Another Little One on The Street

Last night Drew and I went out to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary. It was about 10pm, and it seemed like all six million of Changsha's residents were with us at the commercial center of town. There's like street vendors selling everything, people crawling over each other, store-front lights flashing -- actually, kind of like the picture at the top of this blog page, but more expansive, tons more people and more modern.

On the uneven sidewalk, another mother kneels behind her baby, begging for a handout.

The baby is a little younger than Titus. He's sleeping soundly on a raggy quilt. I can tell his face is grimy because the store-front lights are bouncing colors off his face. His feet and hands are sticking out from under his cover. I wish I could adopt him, or adopt him and his mom. They could live with us. I wish.

His mom is maybe thirty, a little pudgy and hunchbacked. Like most beggars, she doesn't stop rocking forward and back, bowing, begging. She looks exhausted, like maybe on the next bow she's going to keel over. I wonder if that hunchback is from the bowing. People occasionally drop something in her coffer, and she tucks away the "big bills"-- worth about fourteen cents.


Think about this! Precious babies sleeping on the filthy, filthy street! Sometimes I hate this world for how polluted with evil and injustice and misery it is. I'm furious with this culture for not having a women's shelter or some place to get help. I'm hopeless within myself because I still don't how I can help these moms and their children. Lots of tears last night, and a few right now.

I am not trying to write creatively or hype this up to impress you with some heartbreaking story. This woman and her baby are real people, on a real street in my town. And I still don't know what to do.

Rachel


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