September is the month for Compassion Blogging and I just feel stumped.

I love Compassion, love our Compassion kiddos (this year we both lost and gained one), believe in the necessity, the success and the sustainability of it, but I feel parched for an angle with which to add to the conversation. My brain feels clogged and my heart is just plain distracted.

These days, I’m focused on the three kiddos living in my home. Their hearts are the top priority of my own at the moment, these uprooted and displaced shoots. Oh, they’re doing fine, really. More than fine. They love life, enjoy school, run circles around me and one another. They walk with heads held high into church or school or playground.

They smile, always.

But it’s a delicate dance, this new life. Eight months in, now, and we are all a bit tired. Dinner table conversations are a bit heated. They are a bit short with one another and with us. In truth, I am a bit short in return. Tears fall a little easier than they used to. And they are not sad, no, just… weary, or frustrated.

I am so thankful for the country we now live in, for the teachers and the programs and the youth workers and the lay people who guide them, shape them, teach them and love them. They have no want for people in their lives, and for this I am so grateful. But still, my attentions are those they seek most… and when I could be writing letters to Daphine or our new little guy in Colombia, I am instead slicing apples or my lap is occupied by one little person or another. When I could be writing about poverty in Uganda, I am instead writing about bedtime routines and the way Jack lowers to one knee as he reads a book on the floor.

And when I think of Compassion month and the children around the world marching into their sponsored programs in their own uniforms and with their own school books, I think of the classmates of my children, who themselves are from around the world: North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe.

They’ve all come here, too, just like we have. These wee ones, uprooted and displaced shoots, just the same.

I wonder at it all… how small this world is, how strong the need for love, how children are so much the same, no matter the skin or the country or the language or the heart. I wonder what I could give to them, how much I have to offer them, when I am consumed by the well-being and survival of my own.

Can I make room? Will I make room?

Our children here have ample support, education, health care and love. But, so many children go without, and as you know, Compassion aims to change that.

Child sponsorship IS a necessity, it is successful and it is sustainable… if only people like you and me keep saying, Yes, I’ll give.

Even when I can’t go, even when I have children here who need me, I’ll keep saying yes.