in China, Stacy graciously offered to help get us home. She worked everything out with the travel agent while we were dealing with our emotional breakdown in China. I could go on and on and on about our connection to this family, but I will get to the point... AFter our horrible experience last week at the pediatricians office, Stacy recommended the pediatric cardiologist that she takes her daughter to. She explained that he would probably look at Ethan's medical records. He has two children from China and is located in Springfield, which is only an hour from us. Tim called Dr. Tang yesterday and the receptionist told him to bring what we had and she was sure he could look at it. She said that she didn't know how long it would take him. We drove to the office last night and dropped off our package of everything we know about Ethan. It was after hours, so we left it in their drop box. Around 10:00 this morning, I got a message from Dr. Tang on my cell phone. He was so friendly and said he thought he knew what the problem was with Ethan and he would love to talk about it. I called him back and when the receptionist answered and I told her who I was and that I was returning a call from Dr. Tang. She asked my child's name and before I could explain, she said she should have known by the name Tucker that we were the family adopting Ethan and that he is so cute. She said the doctor showed his picture to her! What a huge difference in office staff! I was so relieved and thankful! When I talked to Dr. Tang he explained that Ethan's VSD was damaged during his surgery when he was 9 months old. To sum it up, his heart is compensating for the blockage that this caused and he needs a pacemaker. His heart is large because it is a muscle that is being overworked and it will shrink when the pacemaker is implanted! He said he doesn't like to criticize other doctors, but it's ridiculous for the doctors in China to think they need to wait 6 months to do this surgery. He also thinks he will be fine to travel, with or without a pacemaker! I wish I could remember and explain all the technical medical stuff he told me, but I can't. He did a great job of explaining it, but the main thing is that he is an expert in his field and he didn't hesitate in saying we should be able to go get him and bring him home! So, the next step was to contact GW, which I did and they said Dr. Tang needs to write a letter stating all of that. I called the office back and explained that and by 4:30 today they had faxed the letter!!!!!!!!!!! Amazing! I am thrilled that we seemed important enough to do things so quickly. I am certain he is very busy, but he made our family and our precious son a priority today and I will be eternally grateful for that! God is so good! Dr. Tang is a hero! Please pray that China accepts what the letter says and allows us to come get Ethan! We are so excited!

Early Morning Thoughts

I usually try to blog when I have something of importance to document about our lives, but occasionally I just need to start typing to try to make sense of my thoughts. It is 4:20 in the morning and I can't sleep. I have this nervous sick feeling in my stomach. I have been so anxious waiting to hear something, waiting to be able to do something about all this confusion, but there has been nothing. I am tired of thinking about the what ifs, the whens, and the hows. I am the kind of person who does not like "fake". I don't like when people try to be something they are not. A phrase I heard quite often from my parents growing up was "tell us what you really think" (said in a very sarcastic tone) because I was never shy about expressing my opinion. I prefer being around people who are the same in every situation, who love me for me, who are honest about their own faults and don't judge me for mine. That being said, I feel like I am walking around all day being fake. I feel like there is all this anger and confusion and heartache boiling up inside of me, yet I walk around with a smile going through the motions of my life. I don't like this feeling. Yes, there are moments of laughter with my kids and my friends and moments when I feel God's arms around me and I know He is still working out His plan. But right now I feel like it is Him and me at rock bottom. That's a lonely place to be. I want to keep faith and keep dreaming about the day when I will hold Ethan in my arms. I want to believe there is a doctor who will fix his heart and give him a long life, but then I have those moments where I wonder if he will ever make it out of China. God knows. God loves Ethan more than I do. He has plans for Ethan and for my family. It feels more and more each day like those plans are not the same as mine. This has happened often in my life and at the end of each trial, when more of God’s plan is revealed, it makes sense and I see how God’s timing, God’s planning, God’s perfect ability to see the whole picture is many times something I cannot possibly understand, let alone plan for. I really would like to stay in bed all day and not face the world. I feel like I might end up losing it somewhere that would be very embarrassing with people who won’t understand. It would be so nice to just be at home alone. Those first few days we were home from China, I got to do that. I got to sleep away the day and it numbed the pain because sleeping helped me forget. That was acceptable to people when we first came home, now it is expected that I should be “back to normal”. I hate that phrase. I think that is what I am having a hard time dealing with. Before everything happened, we were prepared for a new normal. Ethan was going to change lots of things at home, at work, at church. We were all ready to see what those changes were! I hate that we have gone back to old normal with the only difference being the broken heart that I walk around with. I think Tim and the girls feel it, too, but they are better at coping with it. Kids are so resilient and dads are just stronger. This mommy is stubborn and weak. I want to throw myself on the floor and have a good old fashioned tantrum, shake my fists and scream about how badly I want my son. For a few days, we had so much hope that we were going to get Reese’s referral. That made sense to me that Ethan was leading us to her and everything had to happen this way to get us to her quicker. Now I feel like we have been misled. That information about a possible match was just a carrot to dangle in front of us to keep us from being idle. She seems just as far away now as she ever has. I was letting myself dream about having both my little ones home together, trying to figure out how I would manage two carseats, two kids in my office, two kids in diapers, two more kids at the table, two more kids at Wal-Mart… To say I was looking forward to all that stress is an understatement. One of the best moments of my life was when we got home from Latvia with Becca and Isabella and we were reunited with Ryleigh and Reagan at the airport. It was pure joy for all of us to be together. I remember riding in the van on the way home and turning around to look at my four children talking and laughing. I felt overwhelmed by God’s goodness and blessings. Even though it was early March, we had Christmas when we got home because the big girls had presents waiting for them. We watched them open presents and we were all so thankful to be at home together. The next morning, we got up and had breakfast together and our new normal started. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief because all that we had gone through to get them here was over and they were HOME! The transition was so much easier than I thought it would be. We had prepared the best we could and we just let God take care of it. And He did. I know He will take care of everything. I just want to hide in a corner while He does. Prayers are still very much appreciated.

