I Got Many Beatings...

This conversation and the post that flowed from it, happened one year ago, yet we live out the aftermath of this and so many other hurts, every day. 

ONE YEAR AGO...

Lucy: "I was in a rehabilitation hospital and my nanny beat me with a shoe."

Will: "You only got one beating? I got many beatings."

Lucy: "No, I got many beatings too."

This was the conversation yesterday in the car as we headed out to shop for Christmas gifts for friends.

Sometimes in the ordinary of our lives, the reality of their past lives hover above, just out of reach, until...

until a memory comes or a conversation happens and we are thrust back into a world so foreign to most of us that it just can't be real.

Surely my children were never beaten, surely they never went to bed hungry or afraid, surely they were never abused or made fun of, just because they were different or just because they were orphans.

But they were...

Surely my children were never abandoned, left alone where their cries went unanswered, only to be taken to a place where their cries continued to go unanswered.

But it happened...

I know some of my posts are hard and uncomfortable to read but my kids' lives were hard and uncomfortable and I guess I am desperate for you to know because I am desperate for the other ones who are just like my children and just like your children, to be rescued from their realities, to be rescued from the beatings and the abuse and the mocking and the scorn.

For those of you who have met my children, have met Lucy and Will, can you imagine them there?

For those of you who have not met my children, have not met Lucy and Will, can you imagine your children there?

And yet, there are millions who still wait and millions who will never be rescued, will never know a loving touch or what kindness feels like or how precious they are.

As I advocate for waiting children who need to come home, please look at them, really look at them and picture what their lives would be like if someone like you called them son or daughter. 

This isn't how it is supposed to be. What has meaning? What is important? 

In a heartbreaking moment, I am flung out of superficial and back into real...

Please ask me about adoption.