A Special Day in my Heart - 5/23/07

There's a story I've been just dying to share but really have not had the time to get all of my thoughts together. Mostly though, I pretty much get eyes full of tears when I even think of this story and know full well that if I'm sitting in the den typing and crying, well - that's going to elicit a lot of questions from the kiddos. Somehow I've never been able to adequately explain happy tears to either one of them.

While I'm not the best of storytellers, here goes ... I subscribe to a newsletter sent out from the rainbowkids website and back last May or so I read one of her articles that said she was traveling back to China with her oldest daughter who was adopted from China. Part of their trip included plans to volunteer at the Starfish Home. This was the very first I had read about Amanda and her mission to help medically needy orphans.

On May 23, 2007 she posted the most precious and touching story about a little girl named Rebecca who lived at the Starfish Home. You can read her story here:

http://adoptblogger.blogspot.com/2007/05/lovely-rebecca.html

To say I was instantly smitten is an understatement of epic proportions. If you've linked to this blog, would you agree those are the cutest set of cheeks you could ever imagine? What touched me the most was the description of her delightful personality. The young lady holding Rebecca is Martha's daughter that had traveled to China. She was in the hospital with Rebecca during her heart surgery and in another post on her blog she talks about how Rebecca would cry if Jenn stepped out of the room for just a minute.

Here's an excerpt from that post:

"Now Rebecca, that little mischievous child I praised so highly, is another story. Apparently Rebecca went into surgery and came out of the anesthesia asking, “What in the world am I doing in this hospital bed?” She was a handful from that moment on. Jenni, who is a patient as any human ever was, tried to amuse Rebecca as much as possible. In the end, Rebecca would cry if Jenni left the room for even a moment.

Rebecca is one of those little girls who was blessed with a gorgeous face and an active mind. Her body must move at the speed of light to accommodate her curious nature."

So, all of this to say - if you've wondered why I've been so tickled with every little tidbit of information that I have received on Rebecca - everything from pictures to tales of that ornery personality - it's because of this wonderful story told by yet another person that gives her all to help the orphans in this world.

When we get home with the lovely Rebecca, we hope to be able to meet some of these wonderful people in person. Martha & Jenn are high on that list as well as Elaine (the lady who named Rebecca).

We also recently learned of a church group in Tennessee who has been sponsoring Rebecca. We most assuredly will be traveling to Nashville to visit their church. I was told that among many things that they have sent her is a Build A Bear and another family in this group even sent her a pair of crocs! I have seen those in some of the pictures I've been given of Rebecca. Somehow "thank you" just doesn't seem adequate to say to all these wonderful people.

I've really struggled with how to explain my feelings ... but so many times we give to things without really giving a lot of thought to the individual impact. I think mainly that's just because you think you're never really going to know the impact or you think that what you are doing really doesn't make a difference in the big scheme of things. One thing I can say for sure now though is that this has totally changed my perspective on that.

For this one, all these touches from different people from various parts of the world - it's made a difference. Now that is just the perfect correlation to the Starfish Home!

Ok, now that I'm crying again ... it's time to head off to bed. 28 days until we depart for China. In just about a month's time, Miss Rebecca will finally - after all this time - be united with her forever family. At long last she will finally be held by the mother that fell smack dab in love with her on May 23 of 2007.