Job 31:16-23

¹⁶ “If I have denied the desires of the poor
   or let the eyes of the widow grow weary,

¹⁷ if I have kept my bread to myself,
   not sharing it with the fatherless—

¹⁸ but from my youth I reared them as a father would,
   and from my birth I guided the widow—

¹⁹ if I have seen anyone perishing for lack of clothing,
   or the needy without garments,

²⁰ and their hearts did not bless me
   for warming them with the fleece from my sheep,

²¹ if I have raised my hand against the fatherless,
   knowing that I had influence in court,

²² then let my arm fall from the shoulder,
   let it be broken off at the joint.

²³ For I dreaded destruction from God,
   and for fear of his splendor I could not do such things.

Why Adopting a Girl from China isn't like the Doctrine of Election

A few months ago I received an email that purported to explain why adopting an older girl from China is like, or illustrates, the doctrine of election.The person who wrote it has not adopted, which really isn't all that important except that perhaps they are not completely familiar with the world of adoption, which types of adoption are really popular, etc.

[Let me quickly say that I am not opening a debate about unconditional election. In fact, it is secondary to a different point I hope to make.]

The gist of the writer's email is that little girls in Chinese orphanages are in a bad place and they need to be removed from that place. Their parents choose to adopt from China and are rather arbitrarily assigned a child. The idea is that these good parents have chosen to extricate a child from a world that otherwise leads to their destruction. Some of the other girls in the orphanage won't be chosen and will face a life apart from parents. On the face of it, that sounds an awful lot like election, doesn't it? God, in a move that often seems arbitrary to us mere mortals, selects those whom He would save, those whom He would extricate from a world of sin that will ultimately lead to their destruction. Those not so chosen are headed for their rightful destruction as sinners apart from grace.

Why do I disagree with this illustration?

Let me explain a tiny bit about the world of adoption, centered in the USA. Hands down, the most popular type of adoption is a healthy, white, female infant birthed from a non-drug user in America. Following closely behind is the same child in a male body. However, due to many factors those babies are not as easy to find as they once were. Enter the international adoption.

As of last year, the most popular country from which to adopt a child was China, closely followed by Ethiopia which has overtaken Russia as of late. Although the supply of healthy Chinese females has dropped dramatically in the last few years, those females are still very popular and much sought-after among international adopters.

What does this have to do with election? The adoption of a Chinese girl is very popular because they are seen as very desirable, very cute, smart, etc. They just need a home and many families are eager to provide that home, thankfully so.

So if the doctrine of election is like adopting a Chinese girl, we are saying that God is choosing some pretty desirable people for His eternal kingdom. That's where I have the problem.

Romans 12:3--For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

We are sinners. Filthy, waste-encrusted, wretched, hateful, mean, lovers of self, blind, deaf, bitter and hard-hearted beyond measure. If you could find such a child on earth and adopt that child, you might get the merest glimpse of the miracle of our adoption by God. And yet God chooses us to be His beloved children, washing us with hyssop so that we are whiter than snow, changing our heart of stone to a heart of flesh, opening our eyes and ears to His truths.

How quickly we forget just how awful, how depraved, how indifferent to others, how sinful we were before Christ came into our hearts. We think we need to be saved from a bad situation when what we need most is to be saved from ourselves and from God's justifed wrath.

How deep the Father's love for us!

How vast beyond all measure!

That He should give His only Son,

To make a wretch His treasure!

We are worse than we ever seem to believe; we are more loved by God than we could ever imagine.

Thanks be to God!

Merry Christmas, or This Means War!

"Enemy occupied territory - that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to all take part in a great campaign of sabotage."

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

Isaiah 9:6-7 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it withjustice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

These verses are familiar to us at Christmastime. Who doesn't like a Prince of Peace? Who doesn't want a better government, one full of justice and righteousness, than they currently have? It sounds as though those verses were written for us, today.

Not as familiar, however, are the verses preceding Isaiah 9:6-7.

Isaiah 9: 2-5 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. You have multipled the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.

Jesus was born into a world at war. What war, though? Isaiah, of course, was writing to the Jewish people. He was not, however, writing of an earthly war.

Revelation 12: 1-5, 9-10, 17  And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne...

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God...

Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus...

The war was never primarily an earthly war, although we see it on earth from the very beginning, even the beginning of Jesus' life on earth.

Matthew 2:13, 16 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him."...Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Do you see the same wording in Revelation and Matthew? "Became furious." The devil became furious; Herod became furious. Herod/the devil killed all the male children...this was a Christmas at war. The devil mounted a full-on attack to win a war that had been declared lost since Genesis 3:15. Can you imagine him? The Lord's Son, born of a virgin, enraged him. He pulled out all the stops...killed the baby boys...outsmarted at every turn by the Lord Himself.

