Memorial Box Monday - Breathe

     It has been a busy Monday! We have Vacation Bible School this week at our church and it is amazing to watch 200 kids zooming around and having fun...and phew! I am beat!
    I found something this week as I sorted through things and God has continued to bring it up so I am trusting that it is supposed to be my Memorial Box Monday story. If you are not familiar with a Memorial Box, it is a place to remember the things that God has done, a place to tell the stories of God's faithfulness. We have a box and we place actual items in it as reminders so that we will be able to stand firm when things get difficult.
    This story happened at the end of our trip to China to get Georgia Mei. For those who are new here, we adopted Georgia in August. She had a serious and untreated heart condition that was causing her to have spells where she would become limp and turn blue. When we got home we went straight to the hospital where the doctors told us that she would not have been alive 30 days later....God literally did miracle after miracle to bring her home. You can read more about our story from our travel blog Here. You can read more Memorial Box stories from people at A Place Called Simplicity (click on the picture below)



    So, in Chinese adoption a few things happen. You typically travel to Beijing for a few days, then to your child's province for about a week, then to Gunagzhou where everything is finalized. We had been in Guangzhou for all of our appointments and were getting ready to fly to Shanghai for a few days then to home. We needed to fly to Shanghai because we Georgia needed oxygen for plane travel and the only airline that would allow us to use oxygen did not fly out of Guangzhou.
     While in Guangzhou, we learned more and more about how sick our sweet girl was. I learned to read her breathing and the shade of blue on her lips, under her eyes and on her button nose to tell  how much she was struggling. It became very clear that any sort of commotion or change made her weaker very quickly and I lived on edge, hardly eating because I felt sick to my stomach with fear for her. Even going outside just long enough to get into the bus (maybe 30 seconds) to go to the Consulate appointments would bring on one of these spells. She was a very frail baby and I was one worried Mama. So I held her close, kissed her satiny hair and prayed a lot.
    Before we went to China, we had talked with one of the nurse from the Pediatric Cardiology Unit at Children's Hospital in Seattle. The nurse had said flat out, "she could die on the plane, you will have to risk her life to save it. Your job is to get her to us alive." This rang in my head as we inched closer to the day of travel.
    The reason for my worry was this: the airlines in China would not allow us to use oxygen, they figured if someone was sick enough to need oxygen they should not be flying. We had one short flight to Guangzhou (maybe 30 minutes) and Georgia had done well but was weak and blue for the rest of that day. This flight was longer  (2 hours and 30 minutes) and she seemed to be weaker and there was nothing I could do about it. I woke up each night trembling from nightmares of her dying in my arms during the flight. I prayed like crazy and had everyone I could think of praying as well. I put off packing until late the night before the flight because I just could not believe that I really had to do this, that this gauntlet could not be moved out of the way.

     So the morning came...we waved goodbye of our guide at security. I gripped my little note written in Chinese that said, "Our daughter has a serious heart condition and needs medical help right now!" on it. You see, we would be traveling without a guide from this point on. All we had was our faith, our prayers and this little crumpled note in my pocket.
     My stomach lurched as we got to our gate, I could feel Georgia's quick breath on my chest as I carried her in the sling. It was time to board and all I wanted to do was run the other way as fast as I could. I looked down at her blue little nose and knew that what she needed most was the chance to get to medical care, so we stepped in line to board the plane. I prayed with all that was in me fro God's will to be done. It took a long time to get inside the plane and I just held my precious girl closely, not knowing what else to do.

    As I got on the plane and was waiting to find our seat (no small task when everything is written in Chinese, no one speaks English and you have a baby in your arms!), something caught my eye. I looked again. Could it possibly be? Something was absolutely misting out of the vents on the plane...literally pouring out and dripping a little bit out of every single vent. I passed a stewardess and pointed at the vent. She shook her head and in very broken English said, "Sorry...oxygen, too much! Broken."    Seriously...too much oxygen???? Vents broken so that oxygen MISTED out? I laughed out loud, tears streaming down my cheeks, surely looking like the craziest American anyone had ever seen. Only God could put us on a plane with oxygen pouring out of the vents. Only God!!!!!!!!!

     I think I cried tears of thankfulness that whole plane ride long as my little Georgia slept contentedly in my arms. How intimately He cares, how powerful is He, how small is my faith most of the time...and He met this weary, scared at the end of my fraying rope Mama to carry my little girl to the care that she needed.

      The thing I came across that reminded me? Some of the extra oxygen tubing we brought with us as well as that little note that said, "Our daughter has a serious heart condition and needs medical help right now!" They will be going in our Memorial Box today!

Georgia getting her first ever Daddy cuddles at the Seattle airport

"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted

and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Psalm 34:18