Today is morning four in Ethiopia, Sunday, and my heart has broken.
The morning after we arrived in Addis Ababa, we drove to the remote village of Wuchale, where our boys were born and where we met them at their orphanage. This trip was long—10 hours by rented blue Toyota van, roads full of hairpin turns, oxen, mules, camels, and laughing children.
To be honest, I wasn't too excited to return. Our boys Tadesse and Biruk had already been transferred to their newer, nicer orphanage in the capital city. And really—am I not just here to pick up my children? Nonetheless, part of Bethany's itinerary is to take us back to the boys' home, to show us intimately where they come from.
So we met the boys' soft-spoken uncle whose eyes crinkled into smiles as he spoke of them and told how they are miracles of their circumstances...and they are. We walked the streets where Tadesse and Biruk walked every day. We said hello to their neighbors. We learned details of their lives.
Walking down the hill from the orphanage, one smiling girl (Why are they all smiling?) walked next to us and grabbed Jerome's hand. Satisfied to just be walking next to my husband on our short walk, she caused something inside me to be deeply touched. To some degree, we come from a different world. We look different, smell different, sound different.
So this morning, the middle of the night yet, really, Jerome and I lay in bed awake, caught somewhere between the time zones, and feeling over blessed and overwhelmed. It's hard not to feel that what we are attempting to do here is entirely inadequate.
Because nights in Addis Ababa are noisy to our midwestern sleeping sensibilities, we had left my iPad running quietly through my iTunes music. So we listened to Mandisa's "Overcomer" and discussed the Ethiopian indomitable spirit, and I remembered the women we passed along the roadside, who, as they were bent under large bundles of branches carried on their backs, glowed with happiness and cheek to cheek smiles.
We discussed how we quit volunteering as Compassion advocates a few years back because we felt like our church family had been saturated with sponsorship, that everyone who was thinking of being a child sponsor had already committed to it. But we had only seen the pictures of children and watched the Saturday morning commercials that begged for more help for them. Those children felt far away, and a part of me, perhaps, thought that those children were a small minority.
Those children are my children.
And while I am thrilled to get Tadesse and Biruk home to where we can start working on language and nutrition and faith, a sinking feeling remains that I am somehow forgetting about the others: the little girl who walked hand-in-hand with my husband, the children along the roadside who were herding goats, the mothers who desperately want to provide for their children but can see no means of income, the uncles who meet with adoptive families to tell about their miraculous nephews.
How do we whisk away a few and not minister to those who remain? How do we go back to our lives without remaining somehow broken, and are we really even supposed to?
So Jerome and I did the only thing we could think to do: we prayed. We prayed for the people of Ethiopia who are already making great strides. We prayed that God continue to send His Holy Spirit to guide them. We prayed for ourselves, that we can begin to use our blessings more adequately and less selfishly, and we prayed for our miraculous boys.
We don't want to return to life as normal. We want God to change us and mold us, not to forget who God has called all of us to be as the worldwide church. And while we're leaving Ethiopia soon, we hope that a piece of Ethiopia remains with us always.
The morning after we arrived in Addis Ababa, we drove to the remote village of Wuchale, where our boys were born and where we met them at their orphanage. This trip was long—10 hours by rented blue Toyota van, roads full of hairpin turns, oxen, mules, camels, and laughing children.
To be honest, I wasn't too excited to return. Our boys Tadesse and Biruk had already been transferred to their newer, nicer orphanage in the capital city. And really—am I not just here to pick up my children? Nonetheless, part of Bethany's itinerary is to take us back to the boys' home, to show us intimately where they come from.
So we met the boys' soft-spoken uncle whose eyes crinkled into smiles as he spoke of them and told how they are miracles of their circumstances...and they are. We walked the streets where Tadesse and Biruk walked every day. We said hello to their neighbors. We learned details of their lives.
Walking down the hill from the orphanage, one smiling girl (Why are they all smiling?) walked next to us and grabbed Jerome's hand. Satisfied to just be walking next to my husband on our short walk, she caused something inside me to be deeply touched. To some degree, we come from a different world. We look different, smell different, sound different.
So this morning, the middle of the night yet, really, Jerome and I lay in bed awake, caught somewhere between the time zones, and feeling over blessed and overwhelmed. It's hard not to feel that what we are attempting to do here is entirely inadequate.
Because nights in Addis Ababa are noisy to our midwestern sleeping sensibilities, we had left my iPad running quietly through my iTunes music. So we listened to Mandisa's "Overcomer" and discussed the Ethiopian indomitable spirit, and I remembered the women we passed along the roadside, who, as they were bent under large bundles of branches carried on their backs, glowed with happiness and cheek to cheek smiles.
We discussed how we quit volunteering as Compassion advocates a few years back because we felt like our church family had been saturated with sponsorship, that everyone who was thinking of being a child sponsor had already committed to it. But we had only seen the pictures of children and watched the Saturday morning commercials that begged for more help for them. Those children felt far away, and a part of me, perhaps, thought that those children were a small minority.
Those children are my children.
And while I am thrilled to get Tadesse and Biruk home to where we can start working on language and nutrition and faith, a sinking feeling remains that I am somehow forgetting about the others: the little girl who walked hand-in-hand with my husband, the children along the roadside who were herding goats, the mothers who desperately want to provide for their children but can see no means of income, the uncles who meet with adoptive families to tell about their miraculous nephews.
How do we whisk away a few and not minister to those who remain? How do we go back to our lives without remaining somehow broken, and are we really even supposed to?
So Jerome and I did the only thing we could think to do: we prayed. We prayed for the people of Ethiopia who are already making great strides. We prayed that God continue to send His Holy Spirit to guide them. We prayed for ourselves, that we can begin to use our blessings more adequately and less selfishly, and we prayed for our miraculous boys.
We don't want to return to life as normal. We want God to change us and mold us, not to forget who God has called all of us to be as the worldwide church. And while we're leaving Ethiopia soon, we hope that a piece of Ethiopia remains with us always.
