Watch a video and help special needs orphans

Brady Murray, at One Step Closer to Home, has entered a video competition. Winners are selected based on number of votes. Please take less than two minutes of your time to watch Brady's video, which is about Reece's Rainbow and children with Down Syndrome, and vote for him. I'll let him tell you why:

Winners receive a spot to race in the Ironman World Championship in October, but most importantly, they will race as a media athlete and have the opportunity to share their story on NBC's nationally televised broadcast of the championship this year! THIS COULD BE OUR OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE THESE PRECIOUS CHILDREN'S STORY WITH THE WORLD!!!

You can read Brady's post, which is where the quote is from, here.

Click here to watch the video and vote for it. It's less than 90 seconds long and contains cute children. Vote for it in the bottom left corner. (The play button sends you to Facebook, but you don't have to let the app access any data. I'm not sure if you can see it without an account--someone tell me?)

On knitting

I think I've mentioned that I knit. I am one of those people who knits in phases--madly completing several projects, then not touching a needle for three months. I haven't knitted in a long time, because I just got busy with school and went through a non-knitting phase. But now I'm home with spare time that I'd like to use on something more productive than Facebook. So I'm back to knitting. (Why do my mad knitting phases tend to line up with summer? It's too hot to knit. Sigh.)

I was knitting this pretty top. Unfortunately, with the body knitted, I have no yarn left to do the applied i-cord edging. Without the edging, the top rolls and curls in a very unattractive way. To the craft store for me, I suppose. I would post in a knitting group to see if someone has some leftovers, but I can't remember the name of the yarn and I no longer have the label. Oh well. Now I'm just hoping it fits.

I am now knitting the Feather and Fan blanket from this book. I like it. It's a very simple four-row repeat, only one row of which is anything other than "knit across" or "purl across," but it makes a ripply lace pattern with scalloped edges. I suspect I will get bored before it's over though. Blankets are big. I'll post a picture of it too. (Right now I'm just too darn lazy to get up and find my camera.) This blanket will be a fundraiser for Kurt. I'll sell it somehow, either as an auction or as a donations-for-entries-to-a-giveaway kind of fundraiser. I have no idea how long it will be till it's done. I'll post again when I have pictures and/or significant progress to report.

Teamwork Tuesday: Priscilla

Look at this adorable little girl! What beautiful eyes she has. Here's what Reece's Rainbow has to say about her:

Girl, Born February 2010
Pretty Priscilla! More photos available. Priscilla has many facial features of FAS. She is also struggling with "pre-leukemia", also known as congenital Myelodysplastic syndrome. She really needs to get home!!
From her caregivers: communicative; adequate reactions. Character: cheerful, active, friendly, communicative, likes to play with different toys.
More photos available.
$105.50 is available towards the cost of my adoption!

(me again) Priscilla needs a family badly so that her medical needs can be attended to. Are you that family? If not, please consider donating some money to her fund and sharing someone's Teamwork Tuesday post on your blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account. (One more thing: Priscilla has a Guardian Angel, who's committed to raising money and awareness for her, so whoever decides to adopt her will have a helper in their fundraising.)

Click here to look at Priscilla's RR page.

Help needed on several fronts

The Hansen family needs your prayers! Their daughter Maia is in intensive care. I don't know enough medical terminology to be able to explain what is wrong, but it involves seizures, neurosurgeons, and fluid buildup in her brain. The link is to the family's blog, where you can read updates from Maia's parents.

Ksenia needs your help. Look at the change in her from the picture on the right to the picture on the left. She was unlisted on Reece's Rainbow recently and we all thought she had died. But she's back. RR doesn't have enough information about her to collect money, unfortunately. She can also only be adopted by Canadians right now due to the rules in her country. Please pray like crazy, and share her with your friends--even if they aren't Canadian, their friends might be.

As always, keep praying for Kurt! Please consider giving him money. I found his guardian angel, and am hoping that we can work together on a fundraiser. (Do I have any ideas? Possibly. Not really. Yet.)

In personal news, I'm home from school. It's good to be with the family. I hope to start posting more regularly (how many times have I said that now?). Maybe I'll weigh in on the bikini argument floating around the blogosphere; I posted a link on my Facebook page and my friends brought up some really interesting points. Or maybe I won't. I'm not sure that I have anything to add.

A little advocacy for Kurt

Don't you need a four-year-old son with a very minor physical disability? Or don't you know someone who does? This little boy is waiting in an orphanage for his family to come and take him home. Look how wistful he is.

Why is Kurt in this orphanage? Because he has cerebral palsy. But his CP is so mild that he can walk on his own, even with the substandard-to-nonexistent medical care that he is likely receiving now. With proper medical care and therapy, just think how slight his impairment would be. I am not a CP expert, but from what I do know it seems like all he would need is some leg braces.

