I entered this world in the cold, I didn't look like the typical pink baby and I was labelled a curse because I was different. I was rejected by my mother, my father, my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. I was unwanted, "worthless". What happens to us kids who are labeled "worthless"? We are sent to prison. Another cold, dark building with cold, dirty floors, and walls. Metal bars line the walls and hard, old, dirty mattresses fill the bars - they call them cribs, but they are prison cells.
I am scared and confused, where is that familiar heartbeat I have heard from the beginning of my existence? Why don't I hear that soothing voice of the woman who carried me? The woman who should be my mother? I'm hungry, my little body flails and fights and screams for someone to help me. FEED ME!!! But no-one comes. Finally, my cries are heard and a bottle with a huge hole in the nipple is propped in my mouth. I am tiny and I gulp and choke and can't keep up with the outpouring of food. I don't understand. This hurts!
Someone walks to my crib and picks me up, I am so happy to feel someone and hear that thump thump of another heartbeat...I want to snuggle in. I want them to pat my back and sing to me. I want them to rock me and tell me that I am precious. Finally!! I think this need will be met. I am put on a table and changed quickly and roughly, my little body which is getting skinnier each day is run over with a hot rough rag and I am put back into my prison cell...no soothing voice or soft patting. No love.
I will not give up!!! I will cry and cry LOUDER and someone will hear me and come to me. I continue to cry day after day, my stomach growls and aches, I get skinnier, my diaper rarely gets changed and I begin to feel the burn of open sores, I look for human contact and interaction day after day. A week, then a month, then 2 months go by. I should give up and quit crying. NO! I will try again! After another month I realize no-one is coming, not the lady who props the bottle, not the lady who scrubs me down, not the director, not the woman who carried me for 9 months...not one.
I lay in this prison silently now. I know intuitively when a meal will come and I anxiously wait for it so the burning hole in my stomach will lessen, although the pain and the reflux from eating so quickly is sometimes worse than the pain of hunger. I continue to look at the caretakers, I stare at them, but they do not look back at me.
I am 9 years old. I am smart, I am beautiful, I am different. I am unloved. I can't walk very well after 9 years in a prison cell called a crib. I have no toys and never have so I don't know what to do with them. I can't look at you in the eye because I have learned not to. I don't understand when a stranger comes in a smiles at me or wants to hold me....these things are strange to me and I brace myself for what kind of pain this new interaction will inflict. I am certain that pain WILL come from it because everything in my life causes pain.
I am an orphan.
***Ok, this is what I think of when I think about the children that I am screaming for. When I have cried out and asked you to pray for Chad
or Walt
This is the life these children lead every minute of every day.
Now....here's the GOOD!
Chad has finally found a family. Someone has seen him, heard his story, read about all of his abundant medical and emotional needs and has stepped forward in faith!! Friends, some days I have shouted for Chad and wondered if anyone would ever see the beautiful life in front of them. I have wondered if he would experience freedom on this side of eternity and God has answered and said YES!!!
Now...the not so good.
Chad is not the only child who has been waiting...and waiting...and waiting.
There's a little girl -an adorable little girl who has been waiting. She has dark curly hair, dark eyes, and truly the most beautiful "little" voice I may have ever heard. She is a little spitfire! She tells the caretakers when they need to change the other babies' diapers and is like a little mommy to them. Here's the difference with Sadie: She has Osteogenesis Imperfecta. This means that her bones a very brittle and break easily. She can break a bone simply by sneezing. However, there are IV injections in the US that I'm told can strengthen her bones and surgeries that can also improve her condition. Is she fragile? Yes, but she is strong! Maybe not in the typical sense of the word, but at almost 8 years old she has survived more than most of us can even imagine. Please, don't pass Sadie bye. This little angel needs a family.
To learn more about her, please go here
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