I will never forget her cries — screams, really — as we were leaving the orphanage. Here we were, three people with different skin, who spoke a different language, and were complete strangers to her, taking her from the only home she ever knew, into an unknown, scary world.
It was, of course, terrifying for her.
Marella (given name: Chatura), clung to one of the orphanage workers as we traipsed down the street to try and get a passport photo done before we left, after spending approximately only three hours with her. When that proved unsuccessful, the worker handed Marella to me and walked away, while we got into the car with our driver and guide and drove off.
The cries were heart-breaking. Deep, frightened, guttural cries from this little girl, almost two years old and barely 16 lbs., who had no idea where she was going. Can you imagine?
I wanted to tell her we were giving her a future, a hope. I wanted to tell her the place she called home wasn’t actually a home, not really. It was a place where she was fed and clothed, but it wasn’t a home. I wanted to tell her how bleak her future was if she stayed in the orphanage.
I wanted to tell her we prayed for her before she was born. I wanted to tell her while another person might have deemed her as trash, we knew that she was a beautiful child of God, who was designed perfectly in His image, crooked toes included.
I wanted to tell her we had a home for her, and toys for her to play with, and a soft bed for her to sleep in, food to eat and clean water to drink, and people who loved her already, people who moved Heaven and earth and made big, big sacrifices for her to come home with us.
I wanted to tell her we were bringing her to a land where she could do anything, be anything, try anything. I wanted to tell her we weren’t just taking her, we were rescuing her. Saving her. Changing the entire trajectory of her life.
But, of course, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell her any of that because we didn’t yet speak the same language, and besides, she was not quite two, and those concepts were far beyond her understanding.
So instead I held onto her while we left the small city of Solapur, and drove through towns and villages in the four-hour drive back to our hotel. I held her while she screamed and railed against me, sweat covering her face as she fought me, this strange person who took her from everything unsafe, which she thought was safe.
I held her when her strength gave out , after maybe 30 minutes of screaming, and she, with Reagan wide-eyed beside me, fell asleep, her body limp in my arms, her spirit succumbed to her fate, whatever it might be. I held her and I wiped her face and I prayed — oh how I prayed — and I sang quietly to her and I made promises to her and I marveled that she was in my arms.
And then, after sleeping for about two hours, Marella woke, looked at me wide-eyed, and promptly threw up — all over me, all over her, all over the car. Everywhere. Our kind driver with eyes that reminded me of Jesus, pulled over and held her, covered in her own vomit, while I tried to clean us both off. Then we got back in the car and she seemed to have accepted her fate and her future, terrifying as it might be. She sat in my lap, her face buried in my shoulder, as if looking around was too frightening.
She kept her head buried there the rest of the drive home, stopping to navigate the streets of Pune to get her passport photo, the terror alive in her eyes. She kept her head buried when we got to our hotel. She kept her head buried until our food arrived in our room, and then she tentatively took a few bites. We bathed her, and settled her in, making a space for her in our King-sized bed we all shared, which she promptly left to fall asleep on top of me.
The next morning she wanted water — so much clean, bottled water — which she threw up again. She ate a few bites, but mostly spent the day buried in my shoulder. Every now and then she would give these deep, deep sighs, as if the weight of the world was resting on her shoulder.
Maybe it was.
I’ve tried and tried to imagine what she must have felt, what she must have thought, but I can’t. How terrifying it must have been.
By the time we got to Delhi, a little more than 24 hours after we unwillingly took her from the orphanage, she could offer a shy half-smile. She ate that night, drank so much water (from a glass, not a plastic cup, thus earning her the name Princess, which we still call her), and slept again completely on top of me, all night.
We would sit her on the bed and she would fall back — not because she couldn’t sit, but because she spent so much of her days lying down, she naturally fell back. It took me a couple days to remember to watch her head walking through doorways, because if I let go to open a door, or reach for something, she would fall back, hitting her head on a few door frames before I caught on.
By the time we flew home, one week after we arrived with her in Delhi, her fiery personality was beginning to emerge. Now, more than ten months later — ten months! — I can no longer hold her with her head buried in my shoulder, because she’s grown too much. She likes when I hold her like a baby — she’ll say, “Baby, Mama.” But the other night when I held her like a baby, she said, “I big, Mama! I too big.”
We had to fill out a bunch of paperwork before we went to the Shriner’s Hospital in May to start the process of getting her foot fixed. We didn’t have answers to a lot of the questions we were asked. We don’t know her family history. We don’t know if there’s a history of diabetes or alcoholism or mental illness or vision impairment, or anything. We don’t know if her relatives are tall or short, large or small.
We don’t know if her mother liked to cook, or if her father liked to take walks. We don’t know if anyone in her family was — or could have been — gifted in science and math, or maybe creative arts. We just don’t know.
