I can remember the thrill of NEW shoes for school each year. I would go with my Mom on a special shopping trip before school started. We would go to Stride Rite , The Navy Exchange or JC Penny’s and we would find sneakers and then a pair School/church shoes. My all time favorite was a pair of black Mary Janes that had faint embroidery on the toe of tic-tac-toe in light green and red. I got them just in time to start 2nd Grade.  This was also the phase where I refused to wear pants, only dresses. I would accept leggings if it was cold out of necessity. So there I was in my early 90s bright colored dress and leggings and black Mary Janes. In hindsight, sort of dorky but at the time those little shoes made me feel so grown up.

Somewhere around the age of 9 or 10 when my growth plates were bending in unfortunate directions and I was coming to grips with the reality of chronic pain. Shoes started being a source of great angst.  This was also the time when shoes were changing and no longer was it cool enough to wear my black Mary Janes or My Little Pony Sneakers.  No longer could I wear what my classmates wore. All the girls were wearing jelly shoes or canvas shoes with no support.  We would go to shoe store after shoe store, nothing would fit except for Velcro sort of sneakers that the kindergarteners were wearing and not the middle schoolers.

I went through a combat boot phase in sixth grade. They were a statement and in middle school that seems to be the goal of foot wear. But they also offered my poor ankles some support. This again in hindsight was a fashion low point of my life in which I wore Christian T-shirts (that said things like Got Jesus?) and baggy jeans and combat boots.  One of the security guards who drove me around in the golf cart to band and lunch (which were a bit of a hike) commented that my choice foot wear was probably not the best thing for my feet.  I was horrified being a Type-A people please-er of adults in my world.  Thus ended the combat boot stage. Looking back, he probably did me a favor.

In high school, they started introducing the concept of FORMAL WEAR.  I knew I was in deep trouble the first time I went shopping for shoes for my first prom. Strapy, stringy, heeled plastic things that cost 70 dollars and were a tibia fracture waiting to happen. My sweet mother dyed ballet slippers for me. They had no support but they matched my dress.  I survived without any ER visits.  Then there was the uncovered shoulder ISSUE (previously described) in which I showed my keloided scars to the world. I was not a fan. As if I needed to be more of a freak show.

I then went through an extended phase where I just decided I hated dressing up. Sad thinking that in elementary school, I wanted to dress up and be girly EVERY DAY. I decided I was going to be a hippee who wore peasant boluses, carpi pants or longish skirts and grow my hair (already longer than most girls) longer.  This sustained me through the beginnings of college where I at least in part to thanks my mother and sister switched the hippee skirts for cuter knee length numbers for the Carolina sunshine.

I vividly remember kicking and screaming my junior year of college when all my friends and I decided to go to the Non-Greek formal. My roommates had to nearly  hold me down to put my hair up and do my make up. WE have pictures and evidence of this.  I wore mary janes that I also wore to interview for medical school in. As for interviews, I was so grateful for the stylish gray paint suit for interviews. my grandmother and I found in an expensive store in the big Mall in Norfolk that covered most of my shoes and all of my shoulders.

Then came weddings. It was prom on steroids except now the pictures will actually matter beyond the age of 18, someone will be looking at them for the next 50 years. And those people are my closest friends.  The first wedding I was in had brown dresses which while I did not love, I loved that I could wear small brown flats without concern.  Then I was in two weddings where I was thankfully allowed to wear black and red and thus black flats.

In medical school everyone got cute Danskos and such for the wards. None of  which I could get my feet in. I became mildly obessessed with KEEN shoes. Black and Brown Mary Janes that I wore to pieces in Kenyan Mud. I wore black chaco sandals to my doctorate hooding partly by accident (left my black flats in the car) and partly out of sheer spite of professional shoe wear.

