“Daddy, Mommy is just like me and Hope,” she shot out from the backseat. “She’s an orphan.”

The fact that my daughter, now with our family for over 2 months, still saw herself as an orphan and that she somehow made a delineation between our most recent two and the earlier two we had adopted, was lost on me at that moment. Her words were like a puncture wound.

Two years ago tomorrow, my father went home.

And what I’m learning about grief is that it comes at the times I least expect it. The summer-streaked sky bears witness to a surprise thunder crack and I’m swept with sadness. My dad loved thunderstorms and he taught me to love what he loved. There’s a rare thunderstorm that doesn’t leave me thinking of my father.

And these words from my daughter about where my father’s death has left me with another wave. I bit my lip and my eyes flooded with tears as Nate quickly responded “Sweetheart, you and Hope are not orphans anymore.”

But what about me?

You’re never old enough to witness the death of a parent and feel like it’s normal. Though my father had been ill for some time, his death was an amputation. How can I learn to walk without this leg?

Today I made my Wednesday retreat to the prayer room with this anniversary — such an arbitrary date I’m supposed to feel something around yet a real and tangible reminder of what I’ve lost — in mind. I didn’t pray about it or bring it to His attention, but the remainder marks that hang in our backdrops are God’s territory.

I read this: For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18).

I have this haunting question: what about them? And it surfaces every few weeks, as I’m reminded of all the children who fill the orphanage floors and city streets, without parents waiting for them. Between now and when there is tangible relief, what hope is there?

The answer is the same for them as it is for anyone else, young or old, living with an amputation.

God fills in the gaps. Young and old, we have access to the Father.

And if I was ever tempted to deny God’s goodness to even the sickest child, living on death’s doorstep without a parent in the wings, I just need to remember the early signs of Him each one of my children brought into our home.

Within a day or two of being home, I found Eden and Caleb huddled on our steps, prostrate. “Pray,” they told me in Amharic [Salut]. I hadn’t yet had words to tell them of Him, but the One who went before me did. And part of their life was talking to Him.

“Jesu balungi!” Hope sung through the corridor of our guest home in Uganda. Jesus is beautiful. Something I say often, but she learned from Another.

“Jesus …come…” came muffled through the door, overheard by her foster mom. Minutes earlier, Lily’s ears had been introduced to the story of Him. She twirled around and rushed to her room to talk to this Man — made Father for the first time for her.

God’s goodness didn’t start when they entered our home, or even when we first pursued them. He is still Healer, even when the broken places haven’t yet been tangibly mended. He is the perfect Daddy of the fatherless.

Death has no sting.

My story is small compared to that of the woman who left a comment on my blog, months ago, saying she lived her childhood fatherless. Her whole childhood. The Father’s heart breaks for this. It breaks for her. And for me. It breaks.
And then He tenderly promises access.

Healing’s well.

________________________________________

CHADHA COMMITS TO ETHIOPIA’S CHILDREN
By Amanda Robert

When Paul Chadha remembers his first trip to Awassa, Ethiopia, he describes the field in front of the church where children go when they have nothing else. “It had some of the sickest children I’ve ever seen — just hungry and so sick, most of them with HIV,” he said. “It was a really sad field.” Nine years later, Chadha, an attorney at Accenture and adjunct professor at Northwestern University School of Law, helps these children through the Awassa Children’s Project. As president of the nonprofit organization, he provides housing, food and health care to 100 orphans and vocational training to 100 young adults.

Over the years, Chadha recruited six other lawyers to serve on the organization’s 11-member board. Most of them also volunteer, handling licensing and international law issues and raising money. With their help, they give directly to Awassa’s children instead of spending donations on an executive director, staff or travel expenses, Chadha said.

“It’s a great pro bono legal project as well as a charity,” he said. “As lawyers, we have an obligation to the other folks on this planet, to make sure they have medicine, food and little basic things like clean water and electricity.”

