Katie R. Hurst

In a perfect world *People wouldn't lean over my shoulder to peer into my child's face and walk away. *I wouldn't hear that small, sharp intake of breath as the truth dawns upon them. *I wouldn't have to be afraid of other people's thoughts and comments if my daughter growls in a restaurant. *Churches without special needs programs would not exist Suffer the little children to come unto me? Which children? The ones with good families, the ones who can control their impulses? What about the children who are harder to reach? What about the children who blurt out things in the middle of quiet prayers? The middle schooler who cannot sit still? The teenager with too many piercings? The child who stims and hums and hits the wall? Suffer the little children, Church. *People would understand when it takes months, perhaps longer to figure out how to make church work after adoptions. *Six kids would seem like a blessing to everyone. *My

The hallways were stripped bare and I heard every flip of my flops and the nearly silent swish of my long, navy maxi skirt. My hair was pulled up and braided to avoid lice, my stomach trying to hold onto breakfast. The lights in the room were yellowed and cast a strange brightness to all of the chipped tiles on the walls. I stepped through the threshold and saw a small children's couch on my right side and noticed how few children were in this room. They scooted, crawled, demanded to be scooped into my arms. As my knees found the floor the very air seemed rife with knowing. The word "mama" escaped the lips of a small child. "Mama." Before recognizing the moment and closing the doors to my soul, I scooped him up into my arms and breathed him into my memory. I willed the tears not to fall. "Mama." My heart would have spilled over into a prayer if my lips had cooperated. I remembered just enough not to tell him I loved him. It would cheapen those word

In the last year I trained myself well to focus on the task before me and not worry about tomorrow. However, somehow in the middle of this self training, in the forcing of tunneled vision I lost sight of one of the most basic things. In my quest to make it through the day I left behind the inspiration, the sustaining of hope that breathes life into tired hearts. It hurt too much to hope. The fear of having a child die is overwhelming. And so, I was just surviving and for a time survival mode is absolutely necessary. I needed to just finish one more piece of paperwork. I needed to call one more government official and not be emotional. I needed the fortitude that survival skills bring. Once in China, faced with more trauma then I even allow myself to remember right now, I needed to survive. I needed to bathe my daughter, make rice cereal, walk to the store, avoid the human trafficking rings, block out the rude stares, wipe a runny nose. I needed to survive on little to no sleep. My he