Then came this year. Summer wedding. Yellow dress.  My big toe on the left has this gout like bunion on the metatarsal joint that makes even ballet flats uncomfortable. Again the strappy, string, heeled things are going to be a disaster. My friend tells me you can wear anything but CHACOS.  I go to the comfortable shoe store here and to my horror the only thing they have is a pair of brown Chaco flip flops. I was post call, on my way home for the weekend which included a dress fitting. I was out of time. So I bought them. They didn’t look like CHACOs. They look liked brown flip flops. 20 minutes later I was already regretting spending so much money on ugly flip flops.  My Southern Bell (on occasion) mother gritted her teeth when she saw them. She would later tell me that she had already decided that there was NO WAY I was walking down the aisle in those horrible shoes. I reminded her that at least they were not combat boots.  I got fitted for the dress in the shoes. And then promptly returned them when I got back to OHIO.

I decided at this point I was going to go bare foot. Meanwhile, my PT here when I got my initial post op eval was MORTIFIED that I made it through life so long without orthotics. I told her I had PTSD from such things as a child. She chided me, throwing the whole MD thing at me. I relented and found she was right my feet felt better. On the up side,  I recently discovered that I could wear wedges when I was given a pair of Allergia shoes for work. I loved them so much I bought a second pair in another color. For the first time in my life, people complemented me on my foot wear! I felt strangely like I had in second grade over those dorky tic-tac toe mary janes! So proud and grown up. Oddly, one would think I would get past this, not so much.

With this in mind, I prepared myself mentally for another go shopping again to look at spring wedding shoes.  There had to be something out there, if I could find professional shoes that were NOT so bad, maybe there was hope. One pretty spring afternoon walk resulted in the purchase of a somewhat NOT awful  pair of sparkly sandals with a slight wedge.  My mother approved via cell phone pictures!!! Even my bunion approved with the adjustable straps. I breathed a sign of relief that the pain of shoe buying was over for another year. Already plotting that I could wear the SAME shoes for the Indian wedding I am scheduled to be in next Spring. Maybe I can make it two years if I didn’t wear them in Africa.

As I walked out the of shoe store, I looked down at my feet in CHACOs no less. And I smiled, you know they are funny shaped and they cant wear shoes to save their little soles. But they have grown on me. We’ve been through a lot together. They have gotten me where I have wanted to go, where I have needed to go without cartilage and against the laws of bio-mechanics.  Yes they are calloused, crooked and lumpy but they also tell my story with their stronger contours.  They tell a story of faithfulness even in the mist of suffering. And maybe that is the point.  Maybe I have beautiful feet that tell a beautiful story after all.

Here I was excelling in medical school, living my dream, planning my first trip to Africa and having no idea if I would be physically able to continue in a few months, years. I finally found the courage to get x-rays, a kind rheumatology fellow who I frankly owe my sanity to paged me and went over the films with me gently. He talked me into a steroid shot in which a the radiologist furthered my anxiety with talk of strange anatomy and bone density.  I made an appointment with the hip surgeon who I had met several years earlier and wrung my hands as I studied for Step 2, started my residency essays. The visit upset me even though I knew what was coming and gave me the strange transition of me explaining to my anxious mother what the doctors were saying. He gave me another steroid shot that was amazingly effective and I lived with denial for a summer, went to Romania and pretended that everything was ok. Perfected my residency essay, then my peds AI hit me like a freight train and my denial started to crumble.  My first patient died of pneumonia related to muscular dystrophy in an all night vigil of wailing parents and I was reminded of my sweet Romanian friend whose similar death had rocked my world in college.  Our parallel diseases differed in two major ways, there was a palliative yet potentially close to curative treatment for the symptoms of mine and even when I had no cartilage left…I wouldn’t die.  Visions of a beloved elderly patient with RA who had movement in her hands, was going blind and couldn’t get out of bed flashed through my brain…could I live with that reality?  Visions of the synthetic hip failing because of my bone density and knowing that once we took my femoral head they was no going back, if the prosthesis failed, I wouldn’t walk again.  After the on call vigil, I drove home to the mountains then onward to get a steroid shot.

