China Doll

The Lord has been working pretty hard on me the past several months. Actually, I felt this tug back when I was pregnant with Gracie, as the Lord began preparing me for motherhood.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faithless is this: To look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

There is no substitute for having a family. Not an orphange, foster home, nor a government agency can give a child the true assurance of belonging as a forever home can. What is God's purpose in telling me all this? He has blessed our family richly in so many ways. We live in a comfortable home full of love and laughter. We have secure careers that give us so much joy and sense of accomplishment. All that we have is His. We are not worthy.

"A Father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his Holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing." Psalm 68:5-6

Last night we watched a documentary called National Geographic: China's Lost Girls. If you have Netflix, I encourage you to watch it tonight. These sweet girls were discarded in the street, parks, government buildings, hospitals because of their gender. It is considered preferable to have a boy traditionally, and since China's "One-Child Policy" is controlling the family size, women are forced many times by their husbands to give up their precious baby girls immediately after birth. It is illegal to discover the sex of the baby during an ultrasound, so most of the pre-natal care given to these babies (whether they keep them after birth or not) is excellent.
The orphanges are over run with children. Rooms with 20 or more cribs full of babies. These children do not know they were abandoned. They do not know they live in a desperate situation that they have no control over. They are stuck until someone comes along and rescues them. The lucky ones are adopted around age one. For the first year of life they do not know the feel of a mother's arms or the sound of a father's voice.
How can, with all we have been given, deny that right to a precious child? How can I read about children left in "dying rooms" in orphanges to die of pure neglect and not feel the need to act?

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one." Mother Teresa

Blake and I must both be 30 before applying for adoption in China. That gives us two years of waiting. Currently, the wait for a referral is about 30-40 months once China has given you a "log in date." After you receive the picture of your daughter, you wait about another 2 months. That is a whole lot of waiting. The positive side is, Gracie will be old enough to go on a China vacation!

What can I do in the meantime? Originally, my heart was set on fostering children here at home. I am still very interested. Although, I have my fears. What if I can't let go? What if I don't know how to deal with issues from their past? What is God calling me to do? What if I don't have the time?

These questions plague me all day and night. I go to sleep thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. Right now I am just trying to listen. I like to jump into action, so sitting back can be very out of character.