Hebrews 2:14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

1 John 3:8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

He didn't only come into the manger as a sweet little baby on a bed of hay. He didn't only come as the Prince of Peace or a Wonderful Counselor. He came on a mission to destroy the deceiver who had the power of death.

Exodus 15:3 The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name.

Colossians 2:15 He disarmed the rules and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

How did He wage the war? By laying down His life. Not the way we normally do it, is it? We want action; we want revenge; we want bloodshed. He gave us bloodshed. His own blood was shed for us.

Romans 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

"Satan's work is not the chief peril dealth with in the death of Christ. God's wrath is." John Piper

Zechariah 3:1-4 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?" Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, "Remove the filthy garments from him." And to him he said, "Behold, I have taken you iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments."

Jesus, the sweet, silent baby of our Nativity scenes, is God's Chosen Warrior who wrested power from the accuser, satisfied the wrath of God against a sinful people, and washed our filthy garments that we might appear before God in pure, clean robes of His righteousness, having been washed in His blood that was willingly spilled during a war that has been won yet still rages here on earth.

Matthew 1:21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

"For to us a child is born"

I can't say I didn't know

Proverbs 24~~

¹⁰ If you falter in a time of trouble,
   how small is your strength!
¹¹ Rescue those being led away to death;
   hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
¹² If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
   does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who guards your life know it?
   Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?

...but what have I done? How small is my strength?  



Micah 7:7

But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD,
   I wait for God my Savior;
   my God will hear me.

Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 16.2

Good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and living faith. By them believers

show their thankfulness,
strengthen their assurances,
build up their fellow believers,
adorn the profession of the gospel,
shut the mouths of the adversaries, and
glorify God.

They are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, so that, bearing fruit unto holiness, they may attain the outcome, which is eternal life. Their ability to do good works is not at all from themselves, but entirely from the Spirit of Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:7

Down Syndrome Awareness...in case you hadn't noticed

I received a comment yesterday from Leah, another Reece's Rainbow mom. I'll get back to her comment after I take a moment for a public service announcement:

Leah is having an iPad giveaway on one of her blogs right now in order to raise money for BOTH the children they are adopting! They are going to Eastern Europe to adopt an older boy with Down syndrome and an older girl with a craniofacial syndrome, I believe. All donations to the giveaway are tax-deductible, by the way, and go straight to Reece's Rainbow, which holds the money in trust until shortly before they travel. Come to think, it won't be held in trust for long because it won't be long until they travel.

Back to my regularly scheduled post...Leah pointed out that her husband has not always known exactly what Down syndrome was (until he met her and her then 7 year old daughter). I tend to forget that not everyone has the same exposure that most people I know have had. I don't know why I wouldn't remember, however, considering what happened one Sunday night a couple of years ago....

I received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Ella's Sunday school teacher. He said he was calling to see if I could help him help her more effectively in Sunday. I was thrilled! How wonderfully proactive! "Sure!" I told him. "How can I help?"

"Well..." He proceeded to tell me that Ella was very frustrating to him. Just that morning, in fact, he had handed her an open bottle of glue and told her to make a thin line of glue on top of the lines on her paper. (Inside I'm screaming, "You gave Ella a bottle of glue! You gave a class of 4 year olds a bottle of glue?") To his horror, all she had done was bang the orange tip of the glue on the paper and make a big mess so he went ahead and made the glue lines for her. He then instructed her to take pieces of yarn and lay them directly on the glue lines and she wouldn't do that properly, either.

(I was, for the most part, rendered speechless.)

He went on to ask when I thought Ella was going to start talking. My voice returned and I told him that I assumed she would do so eventually, as her sister Vera who had Down syndrome and was adopted from Russia had not spoken much at all when we adopted her but speak quite a bit now.

The conversation vacillated between his frustration and her lack of speech for 30 minutes, with me answering his every question with uncharacteristic patience. Finally, he landed on the speech issue one last time. I answered it differently this time, saying that it was very unusual for a person with Down syndrome to never speak at all and I was sure that Ella would learn to speak.

Pause. Pause.

"Ella has Down syndrome?"

I have to admit I fell out laughing and said, "Well, no wonder you were frustrated!" We had to end the conversation quickly thereafter because I just couldn't stop laughing and I honestly didn't want to make him feel worse than I assume he already did.

