"I hate you all and wish I had never met any of you!"
"Why didn't you leave me in Russia? That's where I was meant to be! When you adopted me, you stole me from my birth family!"
"I will kill myself if you keep me here! Just wait, you'll find me dead one morning....then you'll regret that you didn't listen to me!"
"I'm going to hurt Hope and Charlie....I'm that dangerous, Mom! You better send me back to Russia or you're going to regret it!"
All of these words have been spoken by Natalie. All are cries from a very broken girl. Wanting to be loved, but scared to accept love. Desperate to give love, but afraid to be vulnerable.
It wasn't always this way. Up until the age of 12, Natalie was very typical....happy, funny, silly, and care-free. She had a spark in her eyes....life in her eyes.
But then Natalie turns 12.....Enter our Arch Nemesis....I call it a demon from Hell:
Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)
RAD is caused when children are not nurtured during the first years of their lives. Often the disorder doesn't show up until a child reaches the age of puberty. That is the case with our Nat-Nat. But when it does rear its ugly head, it takes over the psyche like a tidal wave of destruction....with the sole purpose of wiping out everything in it's path....including the one it possesses.
Know this: It is absolute abuse to institutionalize a baby/child. But our world allows it every single day. Pro-lifers, need to quit patting themselves on the back and wake up! Most of us aren't really pro-life at all....simply put, we are anti-abortionists at best. To be pro-life would mean we would be fighting just as hard for those precious lives who have been locked away in institutions.
Today, my daughter is living in a hell that was forced upon her by a political system, a system of convenience.....And it makes me furious!!! I am watching the consequences of a system that is anti-Christ through the life of my 14 year old daughter.
How can we sit in our comfortable church pews week after week getting filled up on scripture when there are teenagers in our town who are cutting themselves, plotting their suicides, and managing their pain with drugs? millions of children being held captive in orphanages that are filled with abuse and neglect? thousands of children being sold into sex slavery each year? How can we know about the abuse of the least of these and do nothing? say nothing? For crying out loud, what would Jesus want us to do?
This world is upside down....we should be outraged by a system that leaves our most vulnerable in institutions.....we should be aghast that those children will grow up having to endure mental illnesses because they weren't nurtured.....we should be full of shame knowing that we spend more time deciding what type of coffee we'll drink than on the literal destruction of children. Pro-life? Really?
The picture above is of Chappy baptizing Lydia and Natalie....ON THAT DAY, NATALIE MADE A PLEDGE TO HER SAVIOR! I'm holding onto it.
We are working diligently to get Natalie to a treatment center that specializes in Reactive Attachment Disorders. If you want to honor Natalie, watch Lydia's two videos and spread the word....be a part of saving the lives of 5 orphans in honor of her. We need 700,000 views which is a near impossibility....but those lives are worth it:
"It is important to realize that we adopt not because we are rescuers. No. We adopt because we are the rescued!" ~David Platt
Thank you for sharing a truth that is so hard to hear and that must be excruciating to live.
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