The Choice

That moment of choice. I've never had that moment of choice when it came to one of my children because they were always within the realm of what was to be expected. You knew the special needs would be worse than anticipated, but it was minimal. 

This time was a whole new level of shock and awe. When my husband and I arrived at the baby house, I saw how tiny Xavier was. I was shocked. Mouth on the floor shocked. Nothing had prepared me for the extent of his starvation. I know now, without a doubt, that if he had stayed in the "Christian" facility he was in before being transferred to Little Flowers, he would be dead. I often windered why God put him so heavily on my heart and told me to do ANYTHING to get him transferred from SF to Little Flowers and now i know why. He was DYING a SLOW DEATH! His naked body reminds me of a picture I once saw while learning about Nazi Germany and the concentration camps. he is literally skin on bones.  The anger, the sadness, the rage. It takes you over and consumes you. How can a place be so inhumane that they would allow this? How can an organization, who totes themselves Christians, allow this to happen to one of God's children? How could they have turned a blind eye to his vanishing flesh, the sparkle in his eye? How did they allow this to happen? Of course I'll never receive that answer because I'm sure they don't know. I'm sure there will be all sorts of excuses, which I've heard before, so I guess it doesn't matter. But in the long run, God knows. God watches. He sees what we all do in His name and we will all have to answer for our sins, our indifference, our cruelty - even if simply through ignorance. 

So the moment of choice came when my agency in the states found out Xavier needed a feeding tube and has extreme delays in every sense of the word.  His special needs are not what were listed in his file. His file reads " Eczema and cerebral malformation". This is all. and perhaps when he started out in the orphanage and before he was transferred to his "Living Hell" this would have been correct. In fact, it was correct. I remember seeing him when he first arrived and he was a Buddha baby. He was delayed in the sense that he was in an orphanage. He was delayed because he wasn't held as much as he should be but received the stimulation of the surrounding children. What he is now is a child that has given up. That decided death was better than what he has now. He is a child that was force fed the absolute minimum needed for survival and fed formula that he was allergic to. So on top of the constant feelings of drowning in the formula that is being squirt into his mouth, he also then deals with a chronic stomach ache because he is allergic to milk protein (which is noted in his file and records). So the vicious cycle continues. And let's talk about his Ezcema. A skin condition and the reason the nannies wouldn't touch him because they thought he was contagious. Ignorance that could have been prevented if someone had stepped up and led by example. If only someone at this American facility had taken the time to show the nannies he wasn't contagious, that he had worth. Think of it this way, if he's being given food he shouldn't have, the allergies kick in and the skin flares up. The flare up causes him to claw at his skin, causing open wounds and scratches and scars.  This looks scary and yucky and ignorance grows. If the time was taken to show them the right foods to give him, foods he wasn't allergic to!, then we wouldn't be where we are today. And the difference in eye contact and facial expressions from just 3 months of love snd attention feom Little Flowers shows his capacity. But we are. And someone needs to be held accountable. This is not a Chinese problem. This is not an American problem. This is an "everyone who knows better" problem. 

And so my choice, given by my agency who called me all the way from America, was whether we really wanted to continue with this adoption. Were we sure? Did we really want to take on the unknown, subject our other children to the possibility of forever care?

And I faltered. 

I second guessed. 

I questioned. 

The tears flowed. Because I have no idea what Xavier's future looks like. And I'm scared. I'm terrified. I feel like the world is spinning and I don't know the answer to anything. 

But I do know one thing. 

I know Xavier's my son. And if God can forgive me and my sins, if God can love me unconditionally and with abandonment, despite all of my flaws, my craziness....

I can love my son, His son, with abandonment and see that he gets everything he needs.

And yes, that starts with a feeding tube.