orphans

I've been thinking about them a lot lately.


Isabel.















and Faith.













They're in my eyes and in my mind and in my tears and in my thoughts.

It has been killing me to think that they don't even look like these pictures anymore. They're older. They're getting older and are still fatherless. All 50 of them.


I'm getting ready to love and open my life to orphans once again. And this time it will look a lot different. A lot more machines and tubes and technology in between me and them. I hope it doesn't get in the way.

Even though I feel a little nervous at this opportunity, I'm looking forward to singing them to sleep and telling them about Jesus. I am looking forward to loving these unfortunate and deeply valuable little people--hoping that through their illness and deformity they'll get a glimpse of love and of the Gospel and of the good God who hears their cries even when the hole in their neck makes it impossible to make an audible sound.


And as I care for these little ones, again handing my heart over to be deeply wounded by their misery and hopelessness, I will remember the ones who first took my heart and did this very thing. The ones who forever opened my eyes and my heart to the fatherless.

I'll remember Audrey.

and Beauty.

Mapalo.

Mary.

Gideon.

Purity.

Hope.

Mutinta

Mercy.

Esther.

Choolwe.

Peter.

Wilson.

Aaron.

Moses.

Joe.

Jessica.

Ruthie.

and the rest...

Lord, hear their cries. I so badly want to, but I can't. Be merciful, O Father of the fatherless.