Just so no one thinks I am trying to bash churches, let me tell you what I saw when I came to pick her up from Sunday school the next week (John was normally the person who took her to the nursery and picked her up but he was gone that week.) I saw this man's wife with Ella on her lap, both playing the piano and singing up a storm. It was precious! They just didn't know. Once they knew, their whole attitude changed. Information is a powerful thing.

So thank you, Leah, for the reminder that we actually do need Down syndrome awareness month for some people. In fact, I think we may need them for some of Ella's current teachers, who recently remarked how special it was that her class had two sets of twins. I teach in that class one Sunday a month, and there are only two sibling sets in it: a set of boy/girl twins, and Ella and Dean. All I can say is that it must have been some pregnancy and birth, what with having Ella in Colombia in August and Dean in China in November. Pretty impressive, huh?

So close!

Anne Marie--In Memoriam

Today, the Reece's Rainbow family was given the news that one of our own children has passed away (because we have claimed them all as our own, every single child that Andrea Roberts finds and places on her website, because we cannot bear the thought that they don't have earthly families). Today, hundreds of her aunties are grieving her loss, grieving the death of a dream they had for her, grieving that she didn't know a tender touch, that she didn't know a soft, clean bed, that she didn't know a birthday party, or a special meal made just for her, or even get to have a ponytail and bow in her hair because they kept her shaved for convenience.

Most of all, we grieve that she didn't have a mom or dad to take her to the hospital when she was sick, stay by her side and watch like a hawk, just in case, so that she would get the amazing care we have here in America. We grieve that she won't have a funeral, or a grave, or a tear shed in her country, although she has plenty being shed by her aunties all over the world.

 Even within our sorrow, though, there is hope. Hope that we can continue to make a difference. Hope that another family will listen to God's call on their heart and home and step forward in obedience to bring home a child. Above all, we have hope in God who is still on His throne and still here, with us and our orphans just as He was with Anne Marie.

II Corinthians 4:7-18~~But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
  It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
  Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Wow...after yesterday's post...

This much was clear: I am not alone in having my feelings hurt at church via people's response, or lack thereof, to my special needs kids.

This much was not clear: I love our church. Our pastor and Sunday school teacher are simply incredible in terms of teaching, humility, kindheartedness and other fruit of the Spirit. The vast majority of our children's teachers have been full of love and helpfulness to all of my children. I have so many friends who accept us as we are.

I love The Church, the bride that Christ is preparing to present to His Father, blameless and pure.

This much was also not clear: I didn't share what I shared yesterday to hurt anyone or manipulate anyone in our current church. On a church level, in fact, I believe they have done more than most churches do. The problem, and the solution, is that the church is composed not only at the organizational level but the individual level. Individuals are well able to disregard the clear teachings in the Bible. I know I certainly can and do! Individuals are also more easily able to change and grow, oftentimes more quickly than a church.

So why did I share it? My sharing comes from the same place that compels me to share about all the beautiful children with special needs on The Shepherd's Crook or listed with adoption agencies.

  *I don't want anyone to miss the blessing of these children. I don't want anyone to miss the chance to slow down, savor the moment, remember that relationships are going to provide immensely greater satisfaction than powering through a Sunday school lesson.

  *I don't want anyone to have to look back with regret when they realize they have not loved their neighbor as themselves, or when their child has a special needs child, or they themselves become disabled. Many years ago I read a book called Differences in Common by Marilyn Trainer, a series of essays on her son with Down syndrome. One essay had the title: I wish I had given a better smile, and was her sad remembrance of an encounter (prior to the birth of her son) with a group of mentally challenged adults on a field trip and the regret that washes over her as she hopes for people who will smile at her son when he smiles at them.

I will likely have more to say about the amazing and heartbreaking comments I received, both here and on facebook, in the coming days. Each one deserves a hug, a word of encouragement, a vision of hope. Thank you for sharing of yourself here. I truly appreciate it.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

Finding Vera

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Many of my friends whose children have Down syndrome take this opportunity to blog about it daily during October. I'm not a terribly consistent blogger in the best of times, but I thought I might try it, too. Yesterday was certainly the perfect way to kick it off as we celebrated the entrance of daughter #2 with Ds into our family. Today, I thought I would write a bit about the long process to even find Vera.

A few months after Emma was born and we were still in Canada, I started wondering about what happened to kids with Down syndrome in Russia. When we adopted Alex, we had been given several videotapes of Alex in his group and often there was a little girl with Down syndrome in the background. When we arrived to adopt Alex, however, she was not in his group. That orphanage evidently liked to shuffle kids and caregivers often. John and I were both disappointed that she wasn't there. Looking back, I think it's funny that we wanted to see her since we didn't even have a child with Ds then.

