Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The seed....

I think it starts out as a seed, placed somewhere deep within our souls. Whether everyone has it, I'm not sure, but no one knows it's there until it starts to grow. Like all seedlings, it starts out small and slow, easily affected, so very fragile. It grows and grows and slowly, you start to see what it will become.

I remember always feeling the pull, the need to help kids. Even when I was just a kid myself, it was what I loved. I loved picturing myself with a big family, where there were many adopted kids mixed in with plenty of my own. I think I unconsciously knew the seed was there, I could feel it, but it didn't start to grow just yet.

Come the summer I turned sixteen. I loved missions, and everyone who knew me, knew that I loved to go on missions trips and help out. I signed myself up for a missions trip to Eastern Europe, not entirely sure what I would be doing there, but I knew it was to help. I remember walking down the paved sidewalk, along a brick wall that reached far above my head. I knew we were going to an orphanage that day, but I didn't know where it was at, and we were still in the middle of the city. The stone wall seemed to stretch on forever, and slowly we could hear children on the other side. We came upon large iron gates that opened for us to enter, that were meant to keep the world at bay, and in we walked to what I realized was the orphanage.

Kids clamored among us, many pulled us this way and that... wanting us to play ball, or just hold them and talk to them. My team mates got spread in every direction, and I noticed a young girl, maybe around the age of 5, just sitting there. She was quiet, almost trying to hide from the noise but too curious as to what all the fun was to just walk away. I walk over to her, and at first she was scared, but I told her my name, and hers was Mia. She looked at me with her beautiful eyes, as if to ask if she could trust me, and then crawled up into my lap and stayed there. She didn't say anything, neither did I, we didn't speak each others language, so I just held her. My team had brought ice cream for all the children, and when it came to her, she just held it, refusing to unwrap it. She was guarding it from the other kids as they got near, and I tried to tell her to eat it, but she just kept shaking her head no. I pulled over a translator to help. Mia had never had ice cream before. She didn't know it would melt if she didn't eat it. And almost with great pain she slowly unwrapped her ice cream that she wanted to keep so badly, and savored every bite of it. She walked with me to the gate, my heart broken for having to say goodbye. But she had been through this before, people coming and going. People only investing a couple of hours into her, before they left again and again. At the gate that held her in and the world out, she let her hand slip from mine, and she quietly walked away with her head down to go sit back where I found her.

Mia was the first. Mia was the first to steal that part of my heart. She was the first that made that seed start to grow.

Working in orphanages was normal for us in Eastern Europe, but it never got easier. The empty looks in the kids eyes, the conditions they lived in, only grew harder to deal with instead of easier. Babies lined the walls in the baby ward, staring off into the white walls, eyes crossed because they rarely saw anyone, anything, nothing to focus on besides the white. We left the town we had spent most of our time in, and travelled up into the mountains to spend an entire week living at another orphanage in a village with the children there. The kids were older, they had a fair amount of room to play in the walls of their compound. At meal time we would all go together to eat in the dinner haul, and soon we realized that there were a select group of kids who always ate off of different colored plates. We thought nothing of it, besides that it was odd. But it wasn't odd. It was a horrifying reality. See there were two brothers in this orphanage, and the younger brother desperately loved his older brother. His older brother, one who ate from the plane white plates, while we all ate from the pink floral ones, doted on his younger brother like one could not believe. They loved each other, and everyone could see how great of a relationship they had. But we found out, towards the end of our trip, that those who were eating from the plain white dishes, were terminally sick, and they were eating from said dishes because no one wanted to share with them. We were told those who had the white dishes, no one knew how long they would have, or what would happen to them as there was nothing they could do for them. So as I went home, knowing adoption in this country was closed, knowing these kids had no way out at all, and looked back at my six short weeks overseas, I thought of those boys, the younger having to inevitably say goodbye to his loving older brother, and my heart broke over and over as many tears were shed over the months for them... and the seed grew.

Those boys, two brothers, they were the first to completely shatter me.

Just two years later, I ended up on another missions trip. I packed my bags, eager to learn, to help, to make a difference. On this journey, we found ourselves in Northern Africa, high up in the mountains where one would not think Africa to be cold, but snow welcomed us. We were to stay for a month here, living at the orphanage. At one point we were told how things happened there, how parents didn't always relinquish the rights to the children that they gave up, while others did. Some really did want their children but couldn't afford to care for them, and would come to visit often, others did not. It was a common practice to drop girls off as infants, and pick them back up when they were around 5 years old to turn around and be sold as servants in the bigger cities. We were told the life of these unfortunate girls who have to walk this path is harder then one could ever imagine, being used for more then just cleaning houses. My heart ached for the kids who would have to face this fait. It ached for the caregivers who knew this but could do nothing about it. It ached for how horrible and cruel our world can be... and while I was there I held on to those kids just a little bit harder, and a little bit longer, praying fiercely over them in my head as they smiled at me...

The seed grew...