Within in weeks, I could no longer deny it, the shot failed. I wasn’t sleeping now because of the pain.  It was everything I could do to keep the facade that I was just another medical student. I called my surgeon’s PA and cried in the child psych copy room and told her I wanted to do the surgery now.  (yes I had a nervous break down on the pysch floor…fun yes). Things fell into place, the surgeon fit me in (I am sure he was shaking his head thinking finally I was ready a year ago, this girl is nuts).  I passed Step 2, got my first residency interview and with tachycardia to the 120s, lectured my anesthesiologist on the decreased number of DVTs with spinals opposed to general as they rolled me into the OR.

I was a neurotic post-operative patient but I went back to medical school three weeks later, line danced at 5 weeks, interviewed for residency at 6 weeks, Kenya at 16 weeks  and by the time match day came I was taking the steps two at a time for the first time in my life.

I went through a similar period of denial and anxiety although much milder, fought to get steroid shots in Cincy( Part II, Part III). Epic fail, telling my  chief resident was near to the copy room incident. This time the PA tried to comfort me that even though there was a boat load of hardware in the hip, they would figure it out and I would be ok. I nearly lost my insurance coverage, took the Step 3 and then spoke in DC the week before.  By the time I got to the OR I found myself in a much better place than the previous time, believing that somehow the hip would work despite the hardware weakened bone and that I would walk out of this better than ever.  I found myself telling everyone (yay versed) my bucket list of things I wanted to do with two shiny hips (I remember this prior to heavier sedation but apparently I kept right on going although I don’t remember it). I woke up to the news that miracles of miracles the hardware had not prevented them from using the best kind of hip as expected and I had a 30 year lease at minimal. I was texting everyone I knew in the PACU and thanking everyone from the jainator to God for my incredible good fortune.  My family and I survived me with five weeks of unplanned toe touch weight bearing while the hardware holes healed despite a funeral, a mild incision infection and general angst on the part of a sibling.

And I find myself at 5 weeks post op sitting in an exam room across the hall from where this all began three years ago with the visit (see above). The PA comes in and asks me when I am going back to Africa?  She hands me the films with a grin. There they are, healing perfectly. Her optimism is infectious and suddenly as I remember how fragile it all seemed three years ago.I think back though to my first pediatric death and of my sweet friend Laura who died of a similar diseases (dying muscles and connective tissue…I have dying cartilage and connective tissue) and how in some strange way of the disability tribe I feel I owe them, they expect me not to waste this, to live with reckless abandon.

I am overcome by gratitude this time sans versed.  Nearly in tears.  The attending comes in  says my name, kisses my cheek and says “You’re Done!”  He grabs his cell and proceeds to call my pediatric ortho to tell him the good news. (yay for transition..although it was kind of a weird move)  He draws me my “life plan”  which includes one more visit at 6 months, then no more visits for 2 years.   It doesn’t seem real. No more hip pain, no more hip precautions, an inch taller (much to my sister’s dismay) I can throw away my crutches, 6 weeks of PT and then welcome to the rest of my life.

Mom and I drive back down the familiar spine of our beloved mountains, a little giddy despite the recent family sorrow, amazed at marvels of modern medicine, of grace and of the incredible joy of sweet relief and the sweet ability to dream.

Praise God.

I heard a sermon this weekend, the first sermon I had heard in a month, on biblical manhood. It was actually decent. He discussed how men have lost a sense of purpose, have a prolonged adolescence and a lost a sense of value for women and children. And frankly any pediatrician with half a brain has to affirm all of this.  But then at  the bitter end, it all went wrong.  The elder started talking about providing and dependents on his taxes and then he went there.  He said, “If given the choice nearly all women would stay at home and care for their children.”   I nearly stood up and marched out in a huff of self-righteousness as a young women physician not only for my own choices but because he had dove into the pool of fundamentalist, SBC BS clothed in biblical language.  What he intended was not nearly as important as what the congregation heard.

