If Not Me Then Who?

I have this friend, I love her.  She is a super mom to 3 girls.  She volunteers at our little title one school all the time.  She's on the PTA or PTO or whatever it is called.  I'm not so much in to volunteering at my kids schools.  If you need me to send a dozen cookies to a party or send $20 for a teacher appreciation gift, I'm your gal.  But, for the love of Pete, don't ask me to volunteer what little extra time I have and spend it with more bratty kids.  I decided a few years ago that I was going to start saying no to anything extra that doesn't fulfill me.  I know, I'm kind of a jerk like that.  I'll own it.  But I admire my friend for spending her extra time trying to make my kids school better.  When I give her a hard time about it she always replies with, "If not me then who"?

I love that saying, except I feel like this should be the churches response to the HUGE orphan crisis in our world today.  I'm going to say some things today that are going to step on a lot of peoples toes and I'm okay with that.  If you know me personally, you know that I am not generally a people pleaser.  Let me preface this by saying that we are not saints.  God placed adoption on our hearts, we chose to follow His will, it's the hardest thing we've ever done, we suck at it most days.  However, there is one less orphan in the world because of it.

We as Americans love to live in a bubble.  We love to see everything through rose colored glasses, until someone we dislike is voted into office and then we are all up in arms over it.  We love the idea of the American dream.  Go to college, meet your spouse, get married, buy a home, get a puppy, start a retirement account, travel, have a baby and then one or two more, buy a bigger house, give our kids more than we had and certainly more than they will ever need, get them through school, send them to an expensive college, get them married and then retire and travel the world until we are buried 6 feet under.  Sounds lovely, huh?  Except guess what?  The American dream doesn't line up with the bible.  Wait, what?

Listen, I"m preaching to the choir here.  I love my house and I love to shop and I love to eat at nice restaurants and I love to go on vacation and my kids have never wanted for a damn thing.  I don't know where the right balance is.  But I do know that there are over 100 million children in this world as we speak that do not have a mom or dad or a place to call home.  I know that we don't like to think about babies lying in a crib all day and only having their diapers changed once a day and only getting a bottle of formula if there is any available.  We don't like to think about them dying alone in their sleep because of a minor cold because their weak bodies couldn't fight it off and there's no medicine.  We don't like to think about toddlers living in a tiny room and never getting to see outside the 4 walls they live in.  They are frail and malnourished and extremely under developed.  They have sad eyes and tummy aches and don't know what a hug feels like.  We don't like to think about the orphans over the age of 3 that will most likely never even be considered for adoption because they aren't little and cute and they would come with too much baggage and would be too hard to deal with so they will age out of whatever twisted system they're in and be thrown out of the orphanage or institution with zero survival skills.

People, this is the world we live in.  We can bury our heads in the sand and keep on living in our comfortable homes and pretend like there aren't any real problems in the world, but there are.  And if we don't do something about it, who will?  I believe that it is our job to take care of orphans.  I believe that adoption is God's will for just about everyone.  I believe that if you pray about it with your spouse, God will put it on your heart as well and will provide the means to make it happen.  I believe that we can end the orphan crisis.  I believe that every child deserves to have a family and that I come in contact with 20 people a day that could provide a family for an orphan.  I believe that it is hard and expensive and stressful and sacrificial.  But if not us, then who?