Back to Canada. We now had sweet little Emma and my mind turned to the little girl in Russia. I wondered if kids with Ds ever made it to adoption photolistings (which were still fairly new and small). I got online and started doing searches like "Down syndrome Russia" or "Down syndrome adoption Russia" or even "Down syndrome adoption." I never found a single child with Ds available for adoption during that time.

I did find something else, though: a report by Human Rights Watch on the treatment of children with Down syndrome in Russian orphanages, complete with pictures of their emaciated bodies, twisted limbs and vacant expressions. Mercifully, the report also included a happy ending of sorts. A doctor had gone into this orphanage and taught the workers to feed these children (the orphanage way of feeding does not always work in children with low muscle tone and they end up being unable to eat solid foods), to work on exercises to improve trunk strength, mobility, and other skills that had been ignored. The report ended with pictures of bright children now walking and plump, smiling and happy.

Nonetheless, those pictures of the children--clearly unloved, unwanted, discarded--stayed with me. It will surprise no one when I say that I sobbed and sobbed the first time I saw those children. I was sick to my stomach for days. I think John was actually worried about me. Problem was, every time I might get it out of my mind for a moment it would be time to hold Emma, change her diaper, do her therapies with her. I would imagine her, fragile and needy, abandoned in a place that wouldn't do a thing more than they absolutely had to for her, and my heart would fall again.

For the next almost three years I would still periodically do a search for orphans with Down syndrome in Russia. One day, one glorious day, a new site showed up in my search: The Shepherd's Crook. I clicked on the link and found descriptions, but no pictures, of two children with Down syndrome in Russia who needed homes. The little girl was almost 5 and the boy around 3: Vera and Ignat.

So, did I immediately know that Vera was MY Vera? Nope. All I knew is that I wanted to see her picture and The Shepherd's Crook had a wonderful way for me to do so: I could request a prayer card for her and they would print her picture, birthdate and name on it! That prayer card is still hanging on my refrigerator today! It's a funny picture of Vera as a 2-3 year old and she's obviously talking. I still didn't necessarily think that she was the one, but I knew I wanted to pray for her and for Ignat (whose prayer card I also received).

One day, while perusing The Shepherd's Crook website as usual, a picture popped up next to Vera's description!

And that, sports' fans, is when I knew I was looking at my daughter. All the air was just sucked from my lungs and as per my usual, I cried. I don't know why the earlier picture didn't grab me (the exact same thing happened with Ella, too) but I can guess that for whatever divine reason, this was the day God chose to remove the scales from my eyes, as it were.

It took God a couple more weeks to remove the scales from John's eyes (John can have some thick scales when it comes to adoption; I have thick scales when it comes to, well, almost anything of a practical nature). After a couple of weeks of praying and fasting, we felt God leading us to adopt Vera. I will never forget making that decision on a Sunday and having to wait until mid-morning Monday to call the agency in Seattle. I was so nervous! What if someone else had decided to adopt her, too, and had called before us! That picture would surely have moved hearts all over the country, right? How could you miss the potential, the beauty, the sweetness?

As it turns out, not one person had ever even called to ask about her. Not one, other than us. But one was all she needed.

Generosity

Generosity--the trait of being willing to give your money or time; freedom from meanness or smallness of mind or character


He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done. Proverbs 19:17


In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' " Acts 20:35

Over the past few days, those of us in the Reece's Rainbow community, the special needs adoption community and the adoption community have been privileged to watch a miracle. The miracle of generosity.

In five (5) days, two moms raised over $20,000 for Yulia, a very special little girl who is waiting for another miracle. The miracle of a family.

Yulia is essentially locked in a crib, locked in a room, and she would be locked away from hope but God sent a mom into her room and the mom peeked over into her crib and fell in love. The mom came home with the two girls she came to adopt but she couldn't forget the face she left behind in that horrible room of no hope. The mom can't adopt Princess Yulia but she just made it possible for another mom and dad to do so without having to worry about the great amount of money it will take to rescue this child. Due to the generosity of hundreds of donors Yulia has a chance to spend the rest of her life with parents who love her, who are willing and able to care for her special needs, who are willing to be the answer to so many prayers.
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

God's power over the ungodly

Genesis 31:22-24, 31 On the third day Laban was told that Jacob had fled. Taking his relatives with him, he pursued Jacob for seven days and caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead. Then God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream at night and said to him, "Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad."

[Laban said:] I have the power to harm you; but last night the God of your father said to me, 'Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.'

The verses above were our (short) family devotional recently. John is reading through Genesis with the kids so we know the rest of the story. Jacob had just fled with his wives and the sheep Laban had promised him. Jacob suspected Laban would renege on the deal with the sheep so he tried to put some distance between them.

