Midnight Train

Midnight Train

11.15.12
from Reagan

I find I have to keep looking for a calendar to know what day it is, check my phone to know more than just the approximate time.  Math is not meant for a sleep deprived brain.  The computer says 4.53pm at home, so it is 11.53pm here in the middle of nowhere.  I am in one of two four bed cabins we have on a train to somewhere, listening to Sara Groves Invisible Empires on my iPod.  Three of us in here are sleeping.

Since leaving home Sunday morning I have spent two nights sitting awake praying in Philadelphia, one laying across three seats in the air over the Atlantic (also listening to Sara Groves), one in Kiev gratefully reunited with my husband and a real bed, and tonight on a train.  This time the tracks lead to Liza.  It has been, as our friend Josh put it, “the ultimate faith walk”.

Josh and Corbett were Liza’s host parents over the summer and the means by which God brought her to us.  We think of them often, especially right now, on this train.  They were on this train less than two years ago, nearly eight months pregnant, coming to rescue their sweet son before he was moved to a place no child should know because he has Down’s Syndrome.  When she told me the story she said she was lying here, sleepless, thinking, “This is crazy.  Who’s crazy? I’m crazy!”  The lengths to which a parent will go for their child, usually is. 

  

We have that inner mechanism that tells us when our child needs us.  Sometimes we’re across the room , sometimes the house, sometimes the world.

When people ask me why we are doing this I have a hard time explaining with rationale.  I can tell you that from the moment I met her, I fell in love with her.  When asked in an interview Monday, “What’s she like?” I said, “She’s beautiful and smart and funny and sweet…”  All true.  But those are not the reasons we brought eight people to Ukraine to get her.  It has been instinct since day one, July 23rd.  When I was pregnant and laboring with each of my first four babies, I acted on instinct to care for my body, and then their bodies; nursing, feeding, bathing, reaching for them, soothing them, knowing when to leave and when to stay.  When our second born, the two minutes older of our twins, was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroid disease last year, we didn’t ask the doctors what their price tag was for helping her.  We didn’t base decisions on how far we would have to go to make her well.  Is there ever a point where I would answer, “That’s just too far”? 

No.

 

So here we are, mere hours from an institution that has been her home for ten years.   After the past few days where I felt like a prisoner, it feels like…something big, something God sized.  I can’t find the word I want.  Has someone ever tried to physically keep you from your child?  It’s agonizing.  It makes you crazy and capable of big, God sized things.  Several people have said they could not have done what I did, made it through, gotten it done, held it together.  I want to encourage you if you are feeling called to adopt but not capable of what it may bring.  It was not I who made it through, got it done or held it together.  It was not any one person.  It was God. And if you don’t believe in God, I want to encourage you to look closer at this story.  It was He.

I left my home, travelled far from my city, had my identity and my money stolen, watched my husband walk onto that plane and fly AWAY.  He’s my rock.  I held onto him and said over and over, “I can’t do this without you”.  After he was gone I contemplated all that loss.  I was nauseated and unable to speak or move. I felt our long awaited dream melting away as if I’d imagined it all.  It was my fault.  One minute all eight of us were walking to our next gate and the next I felt the empty pocket on the outside of my backpack.   Then two of us were gone.  I felt naked.  Utterly vulnerable.

Sara Grove’s album Invisible Empires has been an incredible part of my peace of mind this week.  Her lyrics feel like they were written about me.  “It’s hard to feel obsolete.  It’s hard to feel your skirts are showing.  You pull and tug to hide the works, to keep the whole thing going.  And you don’t know where you stand.  And you feel so small and thin.  And if you are dismissed, will another take you in. Everybody’s having fun.  Everybody seems immortal.  And I don’t know where you stand.  And did something pass you by?  And if you are dismissed, will you get another try?” (from Obsolete)

I don’t remember much about the first three hours that we walked the halls of Philadelphia Airport.  My Dad was talking to every police and TSA officer he could find.  He badgered US Airlines and information desk attendants.  I followed dragging my carry-on behind me, catatonic

More than six hours of walking later, somewhere between 10:30 and midnight, when we finally got to a comped hotel room at the Marriott, hundreds of people had been mobilized by a single post on Facebook.  My sisters, my brother, friends, cousins, perfect strangers were calling me, emailing me and FB’ing me.  My phone had to be permanently plugged in bc it was blowing up.  Governors, Senators, Congressmen, news crews, even Hillary Clinton’s office I’m told, were informed and working to get us those passports.  Now THAT’s crazy.  THAT’s God-sized.  If I didn’t have video proof, I still wouldn’t believe it happened.

At 1:30am Monday morning, 20 intense hours awake , stripped of every comfort and familiarity, I literally felt God’s hand calm my trembling, warm my chills, slow my breathing, and give me the words to speak in that first interview (which never aired on NBC).   My father had walked outside the hotel with me and stood quietly waiting.  I couldn’t see him from where I was.  Not because he was invisible but because I was facing the other way.  He was a perfect model as an earthly father of what our Heavenly Father does for us.  He walks with us.  He stays. He waits.  Sometimes He is quiet.  Sometimes we cannot see Him.  But He is there.

Now I believe God wanted Liza’s story told.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know why me.  I am nobody.  I am just a girl from a podunk town in North Carolina who loathes being in the spotlight. 

“I can’t run with the horses if I can’t keep up with man.  I can try at all these forces on my own and never win.  I can take it from here and have nowhere to go.  I could take it for years and have nothing to show.  I can work like the devil, build a tower to the sky.  I can work for my possessions til they empty me of life.  I can build my own house and be building in vain.  I can plant a seed but I can’t bring the rain.  I’ll wait for you now more than ever.  I see it’s true, now more than ever, I’ll wait for you now…I don’t want to do this by myself.  I know I need your help.  And so I’m waiting for you.” (from I’ll Wait, Sara Groves)

…but He chose me to tell to her story and to be her Mom.

It is 6:10pm at home, 1:10am here.  We have been traveling for 103 hours and 45 minutes. We are now eight hours and 15 minutes away.

“I see my faith before me, it’s always there before me and I can no more own it than I can own the road that I am on.  I don’t know where it leads me, I don’t know where it leads me. Peace and resurrection, suffering and dejection, I don’t know.  And my body’s tired from trying to bring you here.  My brow is furrowed trying to see things clear.  So I’ll turn my back to the black and foam and wait for the mystery to meet me home.  I’ll wait for your mystery to rise up and meet me home.” (Mystery by Sara Groves)