First I refer back to this from 2009 in which I previously spoke to the subject.   and then I echo my last paragraph…

Could you imagine a woman would shrewdly crush the head of a foreign general (either figuratively or literally, diplomatically)? Or could you imagine a woman so strong and wise that a general refuses to go to battle without her? Could you imagine if there was a woman like Esther who would go before the governments of nations where genocides, other hate crimes or gross human rights violations are happening and convince them to stop? Could you imagine if women would support their elderly, widowed family members like Ruth rather than sending them to nursing homes or griping about them? Could you imagine if women of the world fought back against violence toward women and children like Tamar? Could you imagine if the women of the world embraced the children born unplanned or unwanted? Could you imagine if women in nations where there is no freedom of religion quietly yet openly worshiped and ministered like the women at the tomb? Could you imagine if women stepped up as leaders yes pastors, ministers, teachers in places where there is no faith or where faith has died?

How different would our churches be?

How different would our families be?

How different would our world be?

…if every woman got up from the mud of our world that exploits women and their bodies and brushed off the dirt of centuries of fear and ignorance hidden in church tradition but lacking biblical substance and embraced her calling…whatever that calling may be from motherhood (yes even the stay at home kind…love ya MOM!) to ministry to beyond.

how desperate our world is for biblical womanhood….how desperate…

This is what I want.   I am tired of apologizing for my extra X chromosome or my kooky religion. I want to find a place where they can coexist as they were intended to in harmony.

Key sign that my intern mental health might be fraying.  I think I am reaching the breaking point.  I wish Kenya was next month.  I need it to remind me why all of this is worth it.

What I am drowning in:

• See Previous entry:  choosing between my fading passion and what I actually enjoy….and am building passion for…find freedom in not being defined by my differences but not losing who I am in the process…small stuff really…
• Its February, its snowing and icing and I am done with it.  Its not going to be past freezing today.
• My right hip is on the cusp of dying and I am ok with it, at least more ok with it than last time. I have confidence in my surgeons. But my schedule is a night mare and because I am not a 100% WHEN I want to do it so I don’t know how to go to the chiefs. Plus admitting to my bosses is harder than admitting it to my friends. We all know that last time I end up admitting this with tears rolling down my face in the psych copy room. Yeah I suck at admitting weakness.  Not to mention that even after that there is the question…can I do this living alone in OHIO???  My support network in NC was huge and varied.  Nothing technically ever happened  that required roommates to intervene but is really safe to live with the risk of not having anyone… but how to I place an ad on Craig’s list…HI I need a roommate to be there when I get a shiny new hip so if I fall and do something crazy someone will be there to pick up the pieces…
• I feel like I suck at my job which is mostly not true but my burnout is not  helping my morale or my confidence.
• I miss home….yes I am falling back into the 8 yo away at summer camp mode.  I dream about being back at Wake, I miss the intimacy, I miss not having to explain things and more than anything I miss my friends particularly their diversity in that many of them are not doctors.
• Speaking of which I MISS MY CHURCH even though it  doesn’t exist as I knew it.   I miss the freedom, the lack of formalities, I miss eating bad Mexican food every Sunday.  I miss doing life with SACRED TUESDAY, the small group we created without any guidance but out the desire to know one another and laugh at life and the questions we didn’t always understand.  I miss being able to curl up into the corner of the coach and just be or occasionally cry as long as I needed to about the dying patient, my dying hip 1.0 or the joy of it all.
• I feel like I am missing out.  My sisters are both living at home right now one because she is doing a her student teaching and one because well she can’t handle college away.  NOW I KNOW that I pride myself in my independence and I do. But  I love my family and its hard to talk to them on the phone and listen to them all hanging out and laughing while I am here in 20 degree weather by myself in OHIO looking at erythema toxicum all day (it  is a completely benign newborn rash that is meaningless).
• I miss Romania and this above all is the most futile.  I know I can’t be a doctor there. I cant get excited about Kenya in April or Zambia vs. Cameroon vs. Togo for next year. Or even the Ukraine….I just want to go and sit in a corner in a crumbling hospital building that I have memorized every inch of with a scarf over my head and hold a baby and not care about his erthema toxicum even though I know eventually would miss the medicine right now its killing me and I just want to love children without having to analyze their every freckle.

