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.
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