A few weeks ago, my husband and I watched the movie Lion. For those unfamiliar, it’s the true story of Saroo Brierley, a five-year-old little boy living with an impoverished mother in rural India who, while out looking for scraps late at night with his older brother to make a few pennies, fell asleep on a train, and woke up far away from his home, abandoned and alone, left to fend for himself as a little boy in an unfamiliar land.
Probably at least ten people told me I needed to see the movie. Maybe more. But I wasn’t ready to see it, and I certainly wasn’t ready to write about it.
And then I stumbled upon the website, RansomforIsrael.com, about a family who has a total of six children, including a little boy they adopted named Israel. Israel was four years old, wearing size 18 to 24 month clothes, had a spine ready to POKE THROUGH HIS SKIN because of malnutrition, and spent almost all day, every day of his life, in a crib in his native country of Bulgaria. You can read his story — he who represents one of so many — here.
And I still wasn’t ready to talk about it.
And then, this week, Reagan wanted to ride his bike through the neighborhood, so I walked with him so he could go past the confines of our cul de sac. He rode his big wheel down the “big hill” a couple times, and then decided to go back home because he was so hot.
As we were riding/walking back, he said, very confidently, “I’m going to ask Daddy to make me a smoothie.” And there was something about the way he said it — so certain, so sure that his father would gladly make him a smoothie (he did, by the way) — that struck me. How fortunate is he to never know anything but the love of two parents? How fortunate is he to know there is food — healthy food — available for him anytime he wants?
And that’s when I decided to write about it. Because Saroo was the same age as my son when he found himself 1000 miles from home. Israel was one year younger.
There are over 11 million children living on the streets of India alone. Children like my Reagan. Children just like my Marella, abandoned in a pile of trash in the slums of India because of a few crooked toes. And maybe we need to keep talking about it, and at least keep it in the front of our mind, and stop changing the subject because it makes us uncomfortable. Maybe we need to let it hurt us, just a fraction of the way these orphans are hurting.
Because here’s the ugly truth: while we buy big houses and drive fancy cars and go on expensive vacations and wear designer clothes and spend our evenings watching our flat-screen TV, and say we can’t afford to adopt, orphans are dying.
While we say adoption and foster care is too hard, and we wouldn’t be able to handle the heartbreak, and we’re not strong enough and we haven’t been called to take care of orphans, orphans are dying.
While we send our small monthly donation to an organization that helps children around the world, and drop our 10% in the offering and slip the homeless person a $5 bill and applaud ourselves for being so generous, orphans are dying.
While we say we are too old or too young or too broke or too busy or too overwhelmed, orphans are dying. Our brothers and sisters, our Isaiahs and Marellas, these are the children that are dying every single day.
They are dying right in front of us. Every day. Children just like my daughter, with the same fiery personality, who loves to sing ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and ‘The B-I-B-L-E’ and tell me that the lion goes “ROAR” and plays hide-and-seek by putting a box over her head — these children are dying.
Some facts to consider:
- India is estimated to have the largest orphan population in the world, but their adoption rates have halved. Perhaps that’s because India is so hard to adopt from. But I assure you, the adoption process is not nearly as hard as a five-year-old living on the street and begging for food.
- Every day 5760 children become orphans. Every. single. day.
- 250,000 children are adopted annually, but 14,050,000 — MORE THAN 14 MILLION CHILDREN — will age out of the orphan care system. That’s 38,493 children each day, or one child every 2.2 seconds. The ages for the countries vary, but in India, children go from an institution to the streets by the age of 14. In some countries, the age is younger.
- More than 400,000 children in the United States alone are in foster care, with over 100,000 of them waiting to be adopted.
I love what Israel’s mom, Stacey, says about adoption and foster care:
It’s a problem when we see orphans as a collective group. It’s so much easier to look away when we see a systemic problem, instead of an individual need. I know that not a single one of you reading this could easily walk away from an orphan knocking at the door of your house tonight. You would not look at the malnourished wisp of a child, and tell them to go ask someone else for a meal, a bed, a warm coat. But when we think about these children as a group, as the millions, it makes the pill of indifference an easy swallow.
That was so me until a few years ago. Until I literally heard a voice telling me to adopt a little girl in India (I’m not even joking), I was the one looking away. I was the one saying we weren’t rich enough, ready enough, and I wasn’t “called,” at least not yet. I was the one. I was that person.
But now, each one of these is a Marella to me. Each one. Each one is somebody’s daughter, somebody’s son, somebody’s child.
