The urgency of orphan care

I was reading this week from two different sources about the need to raise awareness for the importance of adoption. To speak up. Be a voice for the voiceless. To advocate on behalf of the vulnerable. All of which I fully agree and believe in.

And yet, I feel like I've been sitting quiet.
Not doing anything.
Not saying anything.
Just keeping everything all tucked away inside.

So I was praying this morning about all that. Asking for words. For boldness. For opportunities to be used by Him. To muster up courage. To be an instrument to bring forth insight and truth. To love more like Jesus. To be open to His leading today.

And then I went to the orphanage this morning. And I felt like I was seeing everything for the first time. I felt raw. My heart threatening to splinter into a million pieces, like it has so many times before. Every child I looked at, I saw into them a little deeper. Their pain and sickness and circumstances just assaulting me.

So many little friends that I love were sick. One little man was just noticeably shrinking away. Growing steadily smaller each week I come. One little guy with a developing misshapen head, for an unknown reason. Another attached to an IV. Two laying on the floor sleeping. Another new baby that arrived last week, and she was the smallest baby I've ever held. She might have been 2 pounds. Her head was the size of my fist. She should still have been in the womb, she was just so small. Again, the smallest baby I have ever seen in person and held. But there she was, breathing and living, in her smallness.

Spared. Spared from a life of who knows what. Spared from starvation.Violence. Further neglect and abandonment. Exploitation. Slavery. Only God knows.

But yet, the sad reality is that children die in orphanages. They die waiting for families. They die, before they ever have the chance to experience the fullness of redemption. I looked around the room and listened to Christa tell me about some kids we know and love who have not yet been matched to a family. I looked around the room at the children who were sick. And I thought....what if they don't make it?

What if they perish before anyone comes to claim them? What if they die here, never knowing the love of a real family? I've seen it happen. To be spared only to die in wait. To die waiting on a forever family to step forward. To die waiting for all the bureaucratic adoption red tape to get ironed out. To die waiting for a birth family to come back and reclaim them like they said they would. To die waiting, because they are stuck in the belly of abandonment where the rules don't apply to them because of a unique set of circumstances. To die because the only health care afforded to them is atrocious. To die from a lack of proper diagnosis, or lack of treatment.

It is a hard reality. But believe me it is reality.

I live in a land that toes the line between life and death on a daily basis.

And I knew after we moved here that it would not be long before my sheltered heart encountered death in a way it never has before.

In reality, we all live in a world that toes the line between life and death. The difference is that, in the States, it's hidden much better. Suffering happens in hospitals. In neat and tidy sterile environments. With well trained doctors, fancy machines and stockpiles of medicine.

In Burkina, suffering isn't contained to a hospital bed.

It is everywhere.

You need not look far to find the face of the dying.

I have witnessed death here. Not on the same scale that many other people have, but once you look into the eyes of just one person dying, particularly that of a child....it stays with you forever.

And it is unspeakably hard.

It was unspeakably hard to look into the eyes of Cerrill, a one year old boy who had become so emaciated from sickness that I could see every single bone in his chest and rib cage. It was unspeakably hard to sit and watch while he threw up the water meant to help dehydrate him. It was unspeakably hard to sit and watch his breathing quicken and his rail thin limbs lay limp and lifeless at his side. To look into his eyes...and know you are looking into the eyes of someone who will soon see death. To sit beside him and rub his tummy and stroke his feet knowing that's the only comfort I could bring him. It was unspeakably hard knowing that every effort was made to save him, but due to Burkina's pitiful healthcare there is nothing the doctors could do, not even diagnose what was killing him. It was unspeakably hard knowing all I could do was sit beside him and pray silently for Jesus to take him soon. To come in His swift mercy and end his suffering. To reclaim the savage and cruel grasp of death on this boy's life and use it to bring new life to his broken body.

It is unspeakably hard to sit and watch a one year old boy dying right in front of you and not know why. To feel the hope of healing here on earth slip away.

It is unspeakably hard to say goodbye to babies who have barely begun to live. I have said goodbye to four, and chances are, I will inevitably say goodbye to more.

There are no words for that kind of helplessness, for that kind of pain.

There are days when I shake my fists and ask,"Why?! She was just a baby! Why?! He was in perfect health just days before! Why?!" Why. Why. Why.

Because we live in a broken world. And pain and sickness and suffering and death are a part of that brokenness.

Suffering in this life is inevitable. We will all experience it to some degree at some point. But suffering here is on a scale of which I've never seen. And there are many other countries all over the world like Burkina Faso where poverty and desperation is running rampant and deep suffering is a daily certainty.

Most of the people I see here will never know another life. Not on this side of heaven anyway. But for my friends in the orphanage, for kids in foster care, for all the children around the world sitting in wait....they have the opportunity to experience something different. They have been given an opportunity to change their fate. To live a fuller life. To know the love of a family. To walk with the Lord in the plan He has for them. To be world changers. Revolutionaries. Eternity advocates. Proponents of justice.

If they get the chance.

There are kids, lots of kids, in every corner of this world, in need of a family. But yet many of them sit. And wait. And sit. And wait. Waiting for someone to move on their behalf. To see the value that they possess. But yet so many kids will never know a different life. Because they don't fit a certain criteria. They are too old, or too sick, or too dark, or too light, or not the right gender, or they lack the right eye color, or they have too many problems. We tell ourselves we're too old, or too young, or too busy, or we have other passions worth investing in, or we don't have enough money, a big enough house, the right kind of job, enough experience, or we just don't want to...and on and on it goes. And in the meantime they sit and wait and sit and wait. And some die in the wait. Others succumb to despair and misery. While they wait and hope of a better life that they may never have.

I don't want to see any more children die. I don't want to see anymore kids waste away in the system while they wait for someone to take up their cause.

These aren't trees. Or glaciers. Or animals. Or any other "green" movement. Or whatever else it is that our world places the most value in these days and we in tune follow.

These are people.
These. are. people.
And they have value.
And worth.
And while we argue with ourselves about whether or not we're called to help, children are slowly wasting away in institutions.

But the reality is that He has called us to help. To get involved. To speak up. To freaking care about what happens to the people around us. To stop placing more importance in whether what we eat is organic or not. Or placing the priority of our care in the rate in which the glaciers are melting. He's called us to advocate on behalf of people. To stop turning a blind eye and saying it's someone elses problem. It's our problem. As citizens of this world, what happens in it to our fellow human beings is our problem. And within our reach to do something about it. These children were created in Christ's image and have just as much right to live up to that potential and God given purpose as we do.

Jesus called them out of darkness. He took up their cause. And now it's our turn to take up their cause too. We have been given the privilege and the mandate of partnering up with the God, to work with Him, to walk alongside Him and be used to help a hurting world. To bring light. Offer mercy. And extend love. And it's high time we start taking that seriously and making it a priority. The time to be obedient and take action is now....precious lives hang in the balance.

"Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. 

Fight for the rights of widows."

"No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."-Micah 6:8