Just Numbers to Some

As many of you know, our eyes were opened to the millions of orphans needing homes because of a little girl named Julia. A good friend of mine, also mommy to a cockayne child, sent me a simple message one morning "there is a little girl with cockayne on a website for adoption."

And so it began.

My eyes were opened to staggering statistics, heartbreaking circumstances, desperate stories, and in the midst hope.

Hope as God was showing me His love

For Orphans.
Families by the hundreds welcoming children into their homes.

But my heart was breaking for what breaks His.

To be burdened is hard stuff.

It is looking at your life, what is important, what REALLY matters in a whole different way.

What really matters?

It's not the American dream.

It's saying "yes" to God. Not turning your eyes away to the reality that IS orphans.

Children should not be just numbers or statistics.
But millions are.

We have said "Yes" to adoption. Why wouldn't we?

But my heart has felt both joy and sadness over the reactions we have had.

Some family and friends are incredibly supportive. Some are semi-negative. I am actually okay with these because it gives us an opportunity to answer questions.  But the ones which have hurt the most?

 Those who won't even ACKNOWLEDGE our adoption.

I have to wonder, if we were having a child biologically would they be acting different?

This child we are praying for, raising money to adopt, loving already will be our child no matter how she comes into our family.

This from the book "Radical" by David Platt...."The idea of billions in poverty or twenty-six thousand children dying from starvation and preventable disease before we lay our heads on our pillows tonight seems hard to imagine. Millions of orphans in Europe, Latin America and United States. As overwhelming as these numbers were, they were still just numbers before we traveled to get our son.We learned that orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. It is easier to pretend they are not real before you hold then in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.

"We can let these numbers remain cold, distant and almost imaginary. Or we can open our eyes and our lives to the realities that surround us and begin considering the faces that are represented by these numbers."

Little One is real. As are the 147 million orphans needing homes around the world.

Little One is not just a number to us.

God willing, she will someday know herself as "daughter, sister, granddaughter,beloved child of God "

God alone has placed this child on our heart and we won't turn away.

We are seeing even more fully God's heart in heartbreaking situations.

Living with eyes wide open is a good place to be.
Have your eyes been opened? What will you choose to do?