November 18, 2009 – Why Ethiopia?

It’s funny. Once we tell people that we are adopting internationally, and then from Ethiopia, they start asking questions like, did you try China? What about Russia? How about India? What about the Ukraine? It’s like the children from Ethiopia aren’t worth it. It’s very heart breaking. To be honest, we really thought long and hard about Ethiopia. Bottom line – there are over 4 million orphans alone in Ethiopia! 4 Million!! Ethiopia has a relatively quick turn-around time (about 18 months), compared to China (which is now in excess of 4 years I hear). The travel time and time away from our family is minimal, and again, they have 4 MILLION orphans. Of course we know there will be struggles, and YES, of course we know our child will have a different color skin. Duh… yeah, we know that and we thought about it. We thought ahead about it for the child’s first 18 years…. How will our little town treat someone of a different color; what about prom? Will our daughter be asked to the prom if she goes to a predominately white high school? What about our community? Will she be welcomed as our daughter?... Lots of questions… we thought about them all. Then, our 10 year old summed it up in one sentence . . . he said, “Mom, aren’t we all God’s children?” ding, ding, ding, BINGO…. Something so simple that an innocent 10 year old can recognize takes some adults forever to understand, and sadly, some will never get it. But, YES, YES, we are all God’s children. It made me think of that song I used to sing in Sunday school, “Jesus loves the little children”… “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight…” In fact, I think I actually sung it at that point, probably because I was trying to keep from crying. Both of our boys are so companionate for people. I’m glad. Diversity is all around us. It’s not a bad thing. God likes variety. Otherwise, we’d all be the same, right? As I said before, we are all adopted daughters and sons of Christ. We are adopted in to His arms, no matter what we’ve done, no matter what color we are, no matter what kind of car we have, no matter what ‘title’ we have, etc. Now, I’m not saying that we won’t have challenges ahead, but I know that we can get through them with the support of our friends and family and with the love of God. He wouldn’t send us on this journey, if we weren’t to learn something about it. We are constantly finding that all of our journeys in life are just training for our eternal life. We’ve walked through our share of ‘junk’ but in the end, we are always stronger for it.