Ups and Downs

As with any adoption, Ethan (and Reese's) adoption has been full of ups and downs. Unfortunately, the downs are extreme. My prayer is that when we finally do meet him, the ups will be extreme, as well! The video has brought so much joy this week. We have watched it over and over and over and over and never get tired of watching him and hearing his voice. Just seeing a little bit of his personality has been such a blessing. We all love him so much. We did experience another moment of down on Thursday when we visited with our pediatrician. I have heard many horror stories about the things doctors say to adoptive parents and now we have had a small taste of what that is like. After looking at Ethan's paperwork, he looked me straight in the face and asked "And why would you want to bring this kid here?" SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!? My response was "because he is my son." In my heart and mind this question was the equivalent to asking a pregnant mom is she wanted to abort a child with possible health issues. Is it really that hard for people to understand that we love Ethan and we will never give up on him. The doctor said that Ethan has congestive heart failure and even the pacemaker surgery will not fix this. He said he could die in 2 years. Although that news was shocking and upsetting, it doesn't change the fact that we love and want him so desperately. He has been abandoned once and we will not abandon him again. If we have 2 weeks, 2 years, or 2 decades with him, we will count it a gift from God. We will make every second count with him. I couldn't go back to work after the appointment, so I came home for awhile and had a good cry. I felt super alone and didn't really want to talk to anybody. It dawned on me that God was trying to tell me something, so I opened up my bible to Psalms and starting reading. In Psalm 37 I was reminded that I need to trust in the Lord and wait for Him to work this all out. He is not leaving us and forgetting about our family. He loves all of us and wouldn't have put this adoption in motion if He didn't already have all the details worked out. I want to have 100% trust and faith and I am blessed to be surrounded by people that remind me of that. Not saying it's not hard to be going through all of this, but I know God is giving us many blessings along the way that never would have been shown to us. The doctor did come up with a care plan for Ethan and said there is a 50/50 chance or less of being okay. Whatever that means. In his opinion, Ethan needs to have surgery now and there is no reason (other than financial or political for China) to wait until he is 2 and a half. Just like we thought, the Chinese doctors saying that is just ridiculous. We are praying and advocating for him to get moved to Beijing to the China Care Home so Half the Sky can evaluate him and do the surgery. We appreciate prayers for Ethan. He is sicker than what we thought and we need our prayer partners to pray him home safely. No news on Reese. Seems like we got our hopes up for nothing, which just adds to the sadness around here. Pray that the perfect match for us is revealed ASAP.