Well this will probably be my last blog post, at least for a while, as my family and I are trying to move overseas (hopefully) in the near future. And, as I sign off of being a part of Katelyn’s Fund’s blog team, I end with a wish. My prayer and my plea is that more people will adopt.
Why do I end with this request? Because I have been to Ethiopia twice and cannot forget the faces of the orphans I saw. I end with this request because there are girls, who if they do not get adopted, will go straight into prostitution because they did not have the privilege of education. There are countless children who are starving. There are children who will live and die without hearing the name of Jesus. There are children lying on mattresses in orphanages soaked in their own urine because they do not have access to diapers, and even if they did, there are not enough hands to change them. There are children who stop crying because, when they cry, no one responds. So they lay there in silence, their basic needs being unmet. There are infants left on the streets by their mothers. Other mothers die giving birth to their children so their babies often face malnutrition because they have no milk or formula. In some places of the world, the infant mortality rate is so high, that mothers do not even name their children until they are about a year old because they assume they will die, and many of them do. This, sadly, is the unfortunate reality for so many orphans in the world.
Contrarily, we as North Americans are likely the wealthiest people to have ever walked the planet. We have the money to adopt. Yes, we may have to take out loans, refinance our houses, apply for grants, put on fundraisers, apply for an adoption tax credit, work a second job, etc, but with some hard work and prayer we can raise the money. It is very doable. We have houses with running water, with refrigerators, with plumbing, with carpet. We live a couple miles from grocery stores which devote entire aisles to condiments, and another to every kind of cereal you can imagine, and so on. Many people overseas equate America with Heaven. We also have access to resources. Our government allows us to adopt orphans. There are agencies that tell us what paperwork to fill out. If we have adoption-related issues with our children, there are support groups, books written on the subject, and other adoptive parents to talk to. We have access to doctors that can help our adopted child who may have contracted scabies in the orphanage. Our churches promote adoption and many are seeking to cultivate an “adoption culture.” We have brothers and sisters in the Lord who would pray for us as we go through the adoption process. We have free public schooling in America. Little girls have just as many choices for a vocation as little boys do. Girls are not limited to prostitution in our country. Truly, compared to the rest of the world, we in North America have an abundance of wealth, opportunity, and resources.
So, with these things in mind, I beg you to adopt. I beg of you to clutter up your life, to make sacrifices out of love for those who are abandoned and often abused. I ask that you trust that the Lord will give you the grace needed for all the stresses that surround adoption and parenting. I ask that you identify yourself with the orphan—that you sacrifice your rights so that you can give rights to another. I ask that you contemplate what it would be like to be a child that has no one to care for his needs, no one to feed him, no one to give him hugs, to tell him about the Lord, no one to love and protect him. I ask that you would adopt.
