Brokenhearted.

Nothing has broken my heart more.

I followed a link from a blog to a website about adopting.  How to get involved, etc.  And then I saw it.  A list of children waiting to be adopted.  Infants.  12-year-olds.  18-year-olds.  Eighteen year olds.  Cooks, sports-lovers, outgoing, shy.  Faces.  261 pages of faces.  They all share the same want: a family.  


It broke my heart.  Questions filled my mind.  Why do I have a family?  Why did God choose for that many people to be without a parent?  18-year-olds!!!!!  20-year-olds that just want somebody to care about them.  To encourage them.  To love them.  That's all they want.  And that breaks my heart.

They write little biographies.  I'm not sure if they're written by the kids or by someone else, but oh, that breaks my heart even more.  They are trying so hard.  They're talking about their strengths and how they are shy but open up once you get to know them.  They just want to be loved so badly that you can tell in their biographies. They're hoping you'll have some kind of connection with them.  Because they just want it that bad.  That breaks my heart.

I'm blessed, I know.  I say that in the most humble manner I can.  I say it wondering why God chose me to be in this family and not put in those hundreds of millions of children's positions.  But I'm not.  I have two parents.  A house.  A bed.  Five brothers.  A camera.  A phone.  An iPod touch.  A computer.  3+ meals everyday.  Anything and everything I could ever want.  It doesn't make any sense that there are millions of others waiting.  Waiting for someone to tell them that they're getting adopted.  That another family with other DNA and different looks, beliefs, anything, is going to accept them into their family and love them like their own.  But they continue to wait.  Because the number of orphans outnumbers the number of people adopting.  That breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart that I can't do much about this.  I can't snap my fingers and give all those children a home.  I can't persuade thousands of people to adopt twenty kids.  I can't give all of those children a home.  But I can inform the world.  I can speak up for those forgotten.  I can love the unloved.  And I will do just that.

xo,
emma

(P.S. if you've never seen this video, take the time to do so now.  I've seen it about five times, and each time makes me want to cry even more than the last)