reality.

I sit and watch his videos.  Our tiny future son, attempting to walk, though his legs are bowed from rickets.  Clutching his special caretaker's hand, looking emptily at a ball pit that he isn't invited to play in. 

I watch his eyes; so badly in need of patching or possibly surgery.  I wonder how much he can see.

I see a glimpse of a smile from him in some of the videos, tiny flashes of light in the grey coldness of the orphanage. 

I watch clinically; noting his eye contact (or lack thereof), watching the way his hands form around a ball, or observing how he investigates his environment.  I am not a clinician, but I watch with the practiced eye of a mother who has watched a child in this way for almost three years.

Then I watch as a mother.  Not his mother - no, not yet - but as a mother.  A mother who sees a little small, hurting child and who can feel her heart hurting too. 

Oh little one...you need so much and you need it now, and I cannot help.

We are waiting.  God makes us wait, and we do not want to wait.  We do not want you to wait anymore, little one, and yet somehow you must.  I don't know where his mother or father or family is, only that they are not there and he is left to be ignored in a place that is rife with neglect and maltreatment. 

It's so unfair.  It's unfair for any child to live in this way.

Dear little boy, as the sun rises in your country on this Sunday morning, we are praying for you and thanking God that we are one day closer to bringing you home.  We thank God that we have been given the honor to find you and love you; that God has blessed our family with enough resources to get us this far in our journey.  We praise God that there are others who love you and care about you; both in your country and here.  People who will try to help us reach you before the place you live in swallows you up and takes away what remains of your health and spirit. 

Our special little boy may have a chance to be the little boy he's meant to be if we can get to him quickly and before The Bad Place eradicates even that tiny smile.  The Bad Place can do that to children.  It does it all the time.  We want to change that for him.

Thank you for helping us change that for him, and for praying and thinking of our family and our little boy.