This past week I learned of a little girl in Eastern Europe who was in desperate need of a family to adopt her, her name is Beth. (her picture is below) She is fighting for her life and needs life saving surgery that she can only get here in the US. The fact that her name is Beth was not lost on me either since we have said we will name our daughter Elizabeth. We prayerfully considered adopting this little girl, but as we prayed about it we felt we must keep the commitments we had already made to our current adoption agency, adopting this little girl would involve switching agencies. We had signed a contract stating we would finish our adoption through our adoption agency. We had also committed to be considered as a possible family for a little girl in Asia, which I have mentioned before on this blog. Both of these commitments are things we need to uphold. It was a hard decision, but one we felt we needed to make. It was hard to walk away from this little girl named Beth, but we knew it was the right decision.  Thankfully, after we had decided this, we found out that another family has stepped forward to adopt Beth.

I think people do not take commitments seriously enough these days. They don’t care if they have committed to something, even something as serious as marriage or some kind of contract, they will walk away if it suits them. I believe your word is your bond. God had led us into making this commitment to our adoption agency and to this little girl in Taiwan. I take that seriously and we could not just walk away from it all, even to do something as noble as saving the life of this little girl with a name we love. God knows all things and He led us to where we are and I think He expects us to stick behind our commitments. It is not unlike a marriage, when you adopt a child. We are committed to our marriage no matter what. And we are committed to seeing this adoption through to wherever it may lead. But I will admit it was very difficult to trust that God had not somehow made a mistake in leading us to make such a commitment when this little girl needed a family so badly. It would have been easy to walk away from our commitments and save her. But God also knew that He had a family all picked out for Beth and we are not that family. Just as He already has our own little Elizabeth all picked out for us. There are many “Elizabeths” around the world, children in need of families. There are many desperate situations, children who will die if they don’t get a family soon. It is so hard to not be able to save them all, but I have come to realize God loves each of those children more than I ever could and He has a plan for each of them. He wants me to be open to the one child he has for me, but meanwhile He wants me to pray and advocate for all these other little ones who are in such desperate situations. Once your eyes are opened to the needs around the world it is hard to face the situations. This world is full of ugly stuff, and we cannot change it all, but we can make a difference for one child who we will adopt and we can make a difference for the children we will pray for and support along the way. Honestly, it just makes me want to shake those around me and ask them to just look at the faces of these little children and see the need and do something about it. The church, as a whole, has blinders on to the need of children around the world. It’s time to stop SAYING we believe in helping children and actually DO something.

Look at this face, how can you not be moved to action?