Adoption Awareness Month

November is adoption awareness month. A topic which is obviously very close to my heart! I am joining with my fellow GuatMoms to promise to devote a few posts this month on the subject as our small contribution to the purpose of the topic. International organizations working with children's issues currently estimate the number of orphaned and/or abandoned children on our planet to be 143 MILLION! They use numbers provided by government run orphanages and NGO's providing aid to these populations. Given the difficulty of guessing just how many children are living on the streets of third world countries who are unable to access the services of an NGO, I'm of the belief that that number may actually be a CONSERVATIVE GUESS. Wrap your brain around 143 MILLION if you can!!!!! Now my rant could run off in any number of directions from this point! I think my plan will be to try and let each rant have it's own post. Today I'm just going to try and limit my ramblings to the relationship between faith and adoption. Since I am a Christian, I really can only address with any knowledge that faith's teachings and actions on the subject. My particular church has a very clear teaching on this subject! Getting past the very obvious teaching of the Golden Rule, my religion exhorts it's members to perform what they call Corporal Works of Mercy. Several of the defined works graze the edges of this topic. They actually, when performed, would greatly reduce the 143 million number because the desperate, ill, or deceased parents of these children would have been fed and given medical care that would have averted the crisis that led to abandonment or orphaning!!!!!!! I specifically note the one which most directly addresses this topic..."Give shelter to the homeless." I mean how clear does the church have to make it for us??? So you cannot adopt to make this happen? Then donate to an NGO that provides shelter or as I will cover in a future post...donate to help a family who WANTS to adopt! (A whole other rant coming on the morally corrupt and sinful COST of adoption!!) I know from my Jewish and Muslim friends that their religions also have doctrine addressing the aid and care of widows and orphans but FOR SURE Christians are obligated. I leave my fellow Christians with this little factoid gleaned from a fellow GuatMom........ If only 7% of those professing to be Christians adopted one child each there would be NO orphans in this world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is an absolute reward here on Earth for those whom God brings together.....just look at proof!!!! The picture that changed all of our lives FOREVER for the better!!!! We were done with the adoption idea after the failed domestic adoption....or so we thought. Then Patrick opened that fateful e-mail asking us to please consider international adoption and specifically the adoption of little Maria Teresa in a country called Guatemala. Led to the simple joy of a FAMILY portrait! I sometimes wonder at the number of times a stranger will stop to tell us how lucky Mari was to be adopted by us?!?!? I mean REALLY!!! To me it seems OBVIOUS that Patrick and I are the lucky ones!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kind of felt selfish not to let anyone else in on our 'luck' so.......... The second picture that ROCKED our world!!! Our little family would now be a table for four! Adoption led to..... one HAPPY FAMILY!!!! By family I mean all that it entails! Not trying to sell you on a picture perfect Hollywood family but a real one with sibling rivalry and sleeping together, picky eaters and clean platers, problem sleepers and nesters, oppositional defiance and snuggling, asthma and myopia, honor roll and reading tutors!!! With all it's warts and dimples we could ask for nothing better...an Irish Dad and an American Mom with their Guatemalan daughters brought together to be The Mahoney FAMILY!!!! It works...maybe you should give it a try?!?!?! Now for a quick wrap up to the BIG holiday weekend.... we 'finished' our ofrenda. On both Sunday and Monday we took some time to light the candles and reminisce about some of our family members now deceased. Julia had, with a VERY single minded determination, gathered the rest of the supplies needed to hang all the mortuary cards Mari and she had collected from around the house. She would not leave me alone until I had come in and strung the yarn and clipped the cards to the string! She had gathered the Pan de los Muertos, strawberry tarts(for the Irish souls!!), sugar skulls (which my cousin Eileen had actually given them as their Halloween treat!!), and a goblet of apple cider. A sure sign of how much they have grown up!!! Mari and Julia set up this whole level themselves. I had made outfits for the girls to wear to school on Monday which Julia was so proud to show off!! She said her Spanish teacher was soooooo happy that he had her come back for all his classes so they could talk about the holiday! She wasn't sure about any 'extra credit' points though (: Tried a BUNCH of settings on my camera trying to show how nice it looked in the dark with all the candles lit (used both real and battery operated= where real might have caused a fire hazard!) But I think you can get the idea. We are going to leave it up all month and plans for next year's are already underway!