Mother's Day #2...and HIV/AIDS

My how we have all changed in a year! Some of us are bigger. Some of us are browner. And life is good - albeit fairly exhausting a good deal of the time (thank God for oversized sunglasses!). As hard as motherhood is - and it can be really hard - I would not trade even one second of being Junia and Eden's mommy for the carefree life I used to lead. They are now a part of me, stitched into the fabric of my soul, by the God who knew we would need each other.

Sweet Davis tried very hard to make today special, including coordinating some very cute toddler handprint artwork and making arrangements for a special brunch at a favorite restaurant. Two smaller guests made the brunch (and the pre-brunch "let's actually try and get out the door of this house") a bit of a trainwreck but he gets a "A" for effort. He told me he had thought about lining up a babysitter so we could enjoy a quiet brunch together for Mother's Day sans the toddler tantrums that have been punctuating our days with relative frequency of late. He said he didn't because he thought I might feel bad if the Little Ladies weren't coming along since it was Mother's Day. I told him ANY TIME he wants to line up a sitter for brunch, lunch, dinner, coffee, tea time, light appetizers - you name it - I am in.

While the AM was a bit of a wrestling match, we did have a lovely afternoon with friends at a very swanky hotel in a neighboring town. This hotel is really fancy but there never seems to be anyone there so they don't really care what you do. They just assume you are rich and famous and should be catered to. Works for me! The girls and dads spent time on the putting green while the mamas sipped drinks under the shade of a tree on the green. It was truly delightful. Davis and I have decided it might need to be a weekly event.









On the note of things going on this week, Friday was World AIDS Orphans Day. This topic is close to our heart as the issue intersects with our lives in an intimate way. I had hoped to post about this on Friday but was busy with some event planning for our orphan ministry and just didn't get to it. (Are you going to be a part of the National Prayer Vigil for Foster Children? Join us and many others in just a few weeks!) Sadly, there are many children all over the world today who do not have mothers because of AIDS. At a seminar I attended at the Christian Alliance for Orphans conference on HIV/AIDS and orphans, the speaker, who was a leading AIDS researcher at the CDC (and a mom of 8 adopted kids, 10 kids total - and I complain about my workload?) suggested that orphan crisis and the HIV/AIDS crisis are synergistic epidemics meaning that AIDS is creating more orphans and many orphans in turn end up with HIV/AIDS as they move into adolescence. She indicated that the growth in the orphan population may in turn double the global HIV/AIDS population which currently stands at roughly 33 million cases worldwide. She also put out a frightening statistic that I have not yet heard saying that global orphan population, in a large result because of HIV/AIDS, now stands at closer to 163 million rather than the 143 million figure we often hear talked about.

I share this because on a day when we celebrate mothers, it is so important to remember that adoption, the amazing experience that made me a mother, is often birthed from the pain caused by much larger global issues, like poverty and disease. While I believe that adoption has always been a part of God's grand design, I also know that in this world we inhabit it is not The Answer. It's a small part of addressing a lot of broken things that need to be fixed, kind of like putting a bandaid on a really big wound. If we are going to pray as Jesus did asking that God's kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven (Matt.6:10), then we, as Christians, need to be on the front lines of doing all we can to eradicate the spread of HIV/AIDS. To learn more about about HIV/AIDS and how we can all get involved, it is well worth reading Erin's post on this. She is an adoptive mother of an HIV positive child and advocates for this vulnerable population.

And so on Mother's Day, in our family, we remember the brave and beautiful woman who made me a mother and made us a family through the gift of sacrificial love she gave to her precious girls by putting them up for adoption knowing she could no longer raise them. And in her honor, we say that we will do what we can to fight a disease that is creating so many orphans. As with the issue of sex trafficking, we must acknowledge that we stand at a unique moment in history, one that calls for us to say with the actions of our lives "Not on our watch."