Fields of the Fatherless

***Platform alert***

Many of you who know me know that God has placed in my heart an open wound, sore and bothered by the plight of the orphaned child. God blessed us tremendously with the adoption of our own dear, sweet, fiesty Lily Chang, the daughter of my heart. What many of you don't know is that my soul LONGS for another child, but God is saying, "Not now." I scour the waiting child lists, especially those children from China where I left parts of my heart 19 months ago, and I don't think I'll ever get them back. Nor do I want to. If I am not to bring another child to my home, it is my prayer that God uses my voice to open other families' hearts to the possibility of bringing one of these little children into their own homes. Especially those children who are harder to place in families because of differences.

Can I just say that "normal" is my least favorite word right now? God delivers every child as a package. Each one comes with beauty and intelligence and talents and extreme value. Each child also comes with challenges, obstacles begging to be overcome, quirks that drive us crazy, rebellion that tests our resolve, and needs that must be met with sacrifice. Every single one of them. And at the end of the day, every decent parent will tell you that when we gaze upon the sweet face of our sleeping child, though we may be grateful beyond measure that our child has finally passed out and please, God, let her sleep through the night, all of the challenges that child's life has thrown at us throughout the day melt away into immense love and gratitude at the wonderful, beautiful, precious child that we've been given the PRIVILEGE of raising. And then we try to clean up the path of destruction our wonderful, beautiful, precious child(ren) left, and two hours into it we haven't made much of a dent, and so we sigh a big sigh, toss in one more load of laundry before collasping into bed with exhaustion, praying that God makes the next six hours of sleep feel like eight. (Okay, maybe that last part is just me.)

Regularly I'm going to be including in my blog a child's picture or profile. Each of these children are available for adoption at the time of my post. For security reasons, I'll only be posting pictures of children whose agencies do not require a password for viewing. Just so you know.

***Stepping off the platform, now.***

So, about this precious little face at the start of this post. Can you believe how cute this little guy is? He is listed with A Helping Hand Adoption agency. We worked with them to adopt Lily, and we had a great experience. He lives in China right now, and he has a cleft lip, that has been repaired (see that ADORABLE grin?), and he has an open palate. My heart is so drawn to these cleft babies. Lily was born with that condition. I would hardly consider it that much of a special need at all here in America where medical care is so readily available. That's not always the case in China, especially the poorer areas. We take Lily's surgeries--she's only needed two so far and maybe only one more in a few years--one at at a time, and they are very manageable. We do speech therapy a couple times a week. How many other kids around this country need speech therapy? Millions. It's not a big deal, and it totally doesn't define who Lily is. AHH's website is www.worldadoptions.org . Click on the "Special Delivery!!" link on the left. This little guy is named "Asher."