Last week we visited the Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit VIII conference and got a view of the power of orphan advocacy organizations coming together to support, envision, educate and inspire global care for the orphan. It was an incredible conference and an honor to be there representing the work we are doing in Kenya.
However, this conference greatly affected us and celebrating Mother’s Day a week later has surfaced a world of pain to the forefront of our eyes. Mother’s Days in our past have been filled with cards for our moms, and brunches, and gifts and notes of love. They have been filled with expectation and hope. But this year with eyes newly opened on the enormity of the pain being felt by children in every country, in every town around the world who have lost, been taken from, abandoned by, or sent away from their mothers, Mother’s Day has a different feel.
This Mother’s Day we have prayed for all the mother’s who don’t have their children to hold in their arms because they couldn’t feed them, all the mother’s who don’t have their children in their arms because they couldn’t afford to educate them, and all the children who can’t feel the warmth of their mother’s embrace because no one provided medical care to them…and they didn’t survive.
We prayed strength for the mother’s out in the world who are feeling the weight of the decision whether or not to advocate for their child by handing them into the care of another person or an orphanage. Relinquishing them because they don’t have the support they need to care for their child; education, medical care, a job, or help with a mental illness, substance addiction, or the complex problem of hopelessness.
We feel the pain today because there is one word said too many times by just being said once…ORPHAN. And every orphan had a mother.
So as the 2,000 individuals who attended Summit VIII head back to their work to care for the motherless…don’t send us out alone. Because these children are not just suffering from a lack of a warm embrace. Don’t be fooled by a simple solution. They are suffering from layer upon layer of life altering grief. They need PEOPLE, just like YOU, to care about them.
On Mother’s Day 2012 this song is our gift from us at Light Up Hope to the children and mothers of the world who are too intimately acquainted with the term “orphan”: All the Poor and Powerless by Sons & Daughters