A table for 8 please.: Burdens-National Adoption Month

We are about to approach the year anniversary of Mike and I flying to Ethiopia to meet Dawit and Israel for the first time. It is hard to believe that a year ago this week I had never held these 2 boys. That I did not know that their smiles would brighten this whole house. I am glad to know that when Dawit gets really excited he claps his hands three times and when Israel is really pleased with himself he shrugs his shoulders and has a little giggle. We cannot imagine not having them in our lives. They have been such a blessing.

This past weekend Dawit was sick. He had a super high fever and was stuck to me. He was so hot and when I would go to another room he would cry out Mommy, sit lap!! I would come back and snuggle with this hot, miserable little boy. I held him all day sunday and could not get these thoughts out of my head. Who would be holding him all day if he was sick in Ethiopia in the orphanage? Who would he call out to in the middle of the nite when he did not feel good? What kind of medicine if any would he get? How many children right now around the world are suffering from illness and have no one to snuggle with or cry out to?

Kind of depressing! Maybe it should be. Maybe we should all have that burden. I prayed and felt we should adopt for 19 years. It was a burden I carried for all those years and did not know if we would ever do it. But God lead us to adopt internationally and naively I thought the burden would magically go away when we landed back in the states with my beautiful boys. Nope!! It did not go away! How could it go away after seeing a row of beautiful babies in a orphanage with no family. A room full of toddlers grabbing at our legs calling out Mommy. Watching mothers with babies on the streets begging for food. No, the burden should not leave. It should continue to burden me and others. It should push us to action.

This month is National Adoption Month, and guess what? I am going to blog my little heart out this month because I believe God wants us all to be burdened. Maybe to adopt, maybe to be foster parents, maybe to help someone else adopt, or maybe sponsor a child or maybe contribute money to help a village have clean water. What ever it may be God does not ask us to help orphans and widows He tells us to.

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