I am sad today.

I don’t even know if I will publish this, but I am a writer. When I am riddled with emotions and feelings and need clarity, I write.

I write from confusion, from longing, from a deep ache inside clamoring for expression.

And today, the hurts just seem too heavy, and perhaps, even our calling, too difficult to bear.

I think of our girls waiting in China. I imagine the days they were abandoned. Eliza was a month old with two holes in her heart. I imagine her mother loved her. I imagine her mother could not afford to give her the medical care she needed.

I don’t know this, I only imagine it.

But who am I to suggest what feelings motivated her to abandon this infant she was only just barely getting to know?

Who am I to even begin to understand the challenges mothers face in other cultures?

Evangeline had Spina Bifida, and a clubbed foot. She was four years old.

Four years old. Can you imagine?

I have a four year old. I know him. I know the sound of his footsteps. I know his laughter and his cry. I know the pattern of his breathing. I know his personality, his hurts, his joys. I know what food he likes and what he hates.

To say that I love him doesn’t even come close to my feelings for this little guy. It doesn’t begin to express how tangled up my life is in his.

I held him in my arms last night as he cried in the darkness from a fear he could not express.

As I comforted him, aware of the feeling of his hot breath and sticky tears against my shoulder, my mind drifted across the ocean to the days our girls were abandoned.

I thought of that four year old little girl crying for her mother.

I could almost feel her tears that day as she sobbed for her, as she craved her presence, as she longed to be in her arms as my little Jonathan was in mine last night.

And I wonder.

I wonder what I was doing on that day almost ten years ago when she cried alone. Would I be proud of how I spent that day?

I wonder what babies are crying now, longing for food or a mommy or even just a warm body? What mothers are crying silent tears for a child they left behind?

This calling hurts. It hurts to watch the church, people who call themselves God’s people lavish their children with unnecessary gifts. It hurts to see them live comparatively extravagant lives and close their eyes to the hurting children who wait.

It hurts to know that we are doing everything we can to bring our girls home and to know, too, that it may not be enough.

It hurts to see the sacrifices our children are making as their parents step out in faith to meet the needs of two desperately needy young girls.

We are giving more than we have to give, and yet we are falling woefully short. It’s not enough.

We are His body. We are His hands and feet. God created us to hold these little ones. He blessed this country incredibly, and yet we take care of only our own and trust we are walking with Christ. We close the door to more children because we want to care for our own. How wrong is that?

It can’t only be about us.

He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Luke 10:2

Move us, Lord.

Break our hearts with the things that break your heart.

And bring the children home.

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3 Comments on Sadness

  1. Amazing words Dianne. So so true! Going through this process has brought the same thoughts and hurts to my heart. I pray that more believers will “understand” the need and step out in faith. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Well said. Praying for you.

  2. Yup. I live it every day. It hurts and it is the most incredible high to see little lives changed not just in transient ways but in ways that really matter. But what hurts the most is what you say about the “church”. The true church does not say they cannot give $50 a month to sponsor a child when the cable bill, the smart phone bill and the pool membership (cleaning lady, pool cleaner, Lexus payment, insert hundreds of “needs” here) are many times that every month. I think of Pharoah and how his heart was hardened even though the truth was in front of him…what more will it take for the “church” to wake up?

  3. Diane, I cry when you write, you hit places in my heart that have been dead for quite awhile. I think how selfish I am. There was a time when I was able to help kids and families, a time when life was good. Your writing takes me back to Africa, having hospitalized and sick kids over on Saturday afternoons for food and games in my backyard. And my soccer team. Things that seemed so easy to do there, and make a difference, I haven’t been able to find here. I am so homesick for my past. Your writing touches my heart and I am grateful, grateful that I can still feel.

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