My friends, I feel like I have been remiss in not telling you about this sooner. Julia over at the blog Micah Six Eight has been having a giveaway/adoption fundraiser over on her blog, and there are some great prizes! They were trying to raise adoption funds for several special needs orphans and the families trying to adopt them, and I guess I did not blog about it because it started when I was so busy and not blogging, and I got wrapped up in my own stuff, but then I was keeping an eye on it and families were being blessed and receiving the funds they needed, so it seemed like maybe I didn't need to share it. . . . But now it is the last day of the fundraiser, and there is one family who needs a lot of money still. They are rescuing one of Julia's "Lost Boys," an older boy with cerebral palsey who is from the orphanage where she adopted her own son a year back. She has written passionately about the value of each of those boys, and advocated for the ones who are available for adoption. So if God moves you this morning, please visit this link to see a photo of Porter, and please visit either that link or the link above to learn more about the giveaway and make a donation.
However you worship and/or love today, may your day be filled with peace and the awareness of your blessings!
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After I posted this, I sat down to have a cup of tea and breakfast, and read blogs, which is one thing I didn't do yesterday. (Since I was trying to do the things I can't do when the family is home!) And I was led to this post. I am not an adoptive mom. I see the perspective of these mothers who believe their long-neglected special needs child is worth loving and parenting. I also can see the selfish, worldly perspective that does not fault the mothers for feeling that way about the children they chose, but questions if the same should apply to all children; that wonders if all children are worth trying to save. Aren't there some children who are clearly unsavable?
I struggle with this.
The children who are discarded by their societies because they have Down's Syndrome or Cerebral Palsey--my heart easily goes out to these kids, and wants to fight to see them adopted, esp. before institutionalization and neglect do further, irreparable damage to their minds and spirits. I want to help save them--I want families to step forward in faith and go get them wherever they may be, however physically unattractive they might appear to the worldly eye. The eyes of my heart see the value in the little girl with the abnormally shaped head but with a sunny smily, or the little boy with twisted legs but bright, intelligent eyes. These children seem savable--they would likely thrive in adoptive homes, and would not be too much of a burden on their families.
Yes, I said burden. Because the truth is, any child adds additional work to a family, as all of us parents know, but of course we get so much love and joy from having these children that we don't usually bat an eye at the work. Children with severe special needs will take a lot more work--and as long as we imagine that the love and joy will outweigh the work, we are happy for those parents. But if we imagined their lives would be forever, painfully reshaped by the addition of the child, we would think the child was a burden, and we would wish the child was loved by somebody but would not want to think about the painful reality of the parent who choses to be that somebody.
I do believe all kids are worth love and deserve families. But there are some kids who have been so traumatized and trained from terrible childhoods that they have brain damage, and maybe are violent and sometimes even downright crazy. They have RAD and PTSD and FASD and all kinds of scary acronyms attached to them. They might be able to heal, even just somewhat, but they also might not. They might really seriously harm their adoptive parents or siblings. At the very least, they are causing the only people who love them long-term emotional and mental suffering.
This is what I see happening. What do I do with that knowledge to view these children as of greater worth to their families than the hardship they are causing them? How do I reconcile the truth of their brokenness with their value in God's eyes?
Because that adoptive scenario is the one that scares me to death. Cleft feet, heart defect, Cerebral Palsey--eh. Not scary. Reactive Attachment Disorder? Leaves me quaking in my boots. I am being completely vulnerable here. My fear is ugly, if understandable. I want to be wise, to be compassionate, to be merciful, to love without fear--I want to view these kids the way God their Father does. So, that is one reason I started to read all these blogs on my sidebar; through them my eyes and heart have been opened to the reality of these kids and their families. Step One to better understanding--seeking to learn more about what I fear.
And I have learned that the lives of these families are very rough, and sometimes scary, and often very very sad. I pray for these families and these kids. If you are led to choose a family to pray for, that is one way we can support these families. I believe prayer is real, powerful communication between us and the Creator of the universe, and somehow also connects us with one another. People can feel tangible support from prayer. (Momma Linda, if you read this, I am praying for you this weekend!) They can see their specific prayers answered, sometimes miraculously. So, Step Two for more compassion and mercy--pray for those doing the good, hard work that scares me, and pray for the kids who are valuable, vulnerable beings but who also trigger my fears.
