Look who's coming home for Christmas! Talk about excited! Our son Benjamin arrives tonight from Guam and our daughter Stephanie and her family will be here tomorrow from China. That means, of course, our ten-month-old grandson, too. I ought to be cleaning the house to get ready, though I realize things will be completely disorganized moments after everyone arrives. At least there would be some satisfaction in knowing that everything was in its right place at the start. But I’m just too thrilled to clean. I’d rather dance. Our family is going to be home for Christmas!
But not everyone. As excited as I am, I cannot forget our four daughters in India, as well as our daughter in Myanmar. These children ranging in age from eight to the mid-thirties are not blood family, but they are family anyhow. Let me explain.
When our son was born in 1979, we quickly fell into a common trap for many first-time parents. Nothing was too good or too much for our son. After all, he was our beautiful gift from God and we wanted to treat him as the treasure he was. Suddenly he had almost more clothes than we did and so many toys, books, and paraphernalia that they threatened to push out the walls of the little four-room house in which we lived.
I don’t remember what triggered it, but I will forever be grateful that one day we came to our senses. As happy as we were to have Benjamin, was our little boy any more valuable in God’s sight than children the world over who were starving to death for want of the very basics of life? The answer was obvious: No. Further, we realized we had a responsibility for other children in the world, not just those of blood relation to us.
That was the day Dipali became our daughter. And when Stephanie was born nearly three years later, Surekha joined our family. Both she and Dipali lived in The Shelter, an orphanage for destitute girls in Cuttack, Orissa, India. As our daughters left The Shelter for marriage and the work place, we added two others in their places—Namita, now 16, and Halima, now 13. And when Stephanie gave birth to Little Ben in January 2008, we honored him by adding another girl to our family—this one eight-year-old Myint in Myanmar. We have supported all these children through Children of Promise, a worthy child sponsorship organization that currently provides for the physical, educational, and spiritual needs of more than 3,450 children in 22 countries around the world (http://www.echildrenofpromise.org/).
Considering the brutal and violent persecution of Christians in Orissa that has escalated since August, we are particularly concerned about our family there. Namita, Halima, and their 60 “sisters” are safe within the walls of The Shelter. In fact, the orphanage has become shelter for another 50 individuals—Christians who homes have been destroyed or are in danger for their lives should they return to their rural villages in Orissa, where heinous crimes are being committed against Christians. But what about Dipali and Surekha? Adults now and with families of their own, we have not had contact with them for some time. Nevertheless, daughters they became and daughters they remain.
We are rejoicing that we can celebrate Christmas with Benjamin, Stephanie, Donald, and Little Ben. But our hearts will also reach out to India and to Myanmar, site of a devastating cyclone in May 2008 that may have claimed as many as 100,000 lives. (A true accounting will never be known.) After all, we have family in those countries, and they won’t be home for Christmas.