I’m not trying to be graphic –but maybe I am. Johnny and I have talked about foster care before, and the more we get settled into our lives as a family of four, the more I think that will be our next step. Stacey, who has the experience of both a foster mom as well as an adoptive mom, doesn’t mince words in what she shares. But whether we want to face it or not, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, whether we want to DO SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD or not, this is the reality of so many children — children in our country. Children in our state. Children in our city. Maybe even children on our street.
I willingly signed up for foster care and invited its victims into my house and their faces march across my memories. I have looked into the sightless gaze of an 18 month old as she undergoes a sex abuse exam, and held her 4 year old brother smeared in his own poop as he raged against me. I’ve used my touch to comfort the pain from burns and breaks, but never came close to touching the deeper scars that will always remain hidden deep within the heart. I’ve held broken babies whose only crime was crying too loudly when their mom was trying to sleep off her high, and nursed to health a toddler who got on daddy’s bad side.
I don’t have all the answers to how we fix this. But I urge you, plead with you, beg you with every fiber of my being to not turn away from the Marellas and Isaiahs of this world. If it took you five minutes to read this, 660 children are out on their own on the streets somewhere in the world, subject to trafficking, abuse and death, without someone to make sure they are clothed, fed, healthy.
Since I’m being blunt, in the Ukraine and Russia alone, 60% of orphan girls are trafficked. Let’s not mince this. 60% of girls. 6 out of 10. More than half. I don’t have specific numbers for India, or other parts of the world, but Asia, and specifically India, is often considered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, human trafficking hubs in the world. The numbers could be (probably are) higher.
Six out of 10 Marellas are forced to have sex with multiple men a night, every night. Sometimes three or four a night. Sometimes more. I attended a conference on trafficking, several years ago, where one speaker said the average men a girl — a CHILD — is forced to have sex with each day is 11.
Eleven. Every night.
Every one of these children is a Marella. Every one. Every one of them deserves to have a mother, a father, a home, a meal. Every one of them deserves to not be on the streets. And for the love of God, if we can’t save all, can we save one?
Today, 5760 children will become orphans, whether due to death, disease or abandonment. Maybe a smaller house would give another orphan like Marella a home. Maybe more meals at home and less in restaurants would give a child like Isaiah a home. Maybe retirement can wait a few years, so a little girl doesn’t have to have sex with an old man. Maybe that extra bedroom doesn’t need to become a reading den just yet, so a little boy can have a father who tucks him in at night.
Maybe a little inconvenience could change a life, save a life.
We have wonderful, amazing, beautiful friends who have been called to other things, but helped the orphan by helping us in big ways during our adoption process. I am not saying that everyone should adopt — not at all — but I am saying that it’s time we step up and become a voice for the more than 153 million children who will never know what it’s like to have a mother kiss their boo-boo, or a father make them a smoothie. It’s time we stop saying “I’m not called to adopt,” because we cannot say we believe in Jesus and are not called to look after the orphans.
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” ~James 1:27
“For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!'” ~Romans 8:15
There are so many wonderful organizations that take what little we can offer and turn it into something wonderful for orphans, and please keep giving to them. Please don’t stop. But while we give that money, in the time it takes us to write that check or log onto the website and send our donations, more orphans are finding themselves on the literal street, with no money, no one to look after them, no place to be.
Our time here is a breath, really. It’s so, so short. What if we collectively stood up and said, “Not on my watch. More orphans will not die, will not age out, will not cease to exist, while I have the power to change a life.”
I promise you, there are plenty more Marellas and Isaiahs who will end up dead or on the streets if we don’t stand up and say ENOUGH. Enough. I’m not willing to let children live unimaginable lives, endure unthinkable things, and die lonely deaths because my American comforts were worth more to me than their very existence.
Enough.
“God is not looking for you to live safe and comfortable, it should terrify you, exhaust you, burden you and most of all cause you to realize that without Him you would absolutely fail. And if I am sitting on this Earth and thinking that all my dreams have come true, then perhaps I should re-evaluate and determine that maybe I dreamed too small. If I feel safe and insulated, perhaps it’s time I look to lose sight of land and step deep into bigger waves. Because the minute I don’t need Him to pull me through the day, is the minute I have allowed my vision of the eternal to fade.” Stacey, RansomforIsrael.com
“I don’t want a flame, I want a fire. I wanna be the one who stands up and says, ‘I’m gonna do something.'” ~Matthew West, ‘Do Something’
“I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me.” ~Matthew 25:40