Last summer, Chadha stepped up efforts to expand the Awassa Children’s Project after the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Ethiopian government asked him to take 50 toddlers who were displaced by the severe drought and closing of nearby orphanages. He could only take 30, and even then, he said he moved 15 of the older children into the center’s gymnasium to make room.

After Chadha traveled to Awassa in August, he saw that the organization needs at least $45,000 to build a brand-new school and convert the old school into more housing. He refuses to shave his beard until they raise the money, he said. “We’ve raised about $15,000, and my whole hope is that by Christmas, we are able to say, ‘Hey, this Christmas, we built a home for 30 kids that were orphaned,’” he said. “There are a lot of people I know who know that I’m doing this, and they’ve seen that I haven’t shaved. Now they realize that with the drought and everything, this is very serious stuff.”

Edward J. Hussey Jr., an attorney at Accenture, who acts as vice president of the Awassa Children’s Project board, made his first trip to Ethiopia in 2007. He described the happiness of the children, which astounded him since so many are orphaned by HIV/AIDS, he said. “The poverty level is high, food is scarce, and you’d think life is tough, but for the people there, and the kids in particular, it’s just life,” Hussey said. “They’re happy to keep going on. The other kids in the center are their family, and they’re very welcoming to us and our volunteers.”

Hussey, who met Chadha when they were both corporate associates at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in 2002, said Chadha leads the Awassa Children’s Project through his unique dynamic energy. “Paul brings this dynamism to it,” he said. “When he talks about it, you can see him light up. He’s very passionate.”

Chadha, who grew up in Broadview, Ill., attended Northwestern University School of Law because he wanted to help disadvantaged and at-risk youth. After he graduated in 2002, he traveled to Europe and met a woman who owned the Trap Door Theatre in Bucktown. When he joined Seyfarth, Shaw, he began assisting her with pro bono matters and met actors who wanted to do AIDS awareness theater in Ethiopia.

Chadha took the first trip to Awassa in February 2003 to see their work, and when he returned the next year, government officials told him they needed help with the city’s orphans. “They told us there were thousands of orphans dying in the streets every day, and they asked if we could take a handful,” Chadha said. “That’s when we started the orphanage.” Three years later, the Awassa Children’s Project cared for nearly 40 children in five rental houses across the city. The government recognized the organization’s commitment and offered land for a permanent children’s center and school.

Chadha, who moved to Baker and McKenzie LLP in 2004 and then to Accenture in 2005, reached out to friends and colleagues in the legal community to draw them into his work in Ethiopia. He taught the board’s treasurer in one of his law classes and convinced another one of the board members — a former member of the Trap Door Theatre group — to go to law school, he said.

Cara M. Houck, a principal at Miller, Canfield, heard about the Awassa Children’s Project through a friend who works with Chadha at Accenture. She traveled to Ethiopia last winter and plans to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in December to raise money for the center.

Houck, also a student at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, convinced some of her classmates to join her. Other classmates and colleagues already expressed interest in supporting them, she said. “For us, it’s nothing,” Houck said. “But when you see these children first-hand and how they appreciate every little thing you do, even if it’s just holding their hand for two seconds, it touches their lives. “But I’ll tell you, it touched my life even more. What you get back by giving is 10 times more than you can ever imagine.”

Chadha and his wife, Ada W. Dolph, who works as an associate at Seyfarth, Shaw and also serves on the Awassa Children’s Project board, juggle practicing law and raising their 1-year-old daughter Emmeline. But they still believe in supporting Ethiopia’s children, Chadha said.

“In the course of practicing law, you meet people in varying degrees of need,” he said. “As you help people through their issues, you get a good sense of what people really need. “The situation in Ethiopia is more desperate than any situation anywhere in America, hands down, by many times over … My wife and I are both working 60 to 80 hours a week for our clients, but we both realize that with these law degrees, there is a lot of good that needs to be done.”

For more information on the Awassa Children’s Project, visit www.awassachildrensproject.org.

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