With Lutaaya’s adoption being passed and processed and the paperwork looming, there have been lots of comments of her being a lucky girl!
To Lutayaa, her world was turned upside down the day I removed her from the orphanage.
To us on the outside world I did the better thing. I took a child, whom I love dearly, out from an institutionalised setting and gave her a home, a Mum, a family.
To Lutaaya, I took her from everything she had ever known.
Add to this the fact that at approx. 18 months old, this little girl was abandoned by her birth mother, who had cared for her during those months and left on a doorstep, you end up with a very hurt little girl.
A little girl, who is certainly anything but ‘lucky’.
Yes she will be blessed with endless love here. Yes she now has a family to call her own. Yes I will, wherever possible keep her culture alive. Yes she is more fortunate than the ones left behind.
But from visiting Uganda regularly myself, even I know some nights it’s tough to go to sleep. Too difficult to forget.
Sometimes it’s too much to simply try and ignore all those little faces that whirl about in your head of all the little ones left behind. All those who don’t have the blessing of a family or a home. All those who tonight, will go to bed hungry. All who don’t have a goodnight kiss and get tucked into bed. All those who are yet to feel loved.
I only ever visited. I have never lived there.
And still I see them.
I can’t imagine what Lutaaya feels like when she recalls her friends.
They are not statistics to us. They are not faces without names.
They are Jo-an, Martha, Tom, Abu, Diane, Miriam, Jessica, Annette, Innocent, ………………………………..
All real.
All with a personality of their own.
All loved in our hearts and held in our prayers.
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| Lutaaya's on the right. With some of her friends the day before she left her former home. |
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| Having fun with some of the other children. Not sure why the head scarf?!?!? |
So tonight, please let them enter your head too, and if you are the praying kind, please say an extra prayer for each of them.
That our miracle-maker God will hold each of them closer to Him and find all of them the RIGHT family. That God will show you the path of a way to help these children.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom will I send? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
Isaiah 6: 8
