Millions Alone

I remember her eyes. She was lying flat in the bed, staring up at me. Her gaze never wavered. The eyes were dark, and seemed like they took up far too much of her face. She was thin. And so still. Except for an occasional heavy blink, she was motionless, and so was I. It seemed as if she wanted something from me, but I was not allowed to pick her up, so I stroked the tiny arm and tried to ignore the holes in her dirty sweater.

I wish I had a picture of her but they wouldn’t allow that either. This was my first visit to an orphanage. Five years earlier I adopted baby girl from China, but I never saw where she spent the first year of her life. The caretakers brought the babies to us in a hotel conference room after they had traveled four hours on rugged roads to get to us. But now, here I was at the Gence Babies Home in Azerbaijan. I stood over that crib and couldn’t move. I was immobilized by the simple and obvious fact that this baby had no one to call her own and she was one of millions. She was, in someone’s book, nothing more than a number. As I stood over her metal crib, I saw my daughter in those coal black eyes. She was born in another country and culture far from Azerbaijan, but she, too had lay in a crib like this – alone, and without anyone who could call her daughter. And I saw myself. For twenty-one days, I was alone, until my adopted parents came to bring me home.

The country of Azerbaijan is closed to international adoptions and there are few domestic adoptions, so it is likely that the little baby girl with the big brown eyes is still there, if she is alive (even the smallest illness can take the life of an orphan in a third world country). The orphanage will probably be her home until she is moved to the Gence Children’s Home, where she will stay until she is 18. Then, she will be turned out into society to fend for herself unless institutional life has taken its toll on her psyche, in which case she will be placed in a psychiatric hospital.

In some countries, life is cruel in orphanages. In other countries, babies are well cared for and if they are not adopted they are given some kind of vocational training to prepare them for life on their own after age 18. In either case, they are without parents, family, or the kind of love that gives them the foundation on which to build a life. And they are alone, even if caregivers and other orphans surround them. When I look at my own daughter, I cannot imagine her without a bedtime story, a piggyback ride and a prayer before being tucked under the covers. It’s her routine, and it sends her into the darkness of nighttime (which she isn’t so crazy about) knowing that she is safe and loved and wrapped within the many arms of her parents and siblings.

The eyes of that baby girl in Azerbaijan still haunt me, and they won’t let me go. So I pray that God will wrap His arms around the millions of orphans who linger in places they shouldn’t be. I pray they will feel His embrace, and that they will sleep in peace.