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Facts that will break your heart
Or at least I hope they break your heart or make you question if you are doing enough or if you could help someone else who is trying to adopt. I hope these facts convict you and make you want to do something. Anything. Believe me I get that everyone isn’t called to adopt, but you can still help. You can still make a difference. You can still do something.
I read these facts in an article which had some pretty staggering statistics. You can read the whole article here. I’ll tell you why…
In this article she talks about the “fact, out of the 167 million orphans, 120 million will never receive any education whatsoever. About 60% of these orphaned girls will become prostitutes, and 70% of these boys will become criminals by the age of 18. 10-15% of these children will commit suicide before the age of eighteen. Every year, 1.8 million are forced into human trafficking, prostitution, or the pornography industry, and 11 million will die of a preventable or treatable disease. These children have no chance at improvement. While orphans here are struggling, orphans oversees are dying.”
This statistics make my heart just hurt. I look at Min and I think about what her life would be if we didn’t adopt her. She has very few options. No education, no wheelchair accessibility, no foster family, no options for jobs, no welfare or disability income available, no affirmative action, all of this equals no hope. My heart hurts when I think about all the others that are still there. All the others who will age out at 14. All the other children who just want a family to love them. I think about Ben and having to die alone and without a family. I think about Maisey who is deaf. What would her options be? You wonder why I continue to talk about this over and over again, this is why. We are talking about a future that would have been my children’s future. The future that is truth for millions upon millions of children. They have so few options. You may not have known the facts before, but if you are reading this, you know them now. What are you going to do about it?
I’m only one. But still, I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
– Edward Everett HaleThe better question is why aren’t we doing more, especially when these are the facts….
“First, there are around 100,000 orphans in the United States compared to 167 million orphans worldwide. According to The Washington Post, there were over 600,000 women in America waiting to adopt in August of 2008. In other words, if every woman in America adopted one child domestically, there would still be over 500,000 women willing to adopt. However, even if these 500,000 women adopted internationally, there would still be a over 11 million international orphans needing care. Now, think for moment. In 2007, 78.4% of the United States’ population of 302 million considered themselves Christian. James 1:27 commands the Church to care for the widow and the orphan. If less than half of these 236,768,000 American Church members took this command to heart and cared for the child that God had placed in their hearts, there wouldn’t be an orphan problem, in the United States or anywhere else.”
We could fix this problem. We could at least put a huge dent in it. We could reduce the number of orphans in the world and save God’s children. So why aren’t we?!?! Why?
