November is adoption awareness month. A friend of mine posted this beautiful article written by her mother in law. It was too beautiful not to share! What a great question...Is everyone here?
Is everyone here?
by Charlotte Riegel
In 2007, a girl was born in a country that did not value girls. Being unable to access necessary medical attention for her daughter, the mother chose to abandon her child on the steps of a busy library knowing she would be given the chance at life she could not provide. The baby was taken to a medical facility and later placed into a foster home as an orphan.
Halfway around the world, a couple with four children of their own, began the arduous task of completing a mound of paperwork for adopting a girl, on the very day this orphan was born. The wait for a placement was agony.
After many months without the girl they were praying for, the hopeful parents amended their application to include a child with minor disability. Soon after, they were contacted about this little girl who was born with a craniofacial cleft. They eagerly accepted the challenge.
Lilah did not choose the life she was born into nor the family she was placed with shortly after birth. Neither did she choose the lifestyle and love of family she now enjoys in a Canadian home. Adoption is God’s plan and it is not a new concept.
Moses, Esther, and Jesus were all adopted. They were nurtured and educated by someone who had not given them physical life. The Egyptian Princess, Mordecai, and Joseph had no idea of the role they were playing in God’s bigger picture, but they were willing to love a child that was not born of their flesh and blood. Are you?
November is Adoption Awareness Month. There are millions of children around the world, including some living in Canada, who need what most of us take for granted – the love and nurture of a parent.
Wendy Robinson of Christian Adoption Services says, “Every child we parent provides one more space in an orphanage for a child in need of a safe place. In many countries the orphanages are full and regularly turn away infants and children, only to find them abandoned on the steps of the orphanage. Mothers, who are starving, know their child will die and the only hope they have is placing them in orphanage care.”
If children are not adopted and grow up in an orphanage, during their teen years they are forced to leave and survive on their own in whatever way they are able. Many become trapped in the sex trade or illegal drug industry.
Though not everyone can adopt internationally, some can help locally by caring for a child needing temporary care. If the child is unable to return to their birth family, foster parents may choose to adopt him or her. Many of the adoptions in this province are by foster families adopting the child in their care.
Look around your dinner table, asking yourself and God, “Is everyone here?”
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans...in their distress...” – James 1:27
Christian Adoption Services (http://http://www.christianadoption.ab.ca//) would be happy to answer your questions and help guide you through this God honouring journey.
Charlotte Riegel is a Calgary based freelance writer with two internationally adopted grand- children.
This article was published in City Light Magazine. It can be found here.
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