I also try to not just be a lurker on those families' blogs. I don't want to be a voyeur, as if these families are on some fascinatingly horrible reality TV show. (Although the families who are on such shows could sure use prayer too!) I respect their family by being a visitor--I say hello, and offer whatever enouragement it sounds like the mom of the family could use. And one beauty of this is that I realized just this past year that one of my spiritual gifts is encouragement. Well, how amazing is that, to be able to love on and encourage women from afar, whom I have never met in real life, and just doing what God has gifted me to do naturally? I pray it blessed them to hear the words--because all of us moms know how much we appreciate a kind, gentle word now and then!--as much as it blesses me to say them. Step Three for trying to love more fully--do what I can to help these families feel loved. Praying for them is loving them too--but words of affirmation and loving acts of kindness are my own two main love languages, so those are the primary ways I naturally show love to others. Even sending little love packages in the mail to some moms every now and then--how would you feel getting a little food treat specific to your family's dietary needs in the mail from someone who read your blog? You would feel loved. And it is so fun, I know I get more reward from it than they do.
When you start reading the lives of such families, your heart breaks for them. You want them to be rewarded for rescuing children who needed families. You want them to have happy lives, with children who love them and who bloom under their loving care. You know adoption is hard, that no kid is perfect, that all families have times of strife and struggle and all families have kids who go through yucky phases--but we don't consider those things outside of the usual Happy Ever After. We want these families to have a normal Happy Ever After. But when you read these blogs for a long time, you learn that even what is healing and is joy and is good is not the same as normal, and for some families there might not be a Happy Ever After. Some families cannot love the pain or trauma out of their kids. Some kids do seem to be too damaged to ever function well as normal adults. I grieve just writing that, and this is where I am begging God to keep showing me how to love the person behind the labels. To not be afraid, even when there is real reason to be fearful for the future of a child and his or her family. This is a broken, sinful world, and nothing broken can ever be repaired perfectly--for many of these kids, we just hope for as few big cracks as possible, so that they can still function as adults without falling completely to pieces.
And when I grieve I pray some more. And God opens my heart a little more. It is a terrible, beautiful thing. He does the same kind of good work in the hearts of so many of these adoptive families, the ones who struggle so much, day to day--the ones who are so completely surrendered to God to meet every single need that they are FULL of His grace. His love, his tenderness, his strength, his love just pour into and through these parents. And through the pain and long-suffering, they find a deep level of joy that I cannot even comprehend. In a strange way, they are the fortunate ones--the ones who have shed so much of the trappings of this normal Happy Ever After that they can see God more clearly, feel him more fully.
And I want that. Would you believe I envy them that. But yet I would not trade places with them for the world. How crazy is THAT, to see one way I could likely be transformed into a woman more fully after God's own heart, but not want to go there. And that makes me feel guilty and sorrowful. But it is still true. I am praying God keeps growing me in wisdom and mercy and compassion and love and most of all, faith.
Despite my own selfish, fearful brokenness, in my running from fullness in God because I don't want to endure whatever pain might take me there, He loves me. He thought I was worth rescuing. He sacrificed himself for me. I am loved and cherished and championed by my loving Father in heaven. The same one who loves and cherishes and champions his RAD/FASD/PTSD children. His grace is big enough to cover all of us.
So that is where I am now, in a place between knowledge and understanding, between fear and faith. I read this post this morning and wept so hard; I can read this mother's parable and completely 100% identify with her own feelings, her own value system. I would want to be running into that burning building and grabbing kids as fast as I could. But I also hear those whispers of Satan in the back of my own head, that those who run in and grab kids are crazy, that they should not do it because they might lose their very lives in the process. Or, even worse, I fear I would be listening to the whispers that I had better try to see who all is in the room before grabbing anybody, so I make sure to grab the kids who are somewhat mobile or mentally aware or who have the ability to reach out for me, call to me--that somehow I should make value calls about which children more deserve a change at life. That I had better make sure to grab the kids who are more worth grabbing first--not that I would leave any kid behind who I could carry out, but just like we try to prioritize valuables from our homes when we are loading up precious car space before escaping a coming wildfire, I might be looking wildly at the children as I ran into the room trying to judge who to save if I can't save them all.
Oh, the wickedness of my heart. That I could judge. That I could save.
I am so glad we are not now in a position to adopt--there is clearly a LOT about surrendering to God and trusting Him that I have yet to learn before He will trust me with one of these treasures. I think the same is true of DH.
And yet. . . if there really was a burning house. . . I know I would run in. I know I would blindly grab the first child I saw. I know that I would feel instant, fierce protectiveness for that child in my arms, no matter what he or she looked like. I know I would want to make sure he or she was safe when it was all over. I know I would not walk away from that child if there was no one else to take him or her home--I know I would take him or her home. I know DH would do the exact same thing.
[break for sobbing. I'm not as wicked as I feel. what a relief.]
Maybe knowing this is true about myself and my husband is the first real step towards faith.
Maybe we know in the backs of our minds that if we really allowed our awareness to be confronted by such desperate, tangible need we would respond without hesitation to plunge headlong into the depths of the terror.
And so that is why we avert our eyes as we walk by the burning house.
Because there is a burning house.
With children trapped inside.
. . .
At the very least I can throw money to those parents who are running into the house.
On The Road - Oh My!
1 month ago