But we do know this: her past, her family lineage, her tragic way she was brought into this world, have no say in her future. None. Her past does not dictate, control, or in any way decide what her future looks like. Not in the least.
She can be a scientist or a teacher or a chef or a doctor or a stay-at-home mom. She can travel the world, live in a big city or settle in a small town. She can go to college or learn a trade. She can get married or stay single. She can run a big company or work in a grocery store. She can do whatever she wants.
One of the top reasons why I’ve heard people don’t want to adopt, probably secondary only to money, is that they know adopted kids who were messed up as they got older. They acted different. They didn’t fit societal norms. Maybe they were angry or withdrawn or loners or lacking social graces. They weren’t ‘right,’ by normal standards anyway.
I’ve heard it so many times., in one form or another. Well-meaning people with beautiful, open hearts cite examples of people they knew, either as children or adults, who were adopted and somehow damaged — as if it’s the adoption that messed them up.
Please hear me in this. Imagine we are sitting together with a cup of coffee, and I’m speaking in soft, gentle tones, reaching out to touch your hand every now and then — but please hear me.
Listen carefully. Lean in. This is important.
Adoption does not hurt orphans. It’s the time in the previous chapter, the time in between, the time before they had a forever home that created the scars. It’s not because they were given a home, but because of the time spent without one.
Adoption is redemption. Adoption is saying, “I see your scars. I see your wounds. I see your future, and I believe better for you. I know you deserve better, even if you don’t see it yet. Let me help you get there. Let me hold your hand. Let me do this with you.”
This is staggering to me: In America, approximately 3.2 million animals are adopted from shelters every year. Also in America, 135,000 children are adopted every year. We have a serious orphan crisis.
Can we change this? I mean, I’m all for animals, and Reagan and I talk a lot about the dog we’re getting in a year or two (he’s already chosen the name Bruce, after the shark in Finding Nemo). I like animals. I think people who abuse animals have a special spot in hell, frankly.
But can we start worrying about saving the children? Can we stop assuming it’s too hard, too expensive, too damaging, and dig in — get our hands and feet dirty and save a life?
We are not perfect parents. If I were to write down everything I know about parenting, it would be pathetically short — barely enough to fill a page. She is not thriving because we had a magic formula, read the right books, spent large amounts of money, did the right things.
You know what we did? We showed up.
We showed up.
That’s it. We showed up. We showed up and said that we believed she deserved a future far better than the walls of the orphanage, where she was fed pretty much the same food all day, every day, where she was fed in a crib, where she stayed most of the day. We said that we didn’t want her to be out on the streets of India when she was 14, in a country where a physical deformity is considered a curse.
We just showed up. We knew we could not save all 153 million plus. But this one — this one who had a 60% chance of being trafficked, and whose future was as dark as the blackest midnight — this one we could help. And man, if we all just said, “I can help one.”
If we all just said that I’d rather help a child — a child fearfully and wonderfully made and knit together in someone’s womb and hand-designed and hand-picked by God, who desires good for them and not evil — if we said we could help one. If we said we’d rather keep one child from living on the street or being at a high risk for being sexually exploited or dead, a child who for sure knows the deep pangs of hunger, both physical and spiritual, who was meant for so much more. If we said their soul and their eternal being, designed by the same Father who designed us, is worth more than my temporary comforts, what a difference that would make.
Any of us who are parents would move Heaven and earth to take care of a child we already have. If our child in our home was sick, we would find the best doctors to take care of them. If they were hungry, we would feed them. If they were in danger, my God we would make them safe.
Yet when it comes to taking care of the children without mothers and fathers, children God loves infinitely more than we could ever love our own children, we remain silent, afraid the burden will be too great. Waiting for someone else to do what we cannot, or will not. Assuming we are not qualified. Staying scared. Staying too comfortable.
So we don’t show up. These children wait, alone — every minute, every second, inching them closer to a fate none of us would wish on our enemies. They wait for someone to show up.
Can we show up?
I just read in Steven Curtis Chapman’s amazing new biography, Between Heaven and the Real World: My Story, that their organization, Show Hope — which provides financial aid, among other things, for families who wish to adopt — was created, at least partly, when his wife, Mary Beth, realized their own friends would adopt if they helped finance it.
I can’t do that, or I would. Believe me, I would. But I can do this: if you have any inkling of an idea that you might want to adopt — if there is something stirred in you even just a tiny bit that thinks you could give an orphan a home, that you could raise your hand and say, “I will not let at least one orphan be without a family on my watch. I can help one,” then reach out to me. Comment here or email me at Gayle@TheGayleThompson.com, and let’s talk. Let’s figure it out. Let’s make a plan. I will help you.
All we need to do is show up. That’s it. Just show up.
“Someday I will die. And on that day I will not care about my bank account, my home, or my career. That day I will care about how I loved. I will care that I have made some small difference to this world. I will care that my voice has not remained silent about these children.” RansomforIsrael.com
