147 Million………..

yesterday I went to adoption clinic…and I think it gave me PTSD in reverse.

The smell of urine,  sunbeams through a barred window, the feeling of chapped hands, the smell of stale bread and boiled cabbage….  These are the things that take me back to being 19 yo, young, idealist who walked down the OTHER hallway at child protective services in Bucharest…

July 13, 2004 (from my journal)

Eerie silence echoed through the long, narrow, gray room. It was frozen in time; the light from the singled barred window on the far side seemed listless, much like the occupants of the cribs. I tiptoed over to the first crib:  there was a heap of brown curls wet with tears, sweat and urine scrunched in the far corner. At the sound of my footsteps, she jerked her head up from her hushed sobbing and looked at toward my quiet steps, scars of untreated infantile galucoma clouded her sky blue eyes. How could a eight year-old know such grief, such fear? I reached down to pick her up:  she was weightless it seemed. I let her down gently to the floor. She stood slowly, her tear streaked face seemed to come alive.  She held my hand with a death grip:  don’t let go, don’t let me go.  She walked with careful steps fearful of the monsters she could no longer see.  At the dark end of the room, another crib had been pushed away from the others.  .I heard the sound of metal striking metal against the rail of the crib. Then I saw a hand and unnaturally slender wrist is covered with red welts and oozing blisters. I peer into the crib and discover the etiology of his suffering. A single piece of cloth encircles his other wrist and the bar of his crib. I gasped, on the sign above the stated this child was 14 but he was the size of a toddler. His head was grotesquely mishapen with untreated hydrocephalus. No wonder she was so afraid, no wonder she grieved. This was not a hospital for disabled children, it was a prison.

I am haunted by these children…orphans…some abandoned because of poor resources, some because they are members of my tribe and their families left them and the stigma of raising a cursed child behind,  some born on the streets, some badly abused and taken for their own safety. But all left in a pitiless system that devalues their potential and slowly teaches them and even molds them (both physically and emotionally)  that they are not worth it.

And don’t this is about Romania or even Eastern Europe.   I could tell stories about the slums of Nairobi where children die of dehydration, HIV and TB and no one cares.  I could tell you about young beautiful African teenagers selling themselves to survive.

And don’t think this is about the developing world either. There are 888,000  children in foster care in the US.   And I shudder to tell you the stories I see every day on the pysch Ward, in the ED of abuse, neglect or kids who have never known a stable environment in their 10 years…who can tell you the top drug lords of their housing project are but can’t find the state they live in on a map….

But yesterday I saw the other side…. White people from the suburbs who I half expect to invite me to a Wednesday night church supper or run into when I shop at the uppity grocery store in uptown who have adopted from China, from Ethiopia, from the Ukraine and yes from the US of A.  People from the culture I grew up in who went to the cultures I live and work in now and brought back a child. I saw one little girl who had just come from China a week ago…she has a clef palate.  In two weeks she had advanced 2-3 months developmentally. In just 2 weeks…. I had tears in my eyes taking her history.     Because I have seen 100s of these children , room after room of babies who get fed and changed twice a day who never learn to sit up or crawl or walk much less talk or interact not because they are not capable but becuase no one holds them.

And I was overjoyed for this little girl…for this chosen one…..  But what about the others…..a 147 million others. What about them?  I found myself wanting to scream this loudly at these parents.  “WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER BABIES???”   I didn’t of course because I knew that I was being absurd.  Its just that while I love the idea of adoption and I think its a beautiful reflection of what Christ does for us…. and I admit I even plan to adopt myself  one day… its a drop in the bucket.

147 million is a lot of drops…

I want to answer the question why babies get abandoned.  I want to be about de-stigmatizing disability/birth defects in the developing world, preventing HIV in Africa, decreasing maternal mortality in the 10/40 window,  changing the way cultures think about little girls, building sustainable economies in nations so that families can keep their babies….

we are called to care for orphans and widows….but what does that mean in our modern world? what does that mean as spoiled, pretentious, well-meaning Americans… ???   I don’t know the answer but the longer I reread the gospel and the more I travel the world, the more I realize that the redeeming, trans formative answers are the ones that make me in my home culture and yes in my home religion the most uncomfortable.

