A Hidden Life

One of the great benefits of adoption, among the countless, is the opportunity to connect with other families who have also adopted, are about to adopt or simply have a passion for the orphans. Victoria is one to stay connected (via the internet) with so many who fit this description and thereby allow us to be benefactors. Most of the stories she reads about are happy and joyous, but a few are sorrowful with heart-wrenching endings, and yet some have a mixture of both extreme hardship and an abundance of exultation. Such is life, but such is anyone who chooses to open their hearts to love another, regardless of whether it's your spouse, a biologically born child or one that's adopted or fostered. When Victoria stumbled across this story about some children in Uganda who've lost their parents, she sent it to me but with a warning that I needed to be in a right and receptive frame of mind knowing (as she does me) that I might react with similar emotion as her. She prefaced her e-mail to me as follows, "It's one thing to know, it's yet an entirely other thing to see." If you choose to watch (~9&1/2 minutes), we want you to know that we are not sensationalists and abhor the use of the afflicted to play on people's emotions, but in my estimation this is a far cry from that. Victoria was right, while I'm prone to tears at times, this caused me to actually weep while sitting in an expensive ergonomically sculpted chair in my high-rise building office, surrounded by everything imaginable to make me comfortable. I shielded my face as tears poured into my lap. I will not ask you to enjoy, because how could you? But I will kindly ask you to mourn, pray and beg God for mercy.

Yes, it's one thing to know, and it's yet an entirely other thing to see, but it's yet altogether another thing to taste, feel and touch. It's almost as if we were there. In so many ways, I wish we were.

Still reeling 36 hours later,

Tom (& Victoria)

"Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun: And I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them." (Ecclesiastes 4:1) "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil." (Ecclesiastes 12:14)