Forgive me that I’m jumping posts right now, I have A LOT of catching up to do but I just had to blog about today. Let me start with…God is so FAITHFUL to his promises! God is so GOOD! God always blows my mind!
Joel 2:25 “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—”
My friends I was blessed beyond what I could imagine today when I saw the beginning of this verse being fulfilled in my sweet Yaya’s life. It came in the most unexpected place, and the title of this blog gives it away. Yaya had her first speech therapy session today. We are working with an amazing organization called Hand in Hand, you can check them out if you are in the Birmingham, AL area by clicking on the link I made out of their name. They are doing all of Yaya’s PT, OT, and speech currently. Anyway, Melissa, is our speech girl and she is A-MAZING. She is in the same vein as our PT girl, Katie. Although Melissa does not yet have “Katie status” with Yaya, but it is coming. We have seen Melissa 3 times now and all those times were with Katie. The goal there was to ease Yaya into being with a new person. Well it worked with Melissa. Yeah! Today we saw her by ourselves at the first official speech session.
My prayer for speech has been this… “Lord, just let Yaya cooperate with the process. Let her be participatory. Let her enjoy Melissa.” He honored that prayer today. We went with Melissa to the speech room and sat on the floor. Melissa pulled out a basket full of “toys” and immediately Yaya was “in”. She started with a Mr. Potato Head toy. I thought this would be a no-go, cuz when we bought her one for Christmas she freaked out when I took the eyes off the toy. Today however, the potato was devoid of accessories and the game was to stick stuff on. Not as traumatizing, clearly. Yaya ended up taking off a couple pieces to add additional arms. Her potato had an arm sticking out of the top of its head and in the place of the eyes, in addition to the normally place arms. Anyway…as Melissa progressed through the session and I got to sit back and watch (with Noah) and the weight of what I was seeing hit me like a ton of bricks. Here was this amazing little girl who in 10 months has learned so much and had so much happen to her and in her. She was lively and excited and engaged and performing beautifully. She was actually making the sounds asked of her…for the FIRST TIME. I found myself silently crying as I was watching the Lord begin to restore his little girl. This was redemption in real time. She is learning to speak! Had the Lord left her in China, they would have eventually fixed her lip and likely her palate, but by the time that happened she would have been fairly old AND they wouldn't have sent her to speech therapy! From the little I understand of speech therapy, they actually have to teach you to think differently; i.e. form new neural pathways. It isn’t just listen and repeat, it is really hard work and can take years and years. She would have never really learned how to communicate, not well. And it would be one more thing against her in China.
But God in his mercy sent her here. He secured two critical surgeries for her that would enable her to talk, eat comfortably, and fit in socially. Then he made sure there were people lined up who would capitalize on these surgeries to give her the best possible outcomes. MIND. BLOWING. You would think the surgeries would have had this effect on me, and they did in a minor way, but for me the goal was always speech. I don’t know why, perhaps it is because I am so language oriented. But for me it was all about enabling her to find her voice and use it…on so many levels. Not just the obvious physical use of a voice to make speech, but the more deeper meaning of being able to communicate all those things she has not been able to. To communicate her past and her present, her opinions, her fears, her joys, her hurt, her anger, her likes, her loves…her world. We have done well to give her an expressive language with sign language, but her mind is so sharp and I know she needs more signs than what I have taught her. She would have been much like Noah had she not had any cleft issues, in that she would have likely talked early I think. Her vocabulary would have been outrageous by this age is my guess. I think in part the reason why this was so emotional for me is that I am actually getting to witness a large milestone with her. I am getting to be here for her “first words”. What a gift! Something that I hadn’t really thought about. I mean we saw her “first crawl, roll over, walk etc.” but those were different somehow. I don’t know, I’m sorta babbling now trying to explain something that I think is fairly unexplainable.
All this to say. Speech was cool today. Melissa was very excited about what she saw and we are both very encouraged. Her exact words were, “She is going to be a delight!” Yaya always seems to blow past our expectations of her. She is an incredible little girl. What an honor and privilege to bear witness to how God is working to restore and redeem this little girl’s life. What an honor to call her my daughter.
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