Why I do it.

It's no secret that I love Reece's Rainbow & love advocating for as many children as I can. But...why? Why am I so passionate about this cause? That's what I'm going to tell you about today.

Many of the people who advocate for RR orphans either have a child {or sibling, family member, close friend, etc.} with special needs, or they have already adopted through Reece’s Rainbow.

I don't fit into either of those categories. I honestly can’t think of a single person I know in "real life" who has Down syndrome.

So… how do I even know about Reece’s Rainbow? And more importantly...

Why do I care? I’ll tell you.

It all started at the end of 2010, when I was first discovering blogs. The very first blog I ever remember discovering and reading was Simply Alicia. I found it through random searching on Blogger and loved it. Then, in some way I remember nothing about, I happened to stumble across Patti’s blog, A Perfect Lily.

Patti happened to an incredibly adorable baby daughter, named Lily. {Seriously… she’s the cutest little girl in the entire world!}. I was totally in love with the pictures Patti would post of Lily, so I kept coming back. That was really all I ever did for so long… just visit her blog once a week or so and strictly scroll through looking at all the photos. I never read a single word of the posts. Then…

One day, I actually started to read. Patti wrote about Lily, of course, but there was something else she wrote about, too. Reece’s Rainbow.

She posted pictures of adorable kids {at that time it was Kareen, now named Mia and happily at home with her family, and Olga}. These weren’t just any random kids. They were kids from Reece’s Rainbow.

In her posts, Patti stressed the urgency of these kids situations. Both little girls were living in Eastern European orphanages, and nearing age 5. Living on borrowed time. Apparently, Eastern Europeans don’t roll like Americans do.

Because these beautiful girls had down syndrome, otherwise known as Trisomy 21, an extra {47th} chromosome, they were living in orphanages. And age 5… the reason that’s a significant age is because the majority of the kids listed on RR will be transferred to institutions at that age.

Institutions. As in MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. Scary, awful, adult mental institutions. At age 5.

Five.

And so... I kept reading. I kept stopping by Patti’s blog, and I slowly fell in love with these 2 girls. It’s inevitable, I think.

All this time, as I read all of these moving posts on Patti’s blog and heard about the institutions, where people as old as 20 who had been severely neglected lived, I had never once visited the Reece’s Rainbow website.

Never.

All my information was from Patti’s posts.

What I heard, it scared me. I didn’t know what to expect if I would click that link to Reece’s Rainbow, let alone the link to that video showing the reality of the institutions.

I was scared. It took me a long time. but finally…

I did it.

I went to Reece’s Rainbow.

and what I saw… it wasn't what I had expected at all.

I saw a bright and colorful site. As I browsed the pages and started to see all the faces of these boys and girls for the first time, I knew I was in love.

They were so cute. SO cute. What babies, 2, 3, 4, & 5 year olds aren't?

My heart broke for them.

These cute kids, they aren't like the cute kids that live down the street from me or anywhere else in America.
They don’t get to live the happy-go-lucky lives that most kids get the privilege of living.

They’re stuck. Stuck in orphanages and eventually mental institution in foreign countries, neglected and unloved, all because of a little something extra chromosome wise.

This website gave a whole new meaning to the words “Down syndrome” for me.

Suddenly, I was an advocate for children with DS and other special needs in Eastern Europe. and to think I hadn't even know it 5 minutes ago.

I started asking why myself.

Why, God?

Why don’t these kids get to have the childhood I had? The one with dress up clothes, cousins, barbie dolls galore, and most of all… a mom and dad who love me? Why?

I wanted to know how their parents could just give them up, just like that, and send them to play a game of Monopoly with life.

Only this time, it isn't a game. If one of those chance cards doesn’t say “my family found me” on it, that could make the difference between life or death.

This is serious. This is real. This is life for these kids.

Go watch this video and tell me you aren’t moved to do something.

Since that day, I’ve been advocating. Fighting the injustice that is the lives of these sweet children.

Jesus tells us that whatever we do for "one of the least of these", we do for Him.

And I believe it.

I love these kids so much now. All of them. I can’t even imagine how different my life would be had I not discovered Reece’s Rainbow at the very beginning of 2011. It’s better now, for sure, because of them.

This is something God has placed on my heart. Not just placed, engraved. Forever.

That’s why.

No matter what other people think of it, I’ll be advocating for these children until the cows come home
{whatever that saying means}.

{And now my short message to you...}

Fight it. Forget any prior notions you have about Down syndrome, special needs, orphans, international adoption, etc., and just see, with your own eyes, what is happening to these sweet babies over in Russia and Ukraine.

It’s not right. At all. Are you going to do something about it?

I know I am.

You don’t have to adopt to make a difference, as the saying goes. Advocate. Donate. Share it with your friends. But whatever you do, do something.