Let me rewind. My team is partnering with Great Mercy Orphanage this month. So far it has been a huge blessing to us. We’ve been helping in classrooms and painting around the campus. And I have loved it.
A few days ago while we were painting, one of the girls, Elizabeth, was painting next to me, and we were chatting. She had lots of questions about my home, my family, my job, all that stuff. And then she asked me a question I didn’t have an answer for.
“Would your government allow maybe one of you to maybe adopt one of the children from this orphanage?”
No words. What do I say to that? She looked right at me and asked if there was a way to change her situation. She wasn’t just asking if the U.S. Government would let someone adopt a child from Kenya, she was asking if she had a chance for something new. Since she was eight years old she has been without both of her parents, she has been taking care of her younger brother and cousin, and she has been hoping for a way out of Kenya.
The only words I eventually found were, “You want to be adopted to America? Don’t you like it here?”
Elizabeth’s father died when she was young, and her mother was killed in political riots of 2007. Since then, she has wanted to leave Kenya. She doesn’t find that joy here. She smiles, and she sings to Jesus, and she shows love, but she’s hurting. And I didn’t know what to say to her.
Elizabeth is 13, and she wants to be a stewardess. She likes to dance and sing, and she is intentional in relationships. She likes to pull at my hair and pin it up in ways I never would have imagined. She likes to make sure the people around her are taken care of. I can see Jesus in her, and I can see sadness in her too.
Honestly, I don’t know if there is a right answer about this. All I can do is show her love while I’m here, and let her know that God hears her cry and wants to bring her comfort. There are so many other children who have the same question. So many other children who no longer feel at home in their country because of the tragedy they have faced there.
Thank God none of us are really at home here.
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Philippians 3:20-21
