Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Solutions

"Mom, I love you. I do. I wish I could have stayed in Ethiopia. This is hard. Hard to live alone without my people. Hard to change my food. Hard to change my language. Is it okay to say that?"

That conversation happens on a fairly regular basis. Too often, potential adoptive parents forget to think about how much pain and grief happens due to the fact that a child is taken from his/her culture, food, and (sometimes) language. This is painful for a child.

Imagine being 8 years old, knowing the English word "no" and nothing else. You are then placed into the arms of these two people that look much different than you and speak a language you know hardly any of. They are nice. You are told to trust them. They will give you new things. Don't complain. This is the family you wanted, right? Then you have to leave behind your friends, food, (possible) family, language, and nannies. You are thrust into a very scary situation. Your thoughts run from, "This is what I wanted, a family", to "my heart hurts", "I want my mom", "I miss my mom", "I hate this food", "Why is this plane trip so long", "I wish these people could speak to me". Your heart is torn because you don't want to be alone in the world but you don't want to be taken from the only world you have ever known. You get to your new home and you are lonely, scared, and basically traumatized by everything that has occurred in your young life. Now you are expected to try and conform to a new way of living. Your parents try to comfort you, make your food when they can, speak to you in small amounts of your home language (because that is all they know), play with you, find other people from your country within the community, but your heart still longs for your homeland. However, you make it work the best you know how, at age 8, because what else are you going to do. That, and you truly did want a family.

That is Evangeline's story. She has told me several times that she has an extremely torn heart and that her dream would be to live in Ethiopia with us. The truth is, no matter what we do to try and make her feel absolutely at home here, she knows she will never fully fit in. She loves us. We love her. She is Ethiopian. We are American. She is the one that has lost the most. She is the one that has sacrificed so much. On a side note, isn't that what life is like, until we are home with God, we will never feel fully right here on Earth. So where do we go from here?

There are lots of conversations happening between us. Hopefully we are creating an atmosphere that allows for Evangeline to feel safe sharing her honest feelings about the loss and anger she feels. I hope we are pointing her to the One who can comfort her far better than we can. We also talk about solutions.

Solutions you say? Yep. In Ethiopia, and in several other countries, poverty is the leading cause of placing a child within an orphanage/institution. Before I continue, I am an advocate for adoption, when a child is an actual orphan. A mother and/or  father should not have to place their child for an adoption because they do not have the finances to take care of them. As the church, I feel as though we should be active in trying to create resources in these countries that allow for family preservation. We have to meet the need head on. Jobs. We have to help step in to empower individuals in these countries (and our own) to become educated and life-sustaining. There are wonderful organizations such as Noonday (www.noondaycollection.com) and the Global Orphan Project (https://goproject.org/go-project/about) that do just this. They help bring jobs and education to women and youth so that they can be empowered to provide for themselves and their families. There are others but these are two that I am very familiar with.

I am going to address something that can be contentious, but I feel as though it is important. We also need to help raise up and support organizations that will provide familial like care when a child is truly an orphan. Evangeline has spoken on several accounts about how she would have rather stayed in Ethiopia with a stranger (who would become like family) than be with a family in America. These are hard words to hear and process through on a personal note but I completely understand where she is coming from. She longs to be apart of creating an organization that would place orphans in a sustainable living situation within their own culture and country. This would be like American foster care, except it would be permanent. There is an organization in Ethiopia that is doing that right now called Bring Love In (bringlove.in).  What they do is raise support that will bring families together. They match a widow up with several children and create a home. It is a beautiful thing to see. I hope you check out the link. Our family wants to be apart of that type of solution. Evangeline and I firmly believe that this is a great way to move when thinking about the orphan movement. Empowerment which leads to sustainability and family building within the country.


Again, I truly believe there are legitimate orphans and that we should always have open homes. However, I think that we also, as the church, need to find ways to help with family preservation (when possible) and family building projects (that will allow orphans to stay in their own culture). I am not anti-adoption, I learning how to stand for total orphan care. I am at the beginning of this journey. I am learning. I am trying to keep an open mind. What are your thoughts?