For All the Starfish

Do you know the starfish story? Chances are that some relative forwarded it to you in an email sometime around 2005. That's why I know about the starfish story. It's also why, on principle, I shook my head and ignored it. I never forwarded anything, and I don't repost on facebook. Jesus still loves me. I still love Jesus. It's all good.

The story, on the rare chance that you haven't heard it, tells us about starfish that have washed up on the beach. These starfish are going to die if somebody doesn't put them back into the water, so a child starts walking along the shore, tossing the starfish into the waves. "What are you doing?" Asks a cynical man. "Throwing starfish in the water," responds the child. The cynic reminds the child that s/he can't possibly make a difference because there are thousands of starfish washed up along miles and miles of beach. The child picks up another starfish, tosses it into the waves, looks back at the man, and says "It made a difference to that one." Again, I ignored this story until I started working with my own starfish. 

I've been feeling really overwhelmed over the past couple of days. Every time a child gets a family, I am over the moon excited about it. But for every child who learns that they really are loved, there are millions more who never will. Children in the US and in countries all over the world will age out without ever being adopted. Right now, young boys are turning to crime because it is literally their only option for survival. Teenaged girls are being sold for sex, either because they were kidnapped or they were lied to and promised real jobs. Children are committing suicide. And usually, when I get overwhelmed over the statistics, one of the only things that helps me keep going is to think about specific children who used to be orphans and remember that it made a difference to that one. 

But right now, as I'm walking along this shore line and tossing individual starfish into the water, I wonder if there is a way to keep them from washing up onto the sand in the first place. Of course, somebody has to fight for the starfish that are already on the shore. But if there is a way to prevent that kind of pain in the future, I want to know about it.

Which is why I started asking around and doing my research. As it turns out, there are many, many ways to help keep children out of orphanages. We need a multi-faceted approach, focusing on alleviating poverty, providing education about special needs, ending discrimination, and several other things. A fair amount of organizations exist to address these issues. So I'm going to keep posting about my individual starfish, but I'm also going to start highlighting ways that we can help prevent children from becoming orphans.

Keep an eye out for these posts in the near future, share them so that others know how to help, and ask me if you want more information about helping the starfish. 

Lifeboats

“Fifteen hundred people went into the sea when the Titanic sank from under us.  There were twenty boats floating nearby, and only one came back.  One.  Six were saved from the water, myself included.  Six.  Out of fifteen hundred.  Afterward the seven-hundred people in the boats had nothing to do but wait – wait to die, wait to live, wait for an absolution that would never come.”

A good sad movie should leave you with something.  A sense of hope.  A catharsis.  “Titanic”, the movie based off of the actual ship, doesn’t provide that for me, though I know it does for others.  I don’t cry when I watch the movie.  I just sit there with a hollow sense of depression and a Celine Dion song stuck in my head.  So much hopelessness and futility permeates those final scenes as water fills the boat, as people wait to drown, as people scream for help in the freezing ocean while those who steer the lifeboats paddle away and refuse to turn around.  The lifeboat pilots had an excuse.  Surely, as one character reasoned, if they had turned around the boats would have been swarmed by desperate people.  The boats would have gone under.

Oh, but wouldn’t it have been worth it to try?  To attempt to save even just one more life?  To release even one more person from the cruelty of the freezing water?  Would you be able to live with yourself knowing that you paddled to safety and ignored the dying?  Would it not be better to die than to live like that? 

More than six people could have been saved if only those lifeboats had turned around.  But the lifeboats just kept moving slowly in the other direction because the people inside counted their own lives, their own safety, as more important than everyone else’s. 

The one boat that turned around got there too late. 

Fifteen thousand people.  Six were rescued.  Six. 

Do you know where I’m about to go from here?

The Titanic is gone.  But there are so many people who are still waiting for a lifeboat.  You and I have managed to paddle to safety, to a world of comfort, plenty of food, of warmth, and of opportunity.  But we’re steadily rowing our lifeboats away from the people who are trapped and screaming for us to help them because we count our own safety and comfort as more important than theirs. 

The world had one hundred and forty three million orphans.  At least.  We have the lifeboats.  They have nothing to do but wait, just like those left in the ocean.  They’re waiting to live or to die.  We can do something.  If only eight percent of the Christians in the world chose to help just one child, the crisis would be over.  The children wouldn’t sink.  They wouldn’t be left to die.  But we’re all still rowing away and hoping that somebody else turns around.  Somebody else can risk being pulled into the water.  And as a result, only a few are rescued. 

