A Mother's Love

A lot has been written about a mother's love, about what a mother will do for her children.  Yesterday I heard a story of a mother's love that haunts me...because of the greatness of this mother's love, but more so because of the greatness of the scourge that could create her situation.

There are lots of adoptions happening in Uganda right now.  After six months of the process being closed earlier this year, the channels are flowing again, and family upon family from America are in Uganda joyfully bringing home their adoptive children.

I can only imagine how it feels to the learned judges of the High Court of Uganda that approve these cases.  They love their country.  They have served it well.  They overcame great odds to become attorneys and now justices.  And in the last thirty years, they have seen their country ravaged by war and AIDS and poverty, so much so that they now must preside over the process of sending its next generation to another land.  How bittersweet this must be...seeing all that promise for the future sent elsewhere.

In one case yesterday, a woman from Texas is seeking to adopt three older children living in a orphanage.  These children have a living mother.  Like many children in this country, their mother has placed them in an orphanage because she is unable to feed them.  Once widowed or abandoned, a Ugandan woman has little hope of earning enough to feed herself, much less a larger family.

For reasons only the judge understands, he approved the Texas family to adopt the two older children, but ruled that the younger girl, around age eight or nine, must remain in Uganda.  The birth mother was in the courtroom for the proceedings, and one might think that this decision would give her great joy.  One of her children was being preserved for her.  But, that is not what happened.

This birth mother got on her knees before the judge and wept.  She pleaded and begged him to let her daughter be adopted and go to America.

Last night, I could not sleep thinking about that woman.   What must it take for her to beg a judge to send her little girl away, perhaps never to be seen again?  How desperate must be her circumstances?  How much must she love her child to make this ultimate sacrifice?  And perhaps most tragically, how unjust is it that America is so full of plenty while sweet mothers around the world suffer to even feed their children?

Mothers of the World, rise up!  These women are our sisters.  God has called us to come alongside them.  Try to imagine that the tables are turned.  Try to imagine YOUR children are starving while millions of mothers just across the sea drink lattes and watch television.  What would YOU want them to do?  What would you BEG them to do?

Mother the World!  www.mothertheworld.org