What Are We Doing?

The Statistics can be Intimidating

• It is estimated that there are between 143 million and 210 million orphans worldwide
• Everyday an estimated 5,760 more children become orphans worldwide
• Approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually
• Each day an estimated 38,493 orphans “age out” of the orphanage system and are put on the streets with no family and no home
• 10% to 15% of these children commit suicide before they reach 18 years old
• All face highly challenging and uncertain futures without the support of a family

Credit: Project 143

If you do the math, 2,050,560 children become orphans every single year. And approximately 250,000 of children are adopted annually. Hmmmm. I’ve never been great at math, but it appears to me that there are plenty of children already in the world who would greatly benefit from being adopted. And sadly, we in America, all know the face of another precious orphan whose parents were gunned down at a Fourth of July parade, by a 21-year old man (with prior issues of violence), who legally bought high powered rifles in his own state.

I’m not trying to be political here. I am grateful for the new law that our Republican governor in Florida put into place recently, that would never restrict loved ones from being able to visit their loved ones in a hospital. No one should EVER have to die alone. Last fall, there was more than one time, when our son’s epileptic seizures were out of control, that we were denied access to visit him in his hospital room, and this was in Florida which was generally much less restricted than the rest of the country during the earliest times of the pandemic. I remember sobbing at the front of a hospital entrance in my husband’s arms, with the power to do nothing but to hope and to pray.

Can we stop with the party lines??? Can we start to come together with realism, common sense, and an agreement to compromise, for the good of our country and for the good of our country’s precious citizens??? These hard core, black/white, all or nothing, stubborn, defiant, righteous, hateful lines that both of our major parties are walking, are not doing us any good. We are not walking a straight path. We are walking in circles. And we are quickly circling down the drain, to the despair of the majority of us, who adore our country.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.