Didn't work. Laban caught up with Jacob and the entourage but before Laban reached them, God spoke to him.

Up to this point in his life, Laban had no apparent use for God and in fact, one of the reasons he was pursuing Jacob was to retrieve his little household gods that Jacob's wife had stolen. Nonetheless, when the God of all creation spoke to him, Laban listened. Not only that, he repeated it to Jacob the next day.

Please let that sink deep into your heart today: God spoke to an ungodly man on Jacob's behalf in order to effect His plan to establish the nation of Israel in the promised land.

So many times I see my friends on adoption journeys run up against ungodly people who have no interest in the orphans of the world nor any apparent interest in just doing their job correctly. God has power over those people. If He has told you to go forward and adopt the orphan you can trust He is going to hem you in, behind and before. You can be sure that the ungodly are tools in His hands.

Psalm 139:1-6
LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

Rejoicing comes in the morning!

Yesterday, we had the inaugural meeting of the DFW Reece’s Rainbow group. Six ladies and a bunch of children converged on a centrally located home for food, fun and fellowship. Lots and lots of fellowship.

Three of the ladies had adopted children with Down syndrome from Russia, Ukraine, Colombia, India. One lady is in the process of doing so. Two more ladies simply want to support Reece’s Rainbow, having adopted children with special needs.

I had met most of the ladies on previous occasions but hadn’t met the mom who had just returned from Ukraine with three, yes THREE children who have Down syndrome. I drove up to the house just as this sweet momma was slowly making her way to the house—two boys in her arms and one darling toddling girl making the walk on her own—and I couldn’t wait to meet these children whose pictures I’d seen on Reece’s Rainbow.

I walked into the house just in time to hear this mom talking about her ‘triplets’ upcoming birthday party; they would all be turning six in the next few months so they were having a combined birthday party, a first for all of them.

I looked at these three beautiful, beautiful children: the biggest maybe the size of a two year old as she toddled on still unsteady feet, the smallest probably the size of a one year old, able to sit and do a small amount of scooting around but not yet crawling. I asked her again how old they would be this year, thinking I had surely misheard. Six years old, their birthdays roughly corresponding to Ella’s and Dean’s birthdays.

I have been to several orphanages and thought I had seen it all but it was a struggle at that point not to weep, not to dwell on the years of malnutrition and neglect that could produce these three tiny children from two different orphanages. I pulled myself together and instead rejoiced that they were in the home of a momma bear with some serious fight in her for her children. Apparently the time to weep and the time to rejoice can overlap.

My mind couldn’t help but turn to another child, Wade, I’ve recently seen on Adeye’s blog and on Reece’s Rainbow. He is about 10 pounds, probably wearing 9-12 month size sleepers (he’s never dressed in other clothes because he never leaves his room) and will be turning three later this year. If he stays in the orphanage he will eventually look like the three children I saw yesterday. If he stays in the orphanage he will continue to be drugged by his caretakers with sedatives intended for adults, at an adult dosage. If he stays in the orphanage he will only be picked up for changes and feeding, not for snuggles and love.

There are hundreds of children like Wade, their growth severely impeded not just by poor nutrition but from a lack of love and nurturing. When my children have entered a stage when they didn’t want to be hugging on their dear old mom, I told them that children need hugs and kisses from their parents or they won’t grow properly. I hate, detest actually, that I can show them an example.

Psalm 30: 1-3, 5b

I will exalt you, O LORD,
for you lifted me out of the depths
and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
O LORD my God, I called to you for help
and you healed me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the grave;
you spared me from going down into the pit.
…weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Praying that tomorrow would be full of news of healing, help, being spared from the pit, and rejoicing! God is able, and He is FAITHFUL!

Hope is rising

I found the links I am going to share on an adoption blog I read. The first entry tells of the writer's first visit to an orphanage for disabled children. He was visiting with a Christian group that goes to this orphanage every week for a couple of hours to love on children that were as rejected by their Ukrainian society as you could possibly be. One of the things they did was teach these children and even young adults to wash their hands. Don't skim over that fact: these children were so devalued that no one had ever taught them to wash their hands.

The next entry is written by the same person returning to the same orphanage a year later. I'm still crying after having read it, not without hope but with amazement! You'll have to read it for yourself. God's people went to work with Him in a hellhole and He moved in a mighty way. So many times the problem of orphans seems too big, too intractable to me, and I forget that God is so much bigger. "The kingdom of God, like a steady breeze, has been blowing away the smoke and the shadows in this place once filled only with hopelessness."

Psalm 9:18 But the needy will not always be forgotten,
nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish.