Monday morning, crying

I don't know what is wrong with me this morning.  All I know is I woke up tired, but that's nothing unusual.  I was getting Sunny ready for her Monday school class (yes, this year she actually goes to "school" one day a week, with other 6-8 graders, from 9:30-2) when my sweet friend Sara called and offered to pick her up and take her to school, as they also go to Monday school, and had an appointment right down the street from us beforehand.  Wow, what a treat!  So, I did not have to rush, and could make a cup of tea and toast and sit down for my favorite morning blog read while the other kids were doing their morning routine. 

And pretty much from that moment on I have been crying. 

It's so odd, too, how completely different the things are that are hitting me so hard today: orphans, sex, and the New York Philharmonic.  Let's see what I can get time to write in the moments I have. . .

#1:
I know I have mentioned the amazing, heartbreaking story of Katie before.  Her mom's blog, The Blessings of Verity, over on my sidebar, has been one of my favorite reads for the past several months.  With every post it's like I get to (virtually) hang out with a smart, wise, spiritually-mature woman who shares her insights about things that Matter.  And every post that is about Katie is such a blessing--the photos and stories are the very process of Redemption. 

This morning's post was powerful in itself, but one of the stories to which it linked just had me bawling.

And if that is not bad enough, another post by the same author is just so heart-breaking.  I confess to you all that I can understand why the orphanages in Eastern European countries hide away their Down Syndrome and other mentally handicapped kids and adults in institutions.  They have never seen a healthy DS adult, and so only see mental disability and think that means the child is "broken," "defective," and somehow thus unworthy of love.  Well, somehow this diminishes the personhood of the child/adult, and it is easier to then stick them away out of sight, out of mind (out of conscience), and everyone assumes it is perfectly ok to do so, since the child will never understand what he/she is missing.  Because how would a child/adult with mental disability know what love is, what care is, what healthy human interaction is, what their value is?   And what they don't know won't hurt them, right?

So, I totally get the (flawed, sinful, and tragic) logic behind the way children with mental handicaps are stuck away in institutions, even as I am so thrilled when big-hearted people go to such lengths to rescue them and show the world how wrong it is when it evaluates people so coldly.  BUT the thing I don't get AT ALL is children who have NO mental delays, who are cognizant, fully intelligent, personable, but who just have some physical handicap.  Children who have physical needs, but who are psychologically and mentally perfectly normal children trapped in problematic bodies, but who are STILL stuck away in mental institutions, for lack of better place to put them!

See, I can get how it is easy to stick a child in an institution who you don't think can understand what is happening and why, and who you don't think is capable of any other living.  It would be much easier to pretend that child is not a person, a soul, just like you.  But how could anyone stick a child in such a place who can look you in the eye and reason with you, who is fully aware of what you are doing to him?  I just can't comprehend it.


And yet, there is always hope for the hopeless.. 

Ok, I have written more, but it is not done, and all the while I have been helping kids with school, parenting a very three-year-old. . . I'm out of time sitting down.  So consider this part one, and hopefully I will get to finish later!