A few weeks back, when my wife was telling me more about Penny, she mentioned her height and weight. Since she is not in the US or Liberia, the units were in kilograms and meters. I'm an engineer, so I can mentally keep track of units pretty well, but my wife was not clear what those numbers meant in reality. Our son was sprawled on the bed after a good nighttime nurse, so I got the tailor's tape and held it next to him, did a few numbers in my head, and came back:
Penny is only slightly taller than our 10-month-old.
She is 12 years of age.
Penny is only slightly taller than our 10-month-old.
This just broke my heart.
We're Reformed Presbyterians, so I didn't think I had illusions about how depraved human nature is. Shiites blow up Sunnis, Copts are killed in Egypt, Boko Haram commits atrocities, a gunman in my adopted hometown kills six, shoots a congresswoman (and gets life in prison?!), these I have categories for. The soft malice of neglect is so bitterly poisonous, so slowly choking, that it just made me weep. I won't ask "how could people do this?", because I know, because without Jesus we are all capable of slouching into sin until children around us wither and die, but it hurts to see it worked out, and on a little girl that we pray for. But God has a bottle full of tears, and each one will be addressed in His good timing.
Don't you love sentences that start with "But God..."?
I just LOVED this post! We are reformed presbyterians too and we just had a really good sermon series on "but God" passages. I truly love those and now I really notice them.:-)
ReplyDeleteSometime if you can bear it (I say that because it really is almost too painful to watch) you should surf over and watch Bulgaria's Abandoned Children on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQZ-ERQczj8
It is a gripping and devastating documentary. But the Lord works! I have one sister in law who came home from Bulgaria. And two others who were in a similar institution in ukraine. I am so thankful that the Lord is moving His children to rescue more.
Thank you, Ivy! I did watch the video, and it is gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. I know that God will give me the strength to do what I need to do once I am at Garnet's orphanage, but it is so scary and impossible to fully prepare! I have seen pictures of your sisters in law... They are all gorgeous :-)
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