I am so blessed to be teaching music (playing around with students who sing and laugh and smile and rock on some fantastic faux wooden instruments.) Sometimes we all start laughing so much while we're trying to sing or "appreciate" some great songs like "Take out the papers and the trash...", "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," as well as some Mozart worked in for good measure...that we are in pain from the convulsions!
The kids I teach range in age from six to seventeen. Some dealing with severe diagnoses. All are human sponges, warmly welcoming touches, smiles, and love. I take our daughters along, two at a time, to help the kids play the rhythm instruments...and to share their hearts with these kids.
They are all so beautiful.
They are all so deserving.
My teaching is embarrassingly poor, my piano playing abysmal, yet they greet me with joy and enthusiasm. Such honor that should be reserved for one far more gifted than I. I feel constantly inadequate. I am a singer, sort of, and I have led music for years in Sunday clubs...but...I was such a bomb in music theory... Even still, I try share the love my Father has given me. Each time I pray that it would spill over from me into their hearts. I have received so much grace, so much mercy, unconditional love and acceptance...I want to cover them with it...make them sloppy with the soul satisfying Love that I know.
With all my glaring faults and rough edges, any failing effort I make, is welcomed by those kids. I just have to keep going back. When I climb the stairs to my fourth floor classroom...I can hear them...chattering about the music teacher...asking each other if I've yet come.
Last week, Magpie and I chatted for awhile with a handsome seventeen year old boy. He has lived his whole life in the orphanage. He has even learned some English...when asked his name...he told Magpie, "You can call me Bruce Lee (his
He has CP affecting his legs. So, when he walks, he has a strange gait.
Our orphanage is filled with loving, talented and caring nannies and teachers. These kids are definitely loved by their caregivers and the volunteers like me who come in to teach extra classes.
But there he was, standing in front of me, his eyes shining with a clever snap...so proud that he's wowed us with his English... Then he sang for us...with a lovely tone and interpretation of the lyrics...and I thought I was going to collapse.
He will never have a family.
He will NEVER have a family.
He will never have a FAMILY.
HE will never have a family.
It is an unfathomable travesty...an egregious life sentence.
He is too old to be adopted. He has never known a Mom or a Dad. He has wonderful loving people who are paid to care for him...but at the end of the day...those who are his substitute family...go HOME to their FAMILIES. Just like I did, and I will on Friday, and the Friday after that...and the Friday after that...
Soon he will have to leave the orphanage.
There is a plan for him; a place for him to go and live. It is the old folks' home.
What is the likelihood that he would ever meet a marry a woman to make a family of his own?
In this place, family is EVERYTHING.
Without a family, his prospects of marrying a girl who has a family are minuscule.
Maybe another girl, who comes out of the orphanage, herself without a family...maybe they could make a life together? Yet, there is no girl that I've seen near his age, nor his mental capabilities.
IF only...
his birth parents had been able to keep him...
he'd had access to the early medical intervention that parents can fight for...can pursue with the ferocity that only parents have for their children's needs....
someone would have seen him like I see him...a beautifully, talented, clever soul who would have made any parents' lives richer and more blessed because he was theirs...
But instead...
He will never have a family.
This reality of injustice squeezes the breath from my chest and makes me ache...
His is the face of the orphan crisis. He is why we continue to encourage people to pray about adoption. He is why when that clueless person says to me a coarse comment like, "it seems like adoption really is a fad these days" I can find the words within me to say, "having a family has never been a fad"...instead of screaming obscenities...
He is why my music class is a shamefully inadequate attempt at "doing something"... when all he has ever needed was a family.
If I could bring you with me...to SEE.
To see THEM.
It is not a social justice issue. It is not a Christian ministry. It is not a service project.
It is the rest of his life.
