This little man comes to mind so, so often. What is his story? Has he been here long? Are his parents deceased or only unable to care for him? Does he have siblings at the orphanage with him? If he is orphaned does he hope everyday for his chance at family life again? These are the children that were painful to leave. He knows that his chances are slim. He watches the ages of children who leave and his is all too aware that more than likely he will finish growing up here and then embark on his own. Recently, I was reading an account of a family who have 10 children now. They adopted a sibling group from Ethiopia last year - 3 children. They returned to bring home another little girl they fell in love with while there last year. So...they now have four Ethiopian children. Two of them are HIV positive. Their story is amazing and moves me to tears so often when I read their blog. The point of me mentioning them is this: their one daughter just celebrated her 10th birthday. Sometime during the day the daughter came to her mother and said she needed to tell her something. You see...this little girls Ethiopian father new her chances of being adopted were going to be really slim if she revealed her real age so they lied. She was actually turning 13 - not 10. You know what her biggest fear was? That she would be deemed to old to sit on her daddy's lap. I kid you not. How horrible that kids need to lie in hopes of finding a home. 
And then there is this little girl. I would return tomorrow and bring her home if it were possible. 
And this little guy. I am pretty sure that after being in Ethiopia and seeing these children we could actually request specific information about them. 
This is the age group that so often goes unnoticed. She captured my heart in a big way. Isn't she beautiful? 
And just for kicks - I love this picture of Mark meeting his little girl. She has so rapidly become a daddy's girl. It is really quite shocking. She looks so tiny and vulnerable here. How much she has changed. Anyway.....pray for the forgotten children of the world today. That God would be more real to them than the air they breathe.
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The homily at mass today was about the 'unfairness' of God - how we as humans feel that those who do good should be rewarded and those who treat others with disregard should be punished. But so often we see people, like those children, who did nothing yet seem to withstand such hardship while others who deserve punishment glide by without consequence. Father very eloquently put a new spin on what we see as unfair - that in treating those who we see as undeserving, God is indeed giving us all a chance to be blessed with His love, because we are indeed all undeserving at times in our lives. I left church feeling like I had a better understanding of this 'unfairness,' as he put it. I suppose it explains why some seem to flit though life with copious blessing, but when I read your blog, I felt once again confused. It doesn't explain the suffering of the innocent, the unfairness in their heartache. I'm sure you are haunted, in a sense, by those faces. I imagine that I would also see their faces behind my own closed eyes. Sometimes prayer is all we have, but sometimes prayer just doesn't feel like enough. I guess that is when we have to trust and have faith that God has his reasons, and that perhaps we aren't always meant to understand. At least you can find comfort in knowing that you did save one little girl, by bringing her into the most loving environment a child could ask for - and that's no small feat!
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