Now I have to go to work.  But there is the list as it stands.

STOP. STOP. STOP.

For just a moment I would like to bask in the moment that I am done with school for all intensive purposes.  Other than three weeks of casual lectures. I am done with medical school.

No more exams, no more adult patients, no more surgery rotations!!!

and now that moment has passed. now we move on to whats really important when you graduate from medical school at 25…becoming an adult.

A real one.

I am bad at it.  For starters…life has been prolonged series of camping trips since well birth…  I go somewhere, I sleep there for a while then I move on. I don’t know what color I want my kitchen or what kind of slip covers I want or where one even really goes to furnish a house… When I imagined myself as a grown up…I imagined a small soviet bloc style apartment or small falling down African house/flat filled with a lot of ethnic art, books, photographs, doctor stuff and stock piled peanut butter in rubber maid containers next to the rubber maid containers of Gideon bibles (in a language that only i speak) and buttons that misguided yet well meaning churches send me and I use as coffee tables. Eventually there will be a husband and kids smooshed in the tiny, tiny flat  too.  I have no idea how to set up house in America especially as a doctor. Apparently doctors are very respectable and have color coordination and matching hand towels. Why didn’t they cover this in medical school?

Insurance…well I have been uninsurable off of my parents’ insurance up to this point. All I know is insurance companies hate me because I was born gimptastic.  There are now like mutliple plans that all cover me now because I have the title of doctor and I work at Childrens.  How do I choose? What’s the difference? Can I just barter brownies for hip x-rays? Is that an option?

Money…never had any of my own…ever.  What little I did have to my name I spend on plane tickets for “camping trips” and food. I have no idea what one does with money that does not go to eating…apparently  one goes to IKEA and buys sofa beds…thats what my Mom said to do.  Then there are taxes and my student loans according to my Dad eats up the rest of it.

Well I have been an adult now for four days. I think I am done. I am ready to retire.

Preparing for major orthopedic surgery in my family has familiar rituals  too because its been a somewhat frequent occurrence in our lives.  Some are very practical, some are down right silly.  Its been  a while but one would think it was just last year if you watched how quickly we all fall into the roles we know so well. My Mom sets out arranging things even with me signing consents and doing most of the arranging now she still finds ways. Dad reassures Mom, me, himself with daily pronouncements that everything is going to be ok.  Emily and Tori shuffle in and out of the dialogue offering books, chocolate and wanting to know long i will monopolize all of our lives (my primary question as well) particularly my parents’.

I go to the library stock up on books,  DVDs, audiobooks,  stock up on food. As I packed my car this morning. I  packed pillows. I went to target and bought new undergarments and socks. I found my one pair of shorts that I own and stuff them in my suitcase.  I plan the traditional ‘last meal’ via google and decide on wine and crab cakes (it is Maryland after all).  All the paperwork has a folder, all the appointments are made and all the necessary items are purchased.  I then of course am now taking the traditional joy ride which has expanded considerably since childhood with my driving ability and all terrain vehicle.  This time it will include a week of visiting, going to the beach and general traveling.

And just like with all rituals and traditions…I remember.  But they are strange memories as I suppose all childhood memories are to some degree when we looked back at them with  adult reason and knowledge. The last time I had major hip surgery I was 13 and although some times I thought what it would be like 10-50 years from now, most of the time I just wanted to be able to go through a whole year of school without having to be on home-bound.  I wanted to get through a Spring where I didn’t break a major limb to pieces over something ridiculous like walking the stairs.  I wanted to be able to stand for a whole play or walk my dog or go hiking with my family like I had when I was younger (5 yo- 10 yo). Frankly, my life was pretty awful between the pain, the social isolation and lost of the abilities to do many, many things I love. I was begging for surgery.  It made so much  sense.

