Silent Cries

I've so much I want to share and then nothing at all.......  It all comes billowing up and then I don't even know how to start to express all that stows inside.

Saw a few photos from the past of my children that were listed on a website...out on the net.  Faces....they are faces my heart knows well.

Cephas is lying down the second child back.  I can tell by his leg hanging to the side.

So many thoughts....

Our journey here will end. The process will soon play out and a new life will begin for both Cephas and Lucia and yet, my ache is still here.  As long as I breathe, tears will fall for the thousands of little faces left behind.

I am bits and pieces.....    here and there.......   full of aches for what I see and hear......

And at the same time overwhelmed in the grace God has poured out.

Stories that stay with me....

A girl coaxed away with promises of a better life to be abused then to give birth and have her baby thrown down in a moment of rage- to never be the same again.  Without help, she pleads to keep her child.

Precious women clinging to the word of God for their children and grandchildren who face very special needs in a society that does not openly accept them. Please pray for them!!! They have touched my heart!!!

A woman encouraged to leave her newborn because he was born with Down Syndrome but she chose love over fear and calls herself BLESSED. Sweet Misha!!

Vova (in black) who spends his life in a special needs institution because a doctor wrote, "mental delay" down on a chart one day.  He has no special need except to be released and taught what he missed all of the years he has been housed here. 

Moms pleading for care for their children so they can be all they can be. 

They need our prayers and support.

 

Missionaries who have spent decades in steadfast faith visiting the orphan. At times not knowing how their own need would be met but trusting God for it all.  Life spent on behalf of the weak ones.

  It's beauty without measure.

 

 

           Randy and I had a day free and decided to go into Kiev on our own.      We visited the World War II memorial and I found the ache of the orphan there too.  

Oppression 

 

                                        Who were these little ones?  What were their names?


On display - their tattered clothes and the remnants of pain.

 
Somehow in all of that fight for freedom, after the war, some children were still forgotten.

But the value of these children standing behind barbed wire hold the same value of the children tucked away in the level four facilities in Ukraine today. 

Priceless

Their images are not on display though.  You will not find many who will discuss them. In fact, it would be preferred not to talk about them at all.  The weakest ones.  Poorest quality care to the frailest.  Fewest caregivers for those who have the least to offer. 


So we will go home.  And it might be different for this one but what about the others?  Who will come for them?  Will you?

Can you see that glimmer?  He's looking at a picture George gave to him of Randy, me and him together.  If I could read his mind it would be something like, "This is my family. Sigh." And the boy in the background...what is running through his mind?  His face speaks something so different.

There may be many things I don't understand.  Societal, cultural and historical pieces that root back farther than my mind can go. I can be told hundreds of times about how clueless I am because I am an American.  I can be belittled, made fun of, ridiculed, and hated.  Even still, I am left with the same facts.  That there are children shut behind doors for a lifetime never knowing love.  And this much I do know well.  I understand yearning eyes, pleading cries, thankful tears, and tugging hugs that scream,

"I don't want to let you go!"

 I know beauty that resides in the darkest of places. 

Please pray for the children left behind, who are hidden away and who desperately need to know Jesus loves them.  They need to experience His love through His people. Will you bring the light? Will you promise not to be irritated when you hear of a family fundraising for an adoption?  It is not for selfish reasons we are to go to the precious ones.  They belong to God.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”  Matthew 19:14