Oh, heading South in January sounds so appealing right now. Beautiful green grass, gentle breezes, sunshine. 30 degrees warmer than here.

Except that it’s about 14 degrees here right now.

Boo.

44 degree weather in the South wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for.

But, that’s okay, because I’ll be by myself with 400 other women. And, that’s all the sunshine I’ll need this weekend.

If you are heading to Created for Care this weekend too, make sure you come by and say hello at The Sparrow Fund‘s table where I’ll be hanging during most of every free moment. Stay and chat for a while (and maybe draw some others in to spend some money at our table and support the work, k?).

Looking forward to this.

It’s lovely, isn’t it? Coin pearls of all different shades. Every time I wear it, people ask about it. It really is pretty.

But, today, it’s my nemesis. 

It was around my neck this morning as I was all dolled up for Bible Study. Drop off Lydia to class. Off to lobby for an opening coffee. Off to classroom for lesson where a few women admired it. Off to sanctuary for lecture. Then, pick up Lydia in class, to car, and to store where I gathered a few new tops to try on in the dressing room where…I noticed I no longer had my lovely necklace around my neck.

Oh no. 

Stay here, Lydia (as if she’d notice that I step away for a few seconds when she was fully engrossed in Yo Gabba Gabba on my iPhone).

No sign of it on the store floor–and I really looked in addition to enlisting staff to help me too. I left my name and number and a description of my lovely necklace, and the ladies there promised they’d look for it. Back in the car. Back to the church. Retrace my steps all while holding Lydia still fully engrossed in whatever she could find on Netflix. Classroom to ladies room to sanctuary to parking lot. Nothing. Not a single coin pearl to be found.

Mom, remember that necklace you gave me with all the different color coin pearls? How hard would it be to find that at the pearl market again? I love it, but it’s gone. I’ve been looking for it for 45 minutes now, and I can’t find it anywhere.

What a relief when she said not to worry. She had an extra one that she had picked up for herself but she never wore. I could just have hers.

Sigh of relief. I could give up the search and take these tired and hungry girls home.

As I ran back to the car, I heard a little jingling noise which is when I looked down–right on down my tank top with a shelf bra that was layered under a cardigan, mind you–and saw it. Yeah, my lovely necklace had fallen into my shelf bra where apparently I must have some sort of nerve problem (?) and was all snuggled up in there while I was searching all over creation.

For those of you who think I just over think all day and write about my deep thoughts, there. I’m just a normal, frazzled mama with a lost necklace stuck in my bra. Go ahead, laugh at me like my mother did.

It’s the last day of 2012. I’ve been thinking about what my last post of the year could be–things I’ve learned this year, things I’m looking forward to in 2013, interviews with the kids. Nothing really jumped out to me.

This morning, a friend shared this link. It’s of a baby boy. Abandoned. Found at a busy Zhengzhou station. The crowd of people look on. Some smile at him as he peers with wide eyes back. Some look on perhaps with shame or just curiosity. Regardless, there is a crowd watching, waiting to see what will be done with this child bundled and alone.

He will be raised by a fruit vendor. No formal adoption, just a handwritten document with some red inked fingerprints. That’s it. No dossier, background checks, homestudies. He’s told by the police not to sell the child, raise him as his own and he’ll take care of him later.

Watch the video. If like me, you have a child who you parent via adoption, pray for your child’s birthparents and for peace for them this coming year. Thank God for the incredible privilege you have been given to parent your child. It is indeed a privilege and a huge responsibility. Pray for children like this boy who find themselves alone. And, pray for big things to happen in 2013 to care for children around the world–that more families would be able to keep their children, that more children could be adopted in their home countries safely, that more children will know the love of a family.

In case you didn’t hear, on Friday, Putin signed into law a ban on adoptions of any Russian children to American families. Period. It was in harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians as violating human rights.

It’s politics, right? Why should we care? I’m not a mother of a Russian child. You likely aren’t either.

We can’t not care. There are about 740,000 reasons why we can’t not care.

In their government’s lashing back at our government regarding human rights, they are significantly limiting the future of potentially thousands of children who now fill what have been long recognized dismal and depressing orphanages.

Some of these lawmakers claimed that adoptive parents are the real abusers. Some said that Russian children were adopted by Americans only to be used for organ transplants, objects for sexual exploitation, or “cannon fodder for the U.S. Army.”A spokesman for the Russian orthodox church added that Russian children adopted by Americans and raised outside of their particular church would not “enter God’s kingdom.” I’m stunned.

Photo from The Toronto Sun

740,000 Russian children not living with their parents and about 18,000 Russian families currently in the process of adopting, most wanting only the healthy, physically attractive infants. If every single one of those families adopt a child right now, they will provide families for only 2.5% of the current children there who need one. Do the math. That leaves a lot of children.

While about 130,000 more children will come into care in Russia this year, another 15,000 will “graduate” from care at the age of 16 or 17. Of those 15,000, about 40% will resort to a life of crime including prostitution and selling drugs to get by (that’s 6,000 children), 33% will continue to be unemployed longterm (that’s about 4,950 of these children who will never hold a job), 20% will remain homeless on the streets (that’s about 3,000), and 10% simply give up and commit suicide (1,500 children who leave the orphanage because they are too old take their own lives).

While Americans brought home to families a small number in comparison to the overwhelming number of Russian children available for adoption right now–942–each one of those children now have a family and a future they may not have had otherwise. I know a few of these families myself. I know how loved these children are and how they see hope as bright as the sun in front of them.

We can’t not care about this new law–a hasty political retaliation at the expense of children–not just “Russian children” from a distant land with unknown faces but children, children like Levi whose parents are waiting to bring him home right now, anxiously waiting to hear if the son they’ve held in their arms already can come home soon. Children just like our children. 

740,000 children. 740,000 reasons we need to care. And, another 130,000 reasons to care in 2013.