But now my desires are so much bigger, I haven’t been ‘sick/injured’ from Kniest in a decade other than an occasional minor mishap. I have traveled the world, graduated from college, live independently, drive a car and do crazy things like ski and play doctor.  And I don’t want to stop any of those things, moreover I want to do more like live overseas, complete a residency, get married, have kids, raise them, etc,etc…  Handing over my life to the hands of a surgeon is so much more difficult now. The stakes are higher, the leap is so much scarier.  Its not about just making it off the ground it, its about finding my way back to  the lofty altitude I have been cruising at for the last 9 years.

The roles are the same, the rituals are the same but the dance is so much more complicated than I remember.

I spent a great deal of time outdoors in the Blue Ridge Mts with my Mom and sisters post-boards. I left my cell phone and computer and books in the corner and forgot that I have the cartilage of an 85 year old and wandered around my favorite mountain celebrating the tentative Virginia Spring with its red buds, Bradford Pear Trees, bulbs and shy buds. I had a long talk with my Dad about life then I moved my stuff back to Winston sans all my school stuff. I just left it in my basement. It was liberating.

I flew to Texas to see Karen and Jon. I soaked in the sunshine, the hippee-ness of Austin and the affection of dear friends. We cooked, talked, stayed up too late, wandered around San Antonio in the middle of the Final Four craziness, ate REAL Mexican food and Americanized Romanian food???, reconnected with a random kid I met in Romania and mostly just talked, solved the world’s problems, told stories and laughed. It was lovely.

On the school front, my life seems to be working out too well. I not only got the sced of my choice, I got the attendings I wanted for surgery which is completely a GOD thing because I never confided in anyone about such.

And now to bed since I have slept much in days…too much fun to be had.

I also got some pictures framed. Ariana (my best friend from childhood) and her husband Jimmy are professional photographers these days. They sent me three beautiful photographs printed on really cool shiny, metallic paper and already matted for Chris. All I had to do was provide the frames. The finished product of shelves and pictures was lovely. I feel for the first time settled in my own home.

I am actually sitting on my sofa (people will have to make out elsewhere tonight) rather than holed up in my room. Its liberating. I feel a little ridiculous I can’t believe I let it get this crazy.  I should never be afraid of my own living room. I should never hate my life like I have for the last while.  I whine and complain but in reality I have not done much to help myself of late.  I think I left my self advocacy in a box waiting in my closet next to my travel guides. It was safer there tucked away where it couldn’t get me in trouble.

Similarly I have let stuff pile and fester without thinking to the point I have beaome so overwhelmed that I just want to purge everything that is overwhelming me so I don’t have to deal with it.And even the smallest addition to the piles makes me want to do this. And of course the mess is NOT MY FAULT, I am great at blaming and justifying my lack of action. Not healthy or helpful.

So today I reorganized. Today I hung some pictures and finally unpacked the last box from college. And I pondered.

and I decided that I was going to blog on my sofa tonight just for starters.

having lunch with my mother.

in a very public local restaurant.

yeah.

You know how when you were a kid sometimes you spent a lot of time in your head going over exactly how you want to tell your parents something. Carefully craft your presentation to decrease scaring your parents and/or  increase the chance of them letting you  do exactly what you want them to do.  This was not one of those times.

This was completely and utterly not planned, not rehearsed. We were just sitting there talking about my two sisters (who are competely and utterly fine) and five minutes later I have tears streaming down my face and I am telling my Mom I want to  quit medical school.  I didn’t plan it, I didn’t wake up this morning and say i am going to quit med school today.

It should be noted that my parental units do not read my blog and although I have told them that I am less than enthused with medical school. Out right talk about quitting  was shocking. It shocked me. It shocked me that my Mother didn’t really skip a beat and suddenly is going over the options with me. It shocked me that I was crying in public, uninhibited and pretty much without shame. I didn’t really feel better afterwards. I didn’t really feel worse.

