Yano.

Before going to Israel, I was in a Bible study on Ephesians with the nurses I worked with. We read Ephesians 1:4.

 just as [in His love] He chose us in Christ [actually selected us for Himself as His own] before the foundation of the world, so that we would be holy [that is, consecrated, set apart for Him, purpose-driven] and blameless in His sight. (Amplified)

I told the nurses “I wanna know what it’s like to be chosen.”

So I prayed.

When I pray, I know God will answer, I just don’t know how.

Then I flew to Iraq to pick up Yano, her mom, Dea and her mom. Never did I dream how this trip would unfold.

Seven days into knowing Yano, she went for her first doctor’s appointment. I cried after she left. She would only be gone for a few hours. Not just shedding tears, but CRYING. I didn’t know why. I could sense the overwhelming love of God all around. And then I grasped that THIS was the answer to my prayer to know what it is like to be chosen.

I have had three encounters with God, in my lifetime, that were filled with His THICK presence. I could barely contain what I experienced. I cried and cried thinking about His holiness.

But this fourth encounter was different. I cried thinking of His incredible love. I knew God was giving me a glimpse of His heart for Yano. I think if I got it all, I would combust. I remember asking one of the Shevet workers “Do you have children die?” At this point, I never dreamed Yano wouldn’t be okay. It didn’t cross my mind. She answered they had seen children die. I cried more.

I’m thankful, while I was with Yano, I never thought anything would happen to her. I thought she would have her surgery and one day I would go visit her in Iraq. I remember googling “What’s the longest someone has lived with hypoplastic left heart post surgeries?” The answer was somewhere in the 30’s. Yano is five and I almost started crying thinking I would only get 25 more years with her.

So the love was so strong. She loved me too. Her mom told me how, at that appointment, Yano kept asking about “Teresa, Teresa, Teresa, Teresa.” Yano’s mom said Yano called me her mom. Yano would sing “Mother Teresa.” We laughed about that.

I felt like the Lord told me, this morning, to write down all my memories with Yano. My Father knows how this daughter processes….in writing, with memories, videos and photos and MOST of all….His voice.

My first memory of Yano was at the airport in Iraq watching her dad say goodbye to her. He grabbed her face gently and kissed her on the forehead. That hit me and I didn’t know why.

In the airplane, she was the cutest little thing wearing her non rebreather mask on 2L. Her oxygen would stay in the 50s and 60s. I knew at that point, call me a medical escort all you want, but up here at 30,000 feet still satting in the 60s on oxygen, we need Jesus. So I prayed. I remember thinking how devoted these moms are, the distance they will go.

I carried Yano’s oxygen tank as her mom and I helped her to the bathroom on board. Yano threw up on both flights. I remember Yano’s mom looking back at me in the seat behind her and saying “Thank you, Teresa.” I was so thankful when we touched ground in Israel.

We ate dinner the first night when we arrived in Jerusalem. I told Yano’s mom that I was praying this would be the last surgery Yano would need. I wrote in my journal from the first night “I love Yano so much. On the flight, she was trying to talk to me. She reminds me of Clennan.” (Clennan is my niece and Yano reminded me of Clennan at her age.)

Our second day, I played with Yano and Dea outside. We were in quarantine, but we had an outdoor area where we tossed a balloon around and laughed a bunch. That was my favorite part of the day.

Our 2nd night together, Yano’s oxygen dropped to 49% and we went in a cab to Sheba hospital. I remember looking at Yano’s face so peaceful as the wind blew in her hair. I asked the Muslim taxi driver if it was okay if we prayed together for Yano. So I did, right there in the taxi. When we got to the pediatric ER, she wanted to play….as her oxygen was reading 44 on our pulse oximeter. She got observed that night and came home. I helped them get back in the house around 2:30am that night.

Our third morning, I had such a sweet time with Yano. We played games. I taught her how to sing “My God is so Big” with hand motions.

Her mom wrote me on Google Translate and said “It’s good that you are next to me, you are better than my sister. (She doesn’t have a sister, this was more for emphasis.) For when I am with you, I feel like I am with family.”

While sitting next to Yano, I prayed for healing for her eyes. You would never know it, but Yano can barely see. She would have to hold things very close to her face to be able to see it. At times, she would tap her little precious feet out in front of her, before she took a step, to make sure the ground was level.

Day three, I added their moms on social media over dinner. I wrote in my journal this day “I can’t explain how much I love Yano. She is so precious. Can’t wait to see how she does. How You will write this story.”

Day four, I found out we were the only Christians Yano’s mom had met in. her. life.

This day, I noticed that Yano copies everything I did. If I wore my hair in a ponytail, she immediately wanted her hair up. It was so funny to watch. We had the same haircut and color of hair. AS SOON as I put mine up, she would frantically ask her mom where her hair tie was so she could put hers up just like mine. Even taking off a hair band and running towards her room to get a hair tie.

When I talked on Google Translate with the moms, Yano wanted to hear it too. She didn’t understand Arabic, as it was translated, but she still wanted to hear. She would LAUGH every time she heard it.

If I was having my quiet time, she wanted to have one too. She would color as I journaled at the kitchen table. I recall one morning, I was having my quiet time and she had just woken up and stood next to my chair looking at me. The most precious face you ever did see.

On day four, Yano and I played a lot. We drew on a white board and colored. I would hang her pictures on the refrigerator and say how beauitful they were in Kurdish. She would LOVE how I adored her work and hung it. I wish you could see her eyes turn to the side as she kinda blushed and loved the praise.

We played hide and seek….her favorite. If I found a new place and it took her a long time to find me, she would bust out laughing and scream out “Dika!!! Dika!!! (Mom! Mom!) to tell her mom of the amazing place I was hiding in. Because of her sight, I didn’t hide in too hard of places. I recall sitting on the couch once (my hiding place) and her looking straight at me, from about 10 feet away and not seeing me. It broke my heart. Her mom anticipated her having eye surgery one day.

Day 4 I wrote in my journal “I can’t express how much my heart loves her.” My bag arrived on this day, after getting lost in transit. The moms cheered when it arrived….only the way Kurdish women can. I loved it. I had been wearing Dea’s mom’s pj’s but now I had my own. Yano loved my own pajamas and commented on them.

Day 5 was Dea’s 2nd birthday. Yano really wanted Dea’s gift and we laughed so much about it. Yano got the doll and named her Fatima. Yano really tried to help blow up the balloons for Dea’s party. After trying really hard on one balloon, she handed it to me, all wet and asked me to blow it up:) We all danced, Kurdish style, in the kitchen.

Yano would come up to me and say “play”….she hand signals peek a boo and that means hide and seek.

Day 6, Yano was right beside me in my quiet time. I told her mom that day that many people are praying and God has a plan for Yano’s life. I would ask the moms and Yano what their favorite part of the day was. That day, Yano said “hide and seek.” She continued to learn “My God is so Big.”

I believe it was this day, it was just her mom, Yano and me eating dinner as Dea and her mom were at the hospital. We sat at a round table spaced out evenly. Yano wanted me to come sit next to her so we all could sit closely together for dinner. Yano wanted me close. Her mom and I thought that was so precious and hilarious all of us sitting almost shoulder to shoulder at that big table.

Day 7, Yano went for her first doctor’s appointment and I wept. That was the aha moment that Yano was how God answered my prayer to know what it was like to be chosen. He told me to come to Israel very specifically. He chose Yano to be with me. He gave me an immense love for her that was not contingent on anything.

This was the last day of my required quarantine. I had my 16th negative Covid test and was “free to go.” But I didn’t want to leave because I wanted to be home when Yano got home from her doctor’s appointment. I recorded a video that day of me crying, in the midst of this encounter with God, talking about His love. It was very 1 Corinthians 13…who cares what you can do if you don’t have love.

I remember hearing their voices at the gate when they returned from the doctors and being so excited they were back. Yano’s mom said Yano kept saying “Teresa, Teresa, Teresa and asking the other worker where I was.” I offered to go get food and they wanted chicken shawarma. We ate together that night…as we did every meal. Yano’s mom told me that day “I love you so much.” Me too….me too.

The next day, I went with Yano and her mom to get their Covid test to get out of quarantine. Yano LOVED the playground on the top of the Mount of Olives. I slid on the slide with her. Bounced up and down on the apparatuses. Even flipped over the bars on the slide like I did when I was little, before sliding down the slide. Yano was in heaven.

We went to the Old City that day. Yano’s mom wanted to see the mosque. I wasn’t allowed to go in, as I am a Christian, so I stayed with Yano and bought her some toys. It was plastic vegetables that you could pretend to cut that were held in place by velcro.

The next day, we went to the hospital for Yano’s heart cath. I wanted to spend the night with Yano and her mom in the hospital. Her mom asked if I would and I also wanted to. We weren’t able to, but Yano’s cath was cancelled because of two emergency caths that were needed….one of them being Dea. We went to see Dea and her mom in the ICU that day. I held Yano, as we looked into Dea’s crib.

Yano always had a heart for babies. When I held another baby, she would want to hold them too. We moved to Tel Aviv/Jaffa area where the other families were. There were a lot of babies and you could see how much Yano loved them.

It was there is Tel Aviv that I got to take Yano and her mom to the ocean. I had been gone all day with Dea at the hospital. When I got home, it’s like Yano hadn’t seen me in ages. She ran to me with such excitement and embraced me so hard. She kept hugging me over and over again. We went to the ocean….her riding in her stroller.

I knew Yano couldn’t see the ocean until we got really close to it. I watched her eyes open in wonder once she beheld the ocean for the first time in her life. I wrote in my journal about this encounter “My heart can barely hold it when she beholds something.”

Yano was fearless. She reminded me of my nephew, Anthony, at that time. I remember his first time in the ocean. Ready to run into the waves. Yano was the same way.

Yano, her mom and I laughed so much. We went to play on the playground next to the beach after that. The sun set. We stared in awe. We swung on the swing. Everything was precious and right in that moment.

The next day, I played with Yano with paint and play dough. She loved it so much. I loved it so much. Anything with her was a gift. We went to the beach again. She cried leaving it. Yano loved living life to the fullest.

On Shabbat, I went to eat with the families. Yano was so happy I came. We played our “uze” hide and seek. As the Kurdish families offered me tea after biryani, I ran around the apartment looking for Yano and her looking for me.

I was cooking dinner for the Shevet workers one night and decided to make them brownies from scratch. They loved desserts and I don’t even eat them. Yano’s mom messaged me and said “Did you make cake for my daughter who loves cake?” So I made another batch of brownies. So thankful I did. When I look back today and think of all the extra miles you go with people, I’m so thankful I went. Especially today, as I write this and Yano is on life support. I woulda made her a bakery, if I knew what was ahead.

Our days were filled with walks, going to parks, and playing hide and seek. We would sit on the couch and hold babies. Sing together…a lot. We sang “My God is So Big”, “Old McDonald”….with the dog being the star animal and the notorious “Baby Shark” with our own rendition of Grandma Shark sounding like an old old lady.

I made up a song for Yano and Dea called “Hiyati….Corbani” and would sing that to them. They laughed when I shook my shoulder.

Yano and I laughed a lot. Period. It didn’t matter what we were doing. I loved her laugh and the way she would make sounds in her throat that you would just have to hear in person to grasp how cute it was.

One day, she came up to me and whispered in Kurdish how much she loved me, with hand signals like ten times ten times ten. Then she busted out laughing. We would go on to tell each other how much we loved each other by seeing how far we could extend our hands. Her face would get so serious as she tried to express how big her love was.

Our second to last day together, Yano had to go to the dentist. She said she wouldn’t be afraid if I went. So we had someone take an extra car to take me to the hospital so I could be with Yano for her dentist visit, which I had already eagerly wanted to go to.

We visited the dentist. We ate shawarma and fries, as that was what Yano wanted. Her mom and I cried so much knowing this was the end of my stay. Yano started calling me TT that day. She busted out with “My God is so Big” spontaneously over lunch. That made her mom and I cry harder.

I cried in my room so much that night, thinking of my goodbye to Yano the next day. And the last day came. I cried all morning. It was so hard to say goodbye to her. God gave me a decision in missions in 2002 when I cried so hard saying goodbye to my YWAM friends in DTS: I could either keep my heart at a distance and not get too close to people, the goodbyes would be easy and I would never cry OR I could love hard and it would hurt. I chose the latter and I’m so glad I did. It was deeply painful saying goodbye after only 3 weeks.

Yano’s face, the morning I left, was different. She kept staring into space as if it was too hard to comprehend that I was leaving. I never saw her face like that. I remember when her mom told her I was going back to America, the look of distraught on her face was too hard to handle. Nancy, who told me about Shevet (the organization I was with in Isreal), had a friend sing, in Kurdish “My God is So Big” and recorded it. I played it for Yano and her mom that day.

As I was leaving Yano said over and over again in Kurdish “Don’t go. Don’t go.” It sounded like “Mo ro mo ro.”

Yano smiled big waving goodbye to me. Her mom was bawling as I was too.

I am so thankful it never crossed my mind that Yano wouldn’t be okay. I think that would have even been a harder goodbye. We Facetimed in the airport in Turkey. Her mom sent me videos. I sent Yano videos twice on my flights home.

I told the founder of Shevet, when he picked Dea, her mom and myself up from the airport in Iraq on our return, that I would be in Yano’s life. Yano had me for life.

The weeks leading up to her heart cath and surgery were filled with us sending videos back and forth. Videos I treasure of Yano telling me how much she loved me, how she missed me and her singing.

They Facetimed me when Yano had to go to the ER. Yano was scared and she wanted me there to hold her hand.

On Tuesday, November 16th Yano had her open heart surgery. It didn’t cross my mind she wouldn’t be okay, but I asked for prayer. Yano told her mom before going into surgery, “Tell TT to pray for me.” Yano told her mom that she wished I was going to surgery with her, but she knew I would be there after her surgery.

I was working at the hospital here in North Carolina. I got the message that Yano was on ECMO following her surgery. I bawled at work, crying with my co-workers.

And my days have been filled with faith and tears since.

Today, Yano is still on ECMO. I write this in tears and much pain. I am so thankful for all the memories. I never wanna forget all those special moments we had. So thankful I soaked her up. What a gift You gave me, God. How you answered my prayer. I know much more now, how much you love us. And I could see why You would want Yano back. I desperately want her back. I still hope for a miracle. I still pray for this. But if I got her for a month and a half….I will choose to be thankful for every moment.