• Mother’s Day

    Date: 2020.05.10 | Category: Adoption, Love Without Boundaries | Tags:

    There’s so much in life that we take for granted.

    Clean drinking water.

    A warm home to live in.

    Food – readily available.

    Medical care.

    We complain. We judge. We bitch about the most trivial of things.

    Today I am…

    I don’t even know the word for it.

    Sad. Frustrated. Angered. Overwhelmed. Disillusioned. Brokenhearted.

    I sit here on Mother’s Day with a house filled with children that I did not give birth to. I get the blessing of their laughter as they play in the backyard. I get the blessing of their warm hugs, sweet kisses, and words of “I love you” every day. I get those things and someone else does not. Someone else is missing out on some of the most beautiful souls out there.

    I pray for the hearts of the mothers out there who did what they believed to be the best for their child. Mothers who stole away in the dark of night to sit their child outside the gates of an orphanage or in a busy park or on the side of the road just so their child could have a chance.

    Before I went to China, I judged those mothers. I was flabbergasted that someone would leave their child outside the walls of an orphanage. I judged because I didn’t understand. I had no clue what it meant to try and get surgery for your child when you have no money to pay upfront because you have no healthcare. I had no clue how hard some of these women fight to hold onto their children. What do you do with no money, in a culture that does not necessarily understand what it means to be born with special needs?

    It’s easy to sit in judgment when we have no clue. It’s easy to judge and say we would do better but would we? Would we really do better? We live in a country with 400,000 foster kids who need a family. Have you even given it a thought? What have you said? I would but…

    (insert your words here)

    I know because I said them too. My families too big. Trauma is too hard. Someone else will do it. I don’t believe that God is calling me to do foster care.

    That is my favorite. If you are a Christian, how about we just assume that God DOES want us to do something. No, I don’t believe everyone can or should foster but you can support foster care. You can encourage the families that do foster care cause it’s a hard job. It can be beautiful and fulfilling but sometimes it can be hard to care for someone who has been through loss and trauma.

    If you are a church who has families fostering, support them, encourage them, lift them up in prayer. If you are a church that has no one fostering, as yourself why. I believe we are to be the hands and feet of Christ. Why is no one adopting? Why is no one fostering? Why is no one supporting mothers in need?

    If we believe in keeping families together, we need to step up and be the helping hand they need.

    We need to pay for surgeries so children can stay with their families. I love Love Without Boundaries unity fund for just that reason. When a family searches and searches for help and finds LWB, and hundreds of people come together giving a little and pays for that surgery, well…it’s just about the most beautiful thing ever. Children healed and families intact. What could be better than that?

    If you don’t believe that orphanages are the right place for a child to be raised, then help stop them from getting there in the first place. Help feed a family. Help pay for a surgery. Help build a home. Help pay for schooling for their child. I know I talk about Love Without Boundaries a lot but that’s because I see the work they do. I see the pictures every day of the faces of heart children who get the surgery they need. I see the faces of children whose lives are changed with one good meal a day while they get to go to school. I see what $150 can do. It is completely and utterly mind blowing. There’s no other way to describe it. It is absolutely AMAZING!

    I am sitting here this morning wanting to do more. Wishing I could do more. That may or may not surprise you. I wish I could do more. If I could get on a plane tomorrow. I would travel half way around the world to adopt another child, but the rules have changed and I can’t go, no matter how badly I want to go.

    Yesterday, I dried the tears of my children who cried and cried for the little girl they have been praying for for over two years. Her picture hangs on our wall, but there is nothing we can do. This little girl is prayed for by many. Other families, who don’t qualify under the new rules, have said they would go too. So she sits without a family even though many, many people love her from afar.

    Today on Mother’s Day, I think about her. How I long to be her mother. How I wish I could dry her tears and hold her tight. But I can’t. How I wish to see a smile on her face and brush the hair from her face while she falls asleep. She looks so much like Lainey and I know what love has done for Lainey’s life. I want that for her. I want to see her splash in the water and laugh in the sunshine.

    We pray every day that a family steps up. I will cry tears when I see her go home both because I am happy she finally has a family and because we didn’t get to be her family.

    There’s another little girl that has our prayers in the Ukraine. She is malnourished…starving. She lies in a bed all day long. She needs a home but will age out in September at the young age of 16. I will not post her full picture here. Her eyes haunt me. She needs a home. She needs love. She needs to not die alone.

    I cried this weekend because I can’t do more. I sit here in my big, warm, wonderful home, with more blessings than I have ever deserved, so absolutely devastated that I can’t do more. I want to do more. But I can’t. Dan said, “Then write about it!” But I don’t feel like I can give it the words it needs. But I will try…

    Satan is good at keeping our eyes on things that don’t matter. Things like “Will we run out of toilet paper?” We are so worried about ourselves we don’t even have time to worry about Grace and all the other mothers and children in Uganda or Cambodia or the Ukraine. Mothers with no safety net, no food stamps, no healthcare.

    Our girls have started a campaign on their Chairs4Change site to help raise money for mothers in need. Mothers living in a shack, unable to pay the $5/month necessary for rent. Mothers unable to pay the $150 to send their child to school. Mothers who need a hand.

    https://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com/teamlwb4/Chairs4Change

    With your wonderful support, they’ve raised enough to build Grace and her family a home.

    We’ve raised enough to build Grace’s home but so many others wait. If you have been blessed, please consider giving a little to help others who work hard and still struggle.

    I am overwhelmed with sadness this week because so many things stop me from doing more. Children need families. Families need support. We, who are abundantly blessed, need to share our hearts, our homes, our dollars, our prayers.

    If you are feeling blessed this Mother’s Day, I ask that you reach out and support some moms that are working as hard as they can to provide for their family. They just need a helping hand.

    And if you have room and can put an extra chair at your table, consider providing a loving home for a child who waits.

    Happy Mother’s Day everyone! Instead of being overwhelmed by the bad in the world, let’s step up for one child, one family at a time, and make this world a better place whether they live right next door or a half a world away! Be the change you want to see!