Injera Guacamole Hotdog: Orphans are like Potato Chips...can't eat just one!!!

I am reposting this...but have been blogging at MOTHER THE WORLD Expressing my feelings...about orphans and potato chips and my need for a fix (this isn't an adoption announcement..just a post about my frustration...)..but anything can happen..LOL!

It's like eating potato chips...You reach your hand in and get a taste of the sweet salty crunchy snack and you just can't resist having another. I never struggled with addictions (although I am a little nuts for chocolate and yankee tea-three quarters unsweet one quarter sweet)...But HELP ME RHONDA!!!! I need an intervention. I have come to the realization that just when I get a bit of satisfaction in having relieved myself of the 'orphan adoption yaya's"...there is a deep need in me to stick my hand back in that bag for another bite.....

I couldn't sleep at night when the addiction first hit me in 2004. I would wake up with night sweats (way too early for the change of life--no comments from the peanut gallery..MOM)...dreams of hearing cries of babies motherless from across the sea somewhere. This went on until I finished my homestudy, sent in the dossier to Guatemala...then it commenced as I waited to get the green light to go to embrace my sweet baby girl Matea... and bring her home.

You would think being filled up with a chubby, raspberry blowing, Guatemalan baby doll bundle would cure me and satisfy this hunger. Afterall, it seriously was as if God had brought to life one of MichaelAngelo's cherubic paintings and handed it to me in human form. Matea was and still is a total 'gift from God!" But like I tell my kids.."Love is like a giant balloon that expands and never pops!" The heart can simultaneously feel immense love for a child and then another and another....(like a craving for salty chips)

So, a few years go by...my cravings, desire for another salty crunchy chip is intensified by three...as we head to Ethiopia...

A great feeling of peace came over me as the chaos erupted in my home...the addiction seemed to have been cured. Six kids, the critics would say is more than enough..."we are tying the tubes of your adoption yayas and taking that bag of chips off the counter...."

Perhaps, if I knew that the statistics were going down and that the number hadn't moved from 147 million to 150 million orphans...maybe I would be able to sit back in my recliner satisfied that I could get a good nights sleep and not be haunted by the cries and pictures of the orphans I have encountered first hand. But the numbers are growing and I know that in some countries less that one hundredth of one percent of the orphans will even be adopted...The chip bag never empties...it keeps getting fuller and fuller...and is overtaking the pantry shelves of my psyche...

I guess I would sleep better at night with the realization that if no one goes to care for the HIV+ kids in Uganda, Ethiopia or Eastern Europe they would still live...But I remain sleepless and restless in the knowledge of knowing that if nobody goes for Baxter, Sveta, Lori, Valentin...that they WILL die very very very young...But if we GO and reach into the salty bag of humanity to pull one out and yield to the addiction a life or lives will be saved...

I long to be cured! I long to not feel this need and this desire! I long to be able to sit back and continue to cheer and support the ones that go...but if I am being honest that isn't enough...My donations...my advocacy is just not as good as going in to pull a child out of a drowning sea...Do I sit in the boat and just continue to give others direction on how to save one orphan from the vast salty ocean when more lifeguards are needed....or do I dive in again because I know how to swim...?There is a prayer inside of me that screams "LORD TAKE THIS FROM ME!!" I spend

my days waffling between my middle class suburban common sense that says..."YOU CAN"T DO ANYMORE...MAINTAIN YOUR COMFORT...YOUR STATUS QUO....don't stretch anymore".....then there is that voice that wakes me up at night...

If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." Isaiah 58:10

'He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so

all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?" declares the LORD." Jeremiah 22:16

It is not so much a voice that wakes me up at night...but there are visions of the places where little Baxter, Valentin, Addison, Lori, Katia could be sent and left to die because I was 'being practical.' I don't like to be labeled impractical. But we live in a topsy turvy world where we prefer to take a sleeping pill and not to wake up to the reality across the sea or even in more disadvantaged areas of America.

I don't have 20k-30k to spend on another adoption...we are underemployed at this point. But I also know that with God all things are possible..And I know that most of my beautiful addicted friends also don't have a penny and somehow manage to scratch and claw their way to satisfy the need for another salty chip...I know I cannot possibly partake of all of the 150 million orphans in that vast salty ocean...but while I know how to swim and while more are being tossed into the salty orphan chip bag...I just have a hard time staying in the boat and not reaching in my hand.....I am rambling and I wait.... for an answer, a cure or a miracle....and I hate waiting...

If there is a 12 step cure to my addiction can someone intercede?
Step 11-Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out...

OKAY..I did that and it is HIS WILL that is making me more ADDICTED....

Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs...

ADOPTION ADDICTS UNITE---practice biblical principles in waking up those addicted to complacency and denial

Those of us who have this addiction have been labeled by the reasonable world as having some kind of psychological disorder. To answer that charge I say...'well then it is a sickness God has given me and encourages in the bible..." I really wish more were afflicted by it... we know there will always be suffering...we know we are not God and can't change that aspect of the world..but we also KNOW what God does say...TO GO AND PRACTICE PURE RELIGION...

But while I wait...sleepless...children are taking their last breaths because too many people were being practical....and because I have been told that going in for another chip is CRAZY....HELP ME RHONDA! (who is Rhonda anyhow?)

I need an intervention or a fix....or about 30k and more income and better health insurance...and a cure that will only come when the bag is empty....

In case you feel like throwing 20-30 thousand potato chips in our bag and contributing to this addiction go here..

( i don't really expect anything but am addicted so am a little outrageous and insane for the orphan left in the bag...so thought I would give it a shot---so I'll have more leverage when I try to convince my family I shouldn't be committed to the looney bin....or you can allocate this money for counseling due to our PURE RELIGION insanity...)...