Thinking About Wrong Turns...

My friends, both professionals, just rounded off their families in a most delightful and significant way with a little girl from Vietnam who needed a home. I think that is so amazing. My other girlfriend and her husband adopted a little girl from Korea when she was little, and she is incredible. When I get to see her I like the chance to talk to her or play with her. She is so bright, but smart enough to be a bit shy. I think I might have missed the boat in this lifetime to be able to do some thing that amazing for a person. They also are giving those children's natural families a gift (if they had families alive), the gift of knowing that these children who they couldn't take care of will have a safe environment, all of their physical and emotional needs met, love and from people who will always respect the child's culture. Sometimes the best thing you can do when you love someone is to let them go, like my mother did me. Thank you to my natural mother, whoever you are. These families saved these children from lives in an orphanage, while not the most horrible thing if they are well treated, it is definitely not the same as being raised in a loving home. My friends new little girl is becoming acclimated to her new situation and isn't ready to meet a bunch of people yet, but I can't wait to meet her.

I am writing about his because I kind of feel left out. I am a very loving person, with a humongous big heart, and I would love to be able to help another human being like that. My daughter's heart may even be bigger than my own, so she would love it too. But all choices having added up to this moment in my life, as a single mom and a teacher it is not possible. I will never be able to make that big of an impact on the world. I'm saddened by that. Believe me I think back to the two times I was engaged and took off running (literally one time), and wonder what would have happened, and how things would be different. I do not honestly feel that if I had married either one of those individuals that anything like that would have ended up being possible either.

This is not regret for what I have done, and my whole life, because if I hadn't had a "challenging" past, I wouldn't have had my daughter and I wouldn't have gone to college at 33, graduated and become a teacher (which I love). There are no other children I could imagine instead of my daughter, and there are honestly no other children I could have imagined as my students. Especially my first class of Seniors when I was a student teacher, they surely did "break me in" well. I have no regrets about my past, except for now. Now I am not in a situation where I can save the world. I want to save the world. If I could adopt a child who needed love and a family, I would hope I could march right over to Darfur and adopt a child who has lost his or her parents due to brutal government sanctioned murder and show them a different world. A world where a mother is not scared or being murdered or raped just to go and find firewood to cook for her family. A world where genocide is not allowed. Why is that still going on?

I'm sorry I can't save the world, I've made some wrong turns.

My two friends and their husbands are saving the world with what they are doing, and they humble me. I think also because they already had their own children, and chose to help a child, it is so huge and so commendable. As an adopted person, I know these children are loved just like the other children are. Surely the parents can't see their own physical features on their adopted children, but they definitely can see their mannerisms, their teaching, their conditioning, it shows - I know it does. (Sometimes I sound just like my mother!)

There is an Jewish proverb, "Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." Thank you for saving the world from the rest of the world. And thank you for saving the world from those of us who wish we could too. Bless you and your beautiful families.