The Waiting Child

During our paperwork process I found that I couldn’t stay away from the Waiting Children. No matter what the agency, what the country, here were these kids staring me in the face. Kids who had been overlooked at birth, too cripple for the average adoptive family. They were too much work. Too imperfect. And yet they were still orphans and still sleeping in rooms with dozens of other kids. There’s a lot of awareness being raised of the waiting children with fixable needs. Many times it’s minor: just a cleft lip or heart defect that requires surgery. I soon discovered that these children are often adopted quickly, almost as soon as they are posted on the waiting lists. It’s all the others no one wants to touch. Cerebral palsy, down’s syndrome, cognitive delays of an unknown origin, even autism. Where would my own son, who has Aspergers syndrome, be had he been born in a different nation? Would someone like him have been abandoned? I can’t help but thinking of how lucky I am just to have been born “normal”. It’s nothing that I did or deserve credit for. It’s just sheer chance and luck. I think back to people I’ve known in the past who were arrogant about their positions in life, including myself! The ignorance of our luck at being genetically normal becomes apparent to me when I think how we are all so superior, as if any of it was something we deserved. I could’ve had a brain bleed as an infant. I could have had an extra chromosome, just by chance, and had down’s syndrome. I could have been abused, hit by a car, born blind or had a limb difference. It’s not uncommon. We don’t see it often in our own neighborhoods but as I scroll through hundreds of faces I can see it is not uncommon at all. Who am I to feel better than people like this? Now my train of thought expands to the question, “Who am I to choose a ‘normal’ child for adoption?” I am feeling more superficial by the moment when I think we started this journey wanting a healthy baby boy for our family. Don’t we all want healthy babies? Of course, but that’s not the only reality. The rest of reality is that there are children out there who aren’t perfect and they need food in their stomachs and hugs before bedtime. They didn’t commit some bad deed to deserve to stay in an orphanage on a waitlist for years. They were simply born.

At the beginning of this journey five months ago we thought Ethiopia was our answer. They have infants, boys, and pretty healthy. The process goes relatively quickly. It just seemed to fit our original plan. We have learned, however, that there are many layers to adoption and many of them are not pretty. There is a documentary out there called The Dying Rooms. It was filmed in 1995 in China. It shows how some orphanages treated their little girls. Some were literally just left to die in rooms. The reporters show footage of an infant girl too weak to even cry. She died four hours later. Other toddlers were strapped in rows to chairs, their legs tied open incase they used the bathroom (which consisted of a bucket underneath them). Can you imagine a two-year old tied down all day? Neither can I. Many of them developed rocking motions for stimulation and several had gashes on their heads from banging their head against objects repeatedly. This documentary embarrassed the Chinese government who has made a point to have beautiful orphanages since then. I could not believe all those babies needing families and here Tyler and I sat, being told it would be three years to wait for a child from China. I want to fly over to China, look the powers that be in the face and just say “stop it.” Just stop it. Can’t you see these are humans? I contacted a world organization that works in that region. We were told that the orphanages that are allowed by the government to adopt internationally have gotten much better since The Dying Rooms was filmed, but in all likelihood those places still exist. Our hands are tied. The three year wait remains. Now when I watch adoption videos on you tube (as I’ve accidentally made a habit of doing) and I see a family in a cheery orphanage in China hugging their little girl, I can’t help but feeling like the ones who need us the most are not being reached.

Another documentary I found quite by accident was based on the forgotten children of Bulgaria. Forgotten basically equated to their special needs children, abandoned at the door of this building. I can’t even call it an orphanage, I’m not sure it was more than a desolate building with a few begrudging workers. It was atrocious. I cried through it all. Children ranging from birth to teenagers, with varying disabilities, and all of them starving to death. No therapy, no eye contact, no interaction. Most were left in their beds. Footage showed one girl changed, unfeelingly, in her bed by a worker who grabbed her dirty clothes, dropped her back over the railing and walked away. And there she lay, staring at the ceiling in an empty room. These children didn’t have to be strapped to a potty. Their legs were skin and bones, they were not physically able to get off the potty seats they were sat on. Some looked like teenagers and were easily lifted off in their crouching positions. They had to be less than 60 pounds. The reporter came back at night and discovered all the doors locked with kids wailing inside. They were all locked in their rooms. The workers had left. No matter how many times I try, I cannot wrap my mind around this. I could not tell you two things about Bulgaria, including it’s exact location on the globe, but I add it to my list of people to reach before I am done with this world.

Orphanages and care facilities don’t get much better in other countries. Even footage from Ethiopia show three toddlers to a crib, 19 cribs per room, all being ignored. I start wondering what makes us different. Why don’t you find these things in America? The easy answer is, of course, infrastructure. We throw money at job training and life skills for people with disabilities. Therapy, while difficult to find in some areas, is an option for most families and helps tremendously. Our average family, while many living below our poverty level, are still richer than 75% of the entire world. We do not have the same reasons to abandon children as you do in other places. In order for money to be put in these areas it means that government officials at all levels in this nation essentially have to care. The communities, and those hired to represent these communities, care about humans at the most basic level. Why is this? I am sure someone can come up with a different answer but to me it’s clear. We are Christian. We were built on Christ, our laws dictated by freedom in Christ. Humans are made in God’s image and Jesus says to love each other. We cherish human life. Both China and Ethiopia have histories spanning thousands of years before America was ever on the map. Literally. And yet there they are, stuck, starving, and lost. Christ always has been and always will be the answer. At these discoveries I am feeling more blessed to be born healthy in the United States of America. And I have even more reason to help a child. I am in the right country to do it.

As you can tell by now, our eyes have been opened numerous times throughout our journey. At this stage in life I am getting used to my original plan not working or changing. I also feel so hesitant just buckling down in one country program, waiting for that perfect baby. So I decided to give this God, and silently prayed everyday, “just show me our child.” I could not say at this point what we desire in a child. We don’t know about age or country. We just want our child to come home.