The Reality

written by Heidi Weimer

...[I]n adopting, we didn't just order up a few kids to our liking and then sit back and wait for our turn. It might appear that way to some on the outside of the process, but adoption--unlike an actual pregnancy--involves a reality that is serious, somber, and far too often glossed over.

Our children, the ones halfway around the world who are every bit a part of our hearts as our biological ones are, carry with them a grief and a loss that we will never experience. Imagine being a child and losing a parent to death. Never to see them on this planet again. Ever. Then imagine it happening again. Death. Then, imagine it happening again. Not twice, but thrice. That is the reality of our kids. That level of pain in my kids' hearts just breaks my own. I so desperately want to comfort them in the physical, to extend my unconditional love to them, to let them know that, as best as we can help it, we will never leave them.

But, how do you explain to a child from a Third World country that parents in America don't get sick and die on a regular basis? How do you make sense of the fact that the money we have raised and spent for this adoption would have saved the very lives of our children's birth parents? How do you reconcile the reality that here in America we have an overabundance of food, medicine, housing, and clothing, but that our own children's birth relatives must stay behind and starve and struggle and die far too soon?

These are the sorts of realities that are pressing on my mind with such force that I wake up in the middle of the night and am unable to sleep for hours. It would be easier to block these thoughts out and just focus on the sweet, rosy picture of a new family being formed. But, the reality is, it ain't all rosy. This world, while full of many good people indeed, is really one big cess pool of suffering that we in the States have the option of ignoring.

Those children that you see on the news? the ones in Africa? the ones who might look different from your kids on the outside but are very much the same as your kids on the inside? Those are my kids. Those are my flesh and blood. Those are our family.

How do I tell this 13-year-old street child in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that his suffering is not as real to me as my own child's? How do I tell him that it's okay with me that he sleeps, cold and afraid, in the streets every single night while my own children kick the covers off because they get too warm at night? How do we distinguish between the worth of this child over the worth of my own?

There is a reality that is hard to bear, but bear it we must. And, until we do, nothing will change. We will not change. I was describing to Kirk an analogy that I think fits so well. Imagine a building with many windows and one door. Inside that building are orphans of every race, suffering in every color, pain of every degree. You KNOW what is in there. Now imagine that every day thousands of people walk right past that building. Some are too focused on their own lives to even take a peek in the windows. Some take a peek, can't bear the pain that the sight brings to surface in their own hearts, and then shield their eyes and continue on their way. Some peer inside, shed some tears, and feel a bit of compassion for the ones suffering. Then some, a few, actually step inside the building. They engage with the hurting souls. They look into the eyes of these children and mothers and fathers and see their own. Their own flesh and blood. And then they do something about it.

Because, once you have engaged with the suffering, you can't NOT do something. You can't go back to your suburban American capitalistic dream and thank the Good Lord for blessing you with your comforts, food, wealth, and health. You can't do it. You shudder and realize, Woe to me for not seeing this suffering before. For not seeing these souls as my own. For not doing unto others as we would have done unto us. As we would want done unto our own white children.

You see, when I went to Ethiopia in June and visited many orphanages, I didn't just visit orphans. I wasn't expecting it to happen this way, but as a mother, I saw my own three biological children in the dark faces of Ethiopia's orphans. I saw my sweet and silly toddler, Justice, languishing in an orphanage, suddenly sullen and withdrawn and afraid of the world. I saw my fearless and vivacious and bright Isabella, suddenly turning lonely and quiet, fearful and terrified. I saw my amazing Brandon, sweet and smart and sensitive, suddenly turning inward, silently dying inside from a pain he shouldn't know. This is the reality of the orphan crisis. Real children, from real families, with real parents, with real pain and real loss and real suffering.

Rise up, America. Rise up, CHURCH. And do the work that Jesus left His Church to do. Open your eyes to the suffering, the pain, the reality. And then step in and step up. You can't look away anymore. Jesus didn't.