The full weight of the Titanic tragedy hits during the scene when two men row a single lifeboat back out into the ocean.  “Is there anybody alive out there?”  One calls repeatedly, his voice echoing across the icy water.  “Is there anybody alive out there?” 

“These are all dead,” replies the other.  “We came too late.”

We came too late. 

Please.  Don’t be too late.  They’re calling for help.

Turn your boat around. 

Three Hundred Broken Promises

"Mommy and Daddy will be right back," I always tell them.  My mother volunteers in a church nursery every Sunday.  If I happen to be home I'll join her in taking care of "my babies" for an hour.  We have the one-year-olds this year.  A decent amount of those kids will just saunter into the room and go straight for the snacks.  But a few still cry when their parents leave the room.  "Mommy and Daddy will be right back," I say as I try to distract them with toy cars.  "They're going to big church and then they'll come get you.  It'll be just a little while.  I promise."

But what if they didn't come back?  What if I couldn't keep that promise?  What if those parents just left, promising that they'd be right back, and then never returned?  What would those babies think?

It's a horrible thought.  But that's exactly what happened to some three hundred children in Russia.  Three hundred orphans were introduced to their adoptive parents.  And then the parents left because Russia required several trips before mothers and fathers can bring their children home.  They promised they'd be right back.

And then Vladimir Putin decided that these orphans shouldn't come home.  He figured that Russia's orphans made better political pawns than family members, so he signed the bill declaring that Americans may no longer adopt Russian orphans.

The children wait.  I can't bear to think about what must be going through the minds of those three hundred who me their parents already.  Why won't they come back to get me? They must wonder.  Did they change their minds about me?  Was I bad?  

Mommy and Daddy promised that they'd be right back.

300 Broken Promises  is a facebook page dedicated to helping these children be reunited with their parents.  Please go like the page for updates and for simple ways that you can help these children come home.  No child should have to wait as an orphan.

HIV and Orphans

Do you know what HIV is?  You've heard of it, of course, but do you really know what it is?  A lot of us don't know the facts about HIV.  I didn't know what the difference was between HIV and AIDS until maybe a year or two ago.  HIV seems really scary to a lot of people.  What about you?  Think about these questions and be very, very honest with yourself about the answers.  What would you do if you found out that a friend of yours had HIV?  Would you want your child to be friends with an HIV positive kid?  How would you feel about sharing your home with an HIV positive person?  What about sharing a pool?  Eating utensils?  Would you want to play on the same sports team?  If you found out that someone you know has HIV, would your opinion of that person change?

Maybe you honestly don't know the answer to any of these questions.  A lot of people don't.  That's why so many orphans with HIV and no other diagnosed special needs get overlooked for adoption over and over again.

So what is HIV?  It stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus.  It's the virus that eventually causes AIDS.  However, that does NOT mean that every person with HIV has AIDS or will get AIDS.  The HIV virus weakens the immune system.

A person can get the HIV virus through unprotected sexual contact, sharing needles, and through birth or breastfeeding.  That's it.  Now, I do know of parents who don't allow their children to share toothbrushes because of the potential for gums to bleed, but that swimming pool that I mentioned?  Not a risk.  Sharing a home?  Not a risk.  Sports teams?  Not a risk.  Eating utensils?  Not a risk.  Toilets?  Again, not a risk.  See where I'm going with this?  The problem is that so many people worry about non-existent risks that they pass over deserving children.  This is why so many children with a manageable disease still wait for families.

And yes, I did say "manageable."  Believe it or not, people with HIV can live very normal lives.  They can play sports, have jobs, get married, have kids (medication can prevent mother-to-child transmission), and have a normal lifespan.  I'm going to be completely honest right now.  If I didn't know the truth about HIV, I'd be so afraid to adopt an HIV positive child because I wouldn't want any of my babies to die young, but HIV is NOT a death sentence.  Anti-Retroviral Therapy and regular visits to the doctor for check-ups and blood tests help people with the HIV virus to live normal lives.  In fact, children taking Anti-Retroviral pills often end up with a viral load that's so low that it becomes undetectable in their bodies.

The waiting orphans with the HIV virus carry this disease only because their mothers had it before them.  Sadly, the social stigma that surrounds HIV causes many people to only see the disease but not the person.  I encourage you do research further into the subject and consider pursuing the adoption of one of the many orphans who wait simply because of their HIV positive status.  If you want a good place to start and see where I got my sources from, check out the Project Hopeful website.