orphans: part III

Of course Chris became discouraged and depressed at times. He's human. He too sometimes looked at the scope of getting children adopted out of a country in denial of the need, and felt completely incapable.

During these times I would try to boost his morale. I believed that he could do what he said he wanted to do. If you have nothing more creative to say to someone who is depressed, use their own words.

I would tell him that God wanted babies adopted more than even he did. I told him that God was tired of seeing babies die everyday, and that he was given the desire to do something about it. Not only was he given desire and passion, he would also be given the ability and the resources.

I told him that I believed he could to this despite the high and looming barriers. I told him that there was no way this task would be as impossible as it looked if the goal was to save lives.

These were the times that tested his resolve. You know those times? The times when all known inhumanity, gross genocides, injustices and all kinds of death convince you that God does not care. Chris would be overwhelmed. I would try to wade my way through it. He would come out on the other side. One day he did.

His salvation came in the form of a swaddled baby girl. He found this baby girl wrapped in a blanket and placed in a box on the sidewalk. Someone wanted her found.

I mean to say that not every family or new mother wanted their baby found. They cruelly threw them out like trash. But this baby was loved...enough. Her family could not give her what she needed if they kept her. In fact the government would penalize the family so much that their first child, mom, and dad would all suffer as a result.

She could have been the first born herself. That changes the scenario.

Baby girls were more often abandoned than boys. Chinese tradition meant that the boy, not the girl, would care for the parents when they got old. Chinese tradition also required that the girl go to her husband's family to care for them.

Unfortunately for tradition the Communist government was slowly trying to abolish these traditions. Communism was working to completely reframe the idea of family. Communism is still working to change these ancient ideas.

The ideal Communist family would look like this:

• each family would have just one child
• they would accomplish this through a "family planning" by enforcing birth control methods and abortions when needed
• when the child grows up that child marries, moves, and leaves the parents
• the parents are then taken care of by the government.

But tradition runs deep and it is hard to convince it's believers that another way is possible. So, families threw away their girls, as Chris put it, because they were useless.

We didn't know this little girl's story but I always imagined that her mother wept. I hope she wept.

Continued later...