My prayer is that I am ready and willing to look beyond my own fears and my own bias and believe that its possible. TO believe that there are answers and be ready to radically follow my God in search of them.

….147 million

My own personal train wreck…

I woke up two days ago with a  sensation. My hip was bursting with heat, anger and exhaustion.  I imagine if my lungs were in the shape the hip was at that moment I would be wheezing and puffing and turning blue.

Its my right hip….the so called GOOD hip.

What if you got on a train and you knew within the first five minutes that there was something terribly wrong?  Maybe there was smoke, maybe there hijackers…something that told you that it was only a matter of time before a…wreck…and you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt there was nothing you could do to prevent it.   It would happen.

What would you do?

What would you do if the same thing happened to you last year?

I can barely put on my socks.  I went to the gym last week and my right hip is still recovering.  The pain is not so bad that it wakes me at night and some days it doesn’t bother me hardly at all but its there.  Its going to give out.   Its relentless…this biochemistry…this physics.  I will lose.  There is no winning, no amount of fighting will save it.

and I can’t help but hate it.  Even though I know in the end it will be fine and it wont be that bad. Its hard to be happy about it.

unspeakable

Grade schooler

likes The Little Mermaid

and butterflies

and her Barbies.

For the past two years

every other weekend

her biological Dad

has molested her.

The story is an old one.

Its all over the world.

Its in your back yard and on the playground and in your local elementary school

Its not like TV.

Its worse.

I have learned the science behind the forensics these past two weeks.

I done a pelvic exam on more little girls than I would like to contemplate.

because one (and I’ve done several more than one) is too many.

I still believe

Here is the dream.

Thank you for climbing the mountain…now please jump off.

I have been the queen of life plans.  All my medical school classmates went through periods of secretly hating me because I had a life plan that was scripted to the nth degree while they wandered amongst specialties .  Since I was 14 the goal was be a doctor and since I was 20 the goal has been be a global health doctor.  There were some tangents like the phase when I was confused about the global health part and thought about div school.  But all in all the foundation of my day life has been centered on those goals for the last 12 years.  I studied for SAT and the SAT II and the AP EXAM and then I overachieved and tried to save the world in college. Then I studied for the MCAT, then I bought a suit and talked my way into medical school. Then I overachieved in medical school and tried to save the world again.   Then I bought a better suit and talked my way into  a top pediatrics program that gave me money to try to  save the world again, this time for real. Mission accomplished.

Now  I am the doctor and I am in a global health pediatrics program.

Well snark it.

Now what do I do?

Everyone else has an idea of what I am to do. Heck, Wake has ideas. My adviser has ideas. My PD and my classmates have ideas. My parents have ideas.  My friends have ideas.   I feel pressured and pulled and spread out over a vast array of possibilities.

But I am idea-less.  I am vision-less.  I am directionless.  For first time since I was 14 I have no idea what I want.  And its terrifying. I keep running around in mental circles without going anywhere.

Maybe that’s the point,  Maybe that’s the bottom line.  Maybe I have been climbing the mountain for so long that I am not sure how to just sit and be at the top of the mountain.  Maybe I was brought to the top of the mountain not because it was the pinnacle of achievement or the dream.  But because it was the end of my dream and beginning of God’s.  I often wonder if God stares down at me and laughs at my efforts and my mental marathons.  Not in a sort of mean or condescending way but in a knowing way. Knowing that his dreams and desires for me are far beyond what I can imagine.    Maybe my job at the top of mountain is not to roll down or even jump off but to wait….

Wait, listen and let someone with far better ideas than I dream the next leg of the journey.