Mike Rusch

…a few days ago we received some new photos of our little baby girl who is across the ocean in seemingly another time and another place.

These were especially difficult pictures to see, and maybe not for the reasons you may think. They were difficult because in a country that in 2008 had an estimated 5.4 million other orphans, our little girl is number 26.

We know this because the number “26” was written on the small white band that is wrapped around her tiny left ankle, and it somehow seems to carry with it her identity.

I could spend hours sitting her writing how dehumanizing this is or how she means so much more to us that just a number, but I’m not sure that will accomplish very much. It won’t change things because tomorrow another child will enter the orphanage and their little white band will be number “56”, “76” or something equally as insufficient.

The only thing that will remove this number from her ankle will be our presence. Our anxiety grows because we have a lifetime ahead of us of removing any trace that she was ever just a number to someone, and we are ready to get started because in her eyes there is life and love awaiting to be discovered. There are sounds of laughter that will ring in our ears for decades to come and there are tears that will fall as she asks the hard questions of “why me?” and “what happened?” and “where do I go from here?”

Our comfort is that someday soon this will be over and the white band will fall away. However, we will leave that place knowing that “104” and “223” are there waiting and we will never know their names. But, our hope is that maybe their names aren’t ours to know. Maybe, just maybe, their names are quickly approaching as their families sit anxiously just we do here today.