I can never understand

Ever since saying goodbye
to the children at the orphanage,
and flying home from Uganda,
returning to my country, my family, my home,
I have been struggling to understand
how there can be so many beautiful,
amazing children who have no one
who claims them as family.
Many of whom were abandoned as babies.
Along a road. Or in a field.
Helpless and left alone.

I cannot begin to understand
the desperation and hopelessness
that interweave to create a scenario where I might
be forced to consider abandoning my child.
How someone could make the decision
to turn their back and walk away.

But that does not give me the right to judge.

I can never understand because
I come from privilege.
I have always had a safe place to call home.
I didn't have to choose between feeding my children
or sending them to school.
I didn't have to make impossible decisions
about their future.

I have always had a safety net beneath me,
with the corners held tightly by family,
by community, by the systems
designed to catch me if I fall.

So how can I possibly understand?

I think about these children,
many of whom I can now name in my heart,
and I cry for the parents and families
who never got to watch them grow up.

Saying a prayer for all the mothers
who didn't feel like they had a choice.
Who perhaps thought that they
were doing the best thing.
(And maybe they were.)

Thinking about the love
that embraced that baby,
before the heartache that followed.
The love that never
wanted to let go.

And now, from my place of plenty,
I can reach out to a child
who was abandoned perhaps out of love,
and somehow, with God's help,
bring hope into the days to come.

Now there is something I can understand.

The children's home at Noah's Ark Children's Ministry Uganda.