I cam home, I got married, I had my own kids, but I never forgot. We looked at adoption from the beginning of our marriage, but with the many laws and regulations, we never qualified. We hadn't been married long enough. Weren't old enough. Didn't make enough money to qualify. And while our hearts were there and broken for adoption, the world kept telling us no. Fittingly, ever new year, my heart would break for adoption, and we would search out a path, and be told no. No by something, somewhere, somehow... the requirements were never right... or a million other things that stood in our way.

Then last year came. I think it was right before the new year rolled around, and I remember my heart literally hurting, aching deep within. God was breaking us from the inside out. I asked for prayer... we've waited for what seems like forever and how do we know that now was the time? So we pressed in, we prayed, and the ache in our hearts only grew until it was too much to bear. We finally qualified per most, including our own, countries laws. So we said yes. Yes to the seed that has been growing since I was a child, that has grown with each experience that comes my way. Yes.

It's not a glorious thing, it's not an 'us' thing. It's not even a saving thing... it's choosing to meet someone where they are at, in all their pain and suffering, and walk their path with them. We don't take it lightly. We didn't jump in to save the day, to be the hero, or to be the martyr... we didn't chose this because it was cool, or it was new... no. Because it's not about us. It's about the kids... it's about God...

Every new year, into every spring, my heart hurt for those I could not walk with. Only fitting to make the decision in one spring to adopt, and the next spring, after a year long of waiting and working and loss, to be matched with child.

And oh, how sweet she is.


Wednesday, March 2, 2016

You've been here before...

It’s winter, and the middle of the night. You hold him close, trying to make him comfortable, as you both lay reclined next to the open window. Icy cold air seeps into the room, you shiver and pull the blankets closer around the two of you.

You’ve been here before. You know.

Raspy breaths come from his tiny body, coughs strained.

You remember the last time, and part of you thinks it was so long ago. But it wasn’t. It was a mere year ago. A year ago when the last time happened, and you drove 80 mph down your country roads in the middle of the night as you brought your one year old to the ER. One year ago when he stopped breathing and became unconscious in the back of your van… one year from frantic calls to 911 at 3am as you pull your van over in the black of night and shake your child’s car seat hoping to get a response.

But you know. You know this time isn’t as bad. You know what the doctors will tell you. You know what to do.

The air is crisp, his breath evens, the cough lessens.

Yes, you’ve been here before.

So you lay with your babe, knowing it will be a long night. Knowing this is not the first time that night that you will sit by the window, where you will both get chills, where you will both pull the blankets in a bit tighter, but so the cold air can touch his lungs. So you sit, and you think…

You know his short life, which doesn’t seem that short… at least to you. Yet you wonder where all the time has gone. You talk to others and say things like ‘three or four years ago when he was a baby…’ but there is no three or four years ago… he is two, and he is still a baby.

Oh, but your baby, his life has been hard. He doesn’t know it, others might not know it, but you do.

You remember the many times he lay unresponsive, not being able to even tell if he is breathing shallow breaths. You remember the many times he threw up over and over again, until there was nothing left, but it would not stop even after his body had expelled every tiny bit that it could. And in between the painful stomach spasms, his eyes would glaze over, and you would cry his name over and over again with no response, as you would gently shake his 5 or 6 month old body. You remember the doctors gently telling you how he was having seizures during these episodes, but there was nothing to do… You just needed to wait…

He whimpers and coughs, yes, the cough still tight, but it’s getting better.

You remember the pain, the physical, white searing pain of feeding him for 10 months from your body. Too allergic to anything to try formula, too stubborn to take a bottle, too many bad experiences with normal food. Too many doctors telling you that you’d need to put him under to get his mouth fixed so it wouldn’t cause you anymore pain to feed him… but you knew. You knew you couldn’t do that, because he was allergic to things like oatmeal and ibuprofen… you had already thought you’d lose him so many times… what would happen if you gave him the strong drugs to put him under… no. So you remember the crying, the screaming, the white blinding pain, for every day, for ten months, just to feed him.

The crick in your neck grows worse as you shift him in your lap… but you’ve been here before, you have made it before.

His short life. Seeming so long at times. And here you are again, but this time you know. You know, but you never get used to the feeling of worry, or all the memories that it causes.

You want to scream, but you let the silent tears fall instead. You’ve almost lost each child, multiple times, and though you try to hold the memories at bay, they flood over you with immeasurable power.

You remember the ER trips when your son couldn’t breathe, his face too swollen from bee stings.

You remember your sons eyes rolling back into his head, and him falling into your arms as he goes limp, as you scoop up his tiny body and run across the lawn screaming for someone to call 911, certain you were holding the body of your dead child….

You can’t imagine what other parents go through who go through worse…

The tears are many. They feel hot as the cool air continues to flow in, the wind swirling outside.

He seems better… but you know. You gather him up, carry him back to his bed, he whimpers more. You know you’ll be back again, at the window, in the chair, listening to his raspy breath, and his strained cough, it won’t be the last time tonight. You kiss his face, cold from the winter air, yet soft and perfect.


You HAVE been here before… you know he is going to be ok… but you curl up on the hard wooden floor next to his bed, just in case, and waiting. Waiting for the next episode. Waiting for morning. Waiting for this to be a memory. Waiting for good. Waiting for grace.