If you can bare to imagine, envision that child living in a place where no one is coming back to take them home. They have no one to tuck them in at night.
No one to cuddle and kiss her soft cheek, no one to tickle her and tell her "I love you".
Imagine your child has no blanket to comfort her or even a mattress to sleep on, just hard wooden slats.
Can you hear the flies buzzing around where she sleeps and lives? ...And a smell worse than any barnyard we have experienced here in America?
She wears shared, tattered, clothes that she cannot call her own, and are two sizes too big or small.
Her belly is hungry... I don't mean the kind where she whines a little, but the kind of hunger felt for days, and months, so intense she has no energy left to complain about it. She is so malnourished she weighs half as much as a healthy girl her age.
Imagine your baby girl crying and crying and no one coming to comfort her. Deprived of attention for so many months she finally gives up her cry... laying listless, staring.
Imagine this girl has no hope, no education. If she lives to the be too old to live at the orphanage, she'll most likely resort to making a living through prostitution or crime.
Now imagine that you look into that child's eyes, face-to-face, and tell her it costs too much, you'll have to give up too much, it will take too long, you're not strong enough to bring her back home. Nonsense, right? You are strong enough, all you have to do is be willing, say "yes".
Wouldn't you do anything to get to that child, to bring them home?
I know, I'm pulling at your heart's strings. You say what I said before, "That's for someone else to take on, someone more "special" than me". But you see, that's exactly what the "special" people think right before they become "special". There's nothing special about saying "yes". However, there is a challenge and a commitment and certainly a sacrifice.
I remind you to look again at that child's face....
My husband, Doug, had an interesting conversation which a lady from our church. She asked our family's plans for this summer and he mentioned we would at some point be in Africa to bring our newest little girl, Della, home. He explained a little about orphanages in this part of Africa, like the one where our little girl came from. She said something like, if she visited one of those orphanages she would want to bring all the children back to our church and the church family's would work out the rest.
This got me thinking... How many people would be willing to take one of those orphans home? An orphan who is standing right in front of them? A child who has no one to give them attention, no family returning to bring them back home. A child who has no one to tuck them in at night (or much less a blanket or mattress), no one to kiss them and hear "I love you". Doug and I never thought about adoption being part of our story. Now that we know other family's who have been through the process, we're not afraid of it. It's doable, and more than that, God commands us to do it. I know I'm probably stepping on some toes, but if by sharing what we've gone through helps just one more family to know how possible adoption is, then that's one less child without a family.
What am I willing to give up for a child?