If Kurt doesn't get adopted, he will eventually be transferred to a mental institution for the rest of his life. He will be neglected, mistreated, and probably abused. He will die lying in a crib. And this is a child with the potential for a "normal" life. A minor physical disability will confine this beautiful child to a mental institution, where he will be treated worse than you would treat your goldfish. Someone needs to save Kurt from the system in the country where he lives. I wish it could be me, but I can't adopt for another 4 1/2 years at the minimum, and there is no reason why he shouldn't find a family before then. 

Kurt's region is a quick region to adopt from with relatively low costs and few restrictions. His disabilities are minor. He's adorable. What's the problem? I suspect that it's either that no one knows about him or the fact that his fund is small. Luckily, he now has a guardian angel who is committed to solving both those problems (it's not me and I don't know who it is. If you stumble across this post let me know who you are!). And you can help too.

If you aren't called to be his family, please consider donating money to help finance his adoption when it happens. Please share this post, or write your own. Let other people know about Kurt--maybe one of the people who reads your Facebook post will discern a call to adoption. And most importantly, whether you can help him financially or not, whether or not you help raise awareness, please join me in praying that Kurt's family finds him soon. 

Realizations

It's been an interesting week. Some good things have happened and some bad things have happened and some very stressful things which are ultimately good have happened. Part of me would like to be more specific, but I am not going to share the details right now.

Today, however, I had a kind of spiritual epiphany. The background: As I've mentioned before, I have had depression on and off over the past few years, and even in the times when I'm not actually depressed, there are bad days. Bad days often manifest themselves in despair and the desire to quit current major life projects (school, romantic relationship) for no reason. I was talking to A once about vocations, and saying that I needed to find something that I could live with on bad days as well as good, because I would always have bad days. He said that this was an entirely too negative way of looking at the future. I disagreed. We let it go.

Fast forward to today. I was walking to Mass, thinking about depression and the shadow it has left on my life, and thinking about the future, and I thought, "Some darkness just never goes away." Then I thought of John 1:5: "And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." And two things occurred to me.

First of all, darkness does not understand light. No wonder I don't know what God is doing. He is light, and there is so much darkness in my life. Secondly, darkness cannot overpower light. Light always wins. If the darkness never goes away, it's not because it lost the battle with the light, it's because I held the door and windows closed and refused to let the light shine in.

This afternoon I went to an area meeting of People of Praise, a charismatic Christian group. From some of the things the people said I gained a few additional pieces to the puzzle. One man got up and said that the Lord had moved him to share that His forgiveness was so perfect that there was nothing you could do that made it impossible to start over. Another said that God's forgiveness was a perfect forgiveness, and the belief that your relationship with God was damaged if you had sinned and been forgiven was a lie. And the frequent requests for the Holy Spirit to come helped me to ask God to shine His light into my darkness. I imagined myself opening the door to a closet containing the things I try to keep secret from God and letting Him in.

So overall, this is what today has taught me: A was right. There don't always have to be bad days. I can't get rid of them, but God can.

I have always known this, but today I think I started to believe it.

Easter!

I need to post here more regularly.....

Easter was wonderful. My mother and my sisters S (my twin) and J (8yo) came up to visit. So did K. Most of my friends stayed on campus for Easter, and we had a relaxed and prayerful weekend. Not much homework was done.

My school does a really good job with Easter. We have morning prayer for the Triduum, the normal Triduum liturgies (Holy Thursday/Good Friday/Stations), Tenebrae, Easter Vigil (with 7 OT readings), and four Easter Sunday Masses. The regular Sunday evening Vespers are especially solemn on Easter. Our main church has several choirs, which are really good, and the liturgical style is very solemn, respectful, and prayerful. I spent a lot of time in church this weekend (6.5 hours in church or church-related things on Friday alone :o). At the last minute K was able to stay for the Easter Vigil--his first ever!

This was a socially and spiritually productive weekend for me. My family got to know my friends a bit better, and got to meet K for the first time. (Verdict: Mutual like and desire to get to know better. Yay!) I got to know K better and spend time with him. (I do not think I get to do this enough. Stupid four hours.) And I think I grew in faith.

It's interesting to me how my relationships teach me about God. This weekend this was most clear in the cases of J and K. I was sitting next to J thinking about how much I loved her, and it occurred to me that if I, an imperfect creature, can love someone this much despite her imperfection, then God, Who is perfect love, must be able to love me too. Obvious? Probably, but this idea that God loves me does not come naturally to me. As for K, the fact that he's mine when I have done nothing to deserve him makes it easier to believe in grace. How do religions where God isn't a person make themselves believable?