Everyone Counts

For those of you who might want to read what I wrote for Jay’s message at church this weekend, here it is, complete with pictures that were up on the side screens.  The series they are in is about obscure Bible characters and Jay taught about Cornelius and how he was a Gentile among the Jews, someone who would have been considered an outcast.  One of our new church’s values is that everyone counts, no matter what.  Jay asked me to write a piece for him about how the value of everyone counts plays a part in our decision to adopt a child with special needs.  Jay had to cut a bit of it for timing purposes, but this is the full version below.  I hope you enjoy.

Everyone Counts

The night I first met Hilary at a Scooter’s Coffeehouse on 84^th Street in Lincoln was one that changed my family.  Introduced to her by a good friend of mine, Hilary shared pictures of her daughter adopted from Kyrgyzstan.  Oh, that sweet face with the chubby cheeks that your lips would get lost in if you kissed them!  And believe me, you wouldn’t be able to resist puckering up and laying one on each satiny cheek.  I listened to a proud mom’s story as I flipped through the photo album that she always kept in her bag for precisely these moments.  A dozen or so pictures into the album and I was alerted to the difference.  Sweet baby Anara was born missing the tips of some fingers and toes and for that reason she could have been unwelcomed in the Kyrgy society.  By the grace of God, she was placed in an orphanage, her adoption file listed online, only to be found on the other side of the globe, by my new friend who knew this little baby girl was the missing puzzle piece to their family.

From that night on, I knew my heart had been melted, destroyed, crushed by the reality that people in this world deem others as misfits. How could someone say no to such a child as this? It happens every day. Day after day I receive an email or two, sometimes 12, I kid you not, from agencies trying to place orphans with medical needs that label them unworthy in their countries of origin. How my heart agonizes over their faces. If I could only bring each of them home! Countless times I have sat on the stool in my kitchen staring at the computer screen with the image of a child I so desperately want to help, call my own and I just sit sobbing with my head in my hands, tears falling onto the keyboard. Twice I have nearly dumped our adoption plans for two of these children because I couldn’t get them out of my brain! Their faces are forever etched into my memory. All I can do for these children is pray and the awesome thing is that God answers prayer. When I’ve called back to inquire about these 2 particular children, God had found them a forever family. More sobbing. But this time, tears of gratitude for families who accept these children and give them the care and the love they absolutely deserve.

Jay and I have been surrounded by people in our lives that even our own American society would stop and stare at, completely ignore, deem useless, but in God’s eyes, they count!  We have a friend Carmie in Chicago with Tourette’s Syndrome. Carmie has a list of ticks a mile long including raising his arms above his head, jumping straight up and trying to fly like Superman, doing “the swim” dance, even flipping people the bird. You can imagine the stares he’d get for that one! But Carmie could clean and worked on the Facility Set-up crew at the church we grew up in. He had time for anyone and everyone who wanted to stop and chat. If you needed prayer for anything, Carmie would be praying for you without a doubt. Carmie counts.

I worked in our catering kitchen with a gal named Barbara Jean.  She had been born with multiple physical deformities that left her face lopsided like a Picasso painting and she had hearing and mental incapacities as well.  But Barbara Jean could serve!  She’d tray up hundreds of rolls and wrap hundreds of potatoes in foil for our evening dinner service.  She had love for the rest of the staff, a love of her Savior, and she had an echoing laugh that Jay and I have burned onto the CD of our minds.  Barbara Jean counts.

After years of struggling with unexplained infertility, our friends in North Carolina were blessed with their first biological baby boy.  But shortly after bringing home this miracle from the hospital doctors noticed something wasn’t quite right.  Months of testing led to a diagnosis of severe hearing loss.  Baby Matthew was almost completely deaf in 1 ear and suffered what the doctors diagnosed as profound hearing loss in the other ear.  Although we’ve never met him because they live so far away, we see pictures of this darling blonde haired, blue eyed boy on Facebook and in their annual Christmas letter.  Matthew has a smile that could just about make all the bad stuff about our world fade away.  He loves  anything with a steering wheel and can’t go anywhere without a fireman’s hat, a typical, normal 4 year old boy today.  Matthew counts.

My list certainly doesn’t end there and I could name probably a dozen additional people whom God has used to grow my heart.  He has clearly been preparing us for a special addition to our family by surrounding us with people who might be overlooked, judged, unloved.   While I know we will get stops and stares, whispers and even harsh words spoken about us, I will follow what God has called me to.  And I pray that my daughter’s story will open up doors of acceptance, soften hearts of insensitivity and flood our communities with compassion and love for one another because everyone counts.