Support LWB Unity Initiative

It's a crazy idea. I don't really know how I got it in my head but once I did I couldn't get it out.

I'm a long-time supporter of Love Without Boundaries and the work they do to provide medical call, surgery, nutrition, Healing Homes and foster care for orphans in China. These beautiful little ones are struggling to live with heart conditions, cleft lip and/or palate, intestinal issues and other medical conditions that require specialized care, nutrition and often surgery for a chance to live. In fact they can't live without intervention.

Their birth parents have made the heart-wrenching decision to "abandon" them in hopes that someone else will be able to heal them, because they cannot afford to seek help themselves.

Throughtout my time of supporting and advocating for LWB, it is that last fact that has often broken my heart. I have thanked God for the people who give their lives to serve, love, heal and care for these vulnerable babies without families. But it is those families that I so wish could have been able to keep and raise their sweet little one. When I see the babies post-surgery, beautifully healed, eating their fill from specialized bottles for cleft lip/palate, being bounced and cuddled by their nanny in the Healing Home, I think of their mom and dad, out there somewhere. Not knowing if their baby is alive.

So when LWB introduced their Unity Initiative, which is providing a way for parents to bring their baby for assessment and provide the surgeries and care needed so that the family can stay together, thus never creating an orphan in the first place, I was thrilled. We have to keep coming to the rescue of orphans, I believe it is an issue as a Christian that does not have optional involvement. Investing in keeping families together, coming alongside these mothers and fathers and saying "we know you'd give anything to heal your child, we want to help" is one way to begin to address the orphan crisis at the root.

I had decided awhile ago to chop off my long hair and donate it to Beautiful Lengths. Then my husband casually says one day "you could shave your head and raise money, too." HAH. haha.

Okay but really, could I? I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Maybe I could. But do people shave their heads for orphans?

A couple weeks ago I listened to a friend speak about the daughter they are in the process of adopting from India. He showed a picture of her, just about 5 years old, standing in front of the camera with a shaved head. This is common in orphanages to keep away lice. And it hit me. People may not usually shave their heads to raise money for orphans (or in my case, at-risk-of-becoming-orphans) but I could shave my head in solidarity with all the sweet souls living without families in orphanages around the world.

I could keep my long hair. I have the money to care for it and I've never been concerned about getting lice. Frankly, I'm nervous (and vain) about shaving it off. But these fatherless ones don't have a choice. So if I can raise $5,000 I'll shave my head, donate it to Beautiful Lengths, and together we can support LWB's Unity Iniative in China, saving the lives of seriously ill babies and sending them home to a life, not as an orphan, but with a family.

So will you join me? Donate to my cause, provide life-saving surgery for parents who would do anything for their child but cannot do alone, and be part of the solution to the orphan crisis.