 We parted ways and I try to get back into studying. 20 mins later my mother calls me on the phone and says she talked to my Dad and he thinks my mom should stay the night.  It then occurs to me that I have most likely just freaked my parents. Here I am the stable child, the child with direction and motivation, the responsible one, here i am having a breakdown.  I explain to my Mom that I love her and am grateful she wants to stay but it would just cause me more mental anguish right now trying to play host and study for my final.

I stare blankly at the wall for a moment and think you know if I presented to a real doctor with this story and my current sleep, eating, social situation, etc.  They would medicate me.  Me and probaly half my class.

med school: Clinically depressed and Fabulous.

The e-mail said, “Yesterday was the worse day of our lives. We met with Ukrainian officials and they showed us child after child with disabilities. They became steadily more condescending as we said NO to each one. We are very discouraged.”

Warning the following is condescending, judgmental and probably not Christian…

Worse day of their lives (worse than losing your children)… In case you missed it, the kids you rejected because they aren’t perfect have a life far worse than yours. That’s why they look so horrible and imperfect. Did you notice child beggars on the streets of Kiev or the elderly beggars with their canes? Do you know how cold it is right now, those people live on the streets?!?! Open your eyes people. I get that Eastern Europe is a little shocking but lets not lose our heads here. Your statement makes me nearly side with Ukrainian officials…stupid, navie Americans.

Now my nutty bias….I get that its a challenge to be a parent to a disabled child. I get that I have been raised and brainwashed with the ideal that mercy and compassion for one’s fellow man over one’s own scruples and needs is given. I get that I am disabled and biased toward my people to the core and I get that I am blessed to grow up with a point of view free of able-ism. But come on people, just confess. You have been raised thinking my people aren’t worth as much as yours and I am calling you out on it. In all your talk about being good Christians or even good Americans or being so wonderful adopting a international baby, confess your imperfection. Confess your bias. That’s all I am asking. I have confessed mine. Don’t blame the Ukrainians for making you feel uncomfortable, don’t ask me to pray that God puts you back in your comfort zone or bring you a perfect baby. Heaven help you but there is no such thing as a perfect child, if you have that expectations you will never be happy.

I try to understand it. But it breaks my heart that people can look at kids with disabilities and not even consider them for adoption. I’ve seen it time and time again in Eastern Europe. If I was an orphan I would have never been adopted even in the states. There is no mercy or compassion for my people just a lot of pointed fingers. In the West we point fingers at the East for not taking care of disabled people but when we go there we don’t take care of them either. And we don’t have a lack of resources, only a lack of compassion and an excess of able-ism.

Confession:

I’m sorry I know this a prayer request. I know that in accusing these people who I don’t even know of lacking mercy that I am lacking mercy for their situation. I also know I am being a bit irrational and melodramatic and taking out an old wound on a couple who I’ve never met. SO let me ask forgiveness. I know that these people must have suffered terribly losing twins. And I am so glad they want to adopt from Ukraine and are there doing it. And I know that there are average children stuck in an orphanage and they need a family just as much as the disabled ones. I just wish you could see them equally worthy of your attention. I’m sorry if I come on a bit strong, I just no longer relate to the Americans in this situation. I only see the endless suffering and abuse of the children. I know how judgmental I sound. Forgive me. I will honor your request with a prayer…

God, Forgive me of my quickness to judge and my pride and thank you for the endless blessings.

strengthen this couple and give them wisdom. Help them to trust you as they make this beautiful, loving decision.

But…

God please, don’t let them shut out the suffering all around them. Open their eyes, soften their hearts and let them be kind, loving and compassionate to all of God’s children (from the kids to the officials).

Somewhere deep under the judgment and the arrogance I believe I am turning over a money changing table or two with justified righteous anger. Help me God to know the difference.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

I promise to talk about America and my life at some point in my blog soon…