The words coming out of her mouth sent shivers up my spine. Collins and I were standing at the front desk of Estes Elementary, registering her for kindergarten. She was unusually agitated and nervous. As I was trying to finish up, my confident and bubbly little girl blurted out something along the lines that she wasn’t worth anything. I was dumbfounded! Not worth anything? This child has been loved and praised continually since we adopted her one year ago. I quickly said, “Collins, you are precious! You are special!” She kept shaking her head saying, “No, I not.” When we got outside she yelled out, “You not come back for me!” She thought that once school started, I was going to bring her to this new place never to return again. Pain started pouring out of her. Tears and mean words flowed. Over and over we went in circles, with many assurances that I would never leave her like that. In the midst of her tears, she kept saying she just wanted to play with Jesus, not me. She wanted to go away with Jesus, not me. I was astonished that 1)she already grasped the truth that Jesus was the one security she had, but also that 2) she thought our 11 months together as a family was just a lie. After all we had been through, how could she possibly think I would stop being faithful to her now? Driving home the thought hit me that if she was experiencing this much pain, how much more those who will never get a family?

Collins was left outside the gate of an orphanage in China when she was a toddler. So on this seemingly normal day, the excruciating pain of her abandonment was rearing its ugly head. When a child is abandoned, neglected or abused, they feel worthless. They feel unlovable. They feel they can’t trust adults, or even God. They believe lies.

Edith Schaeffer once said that a family is a “perpetual relay of truth”. A family provides not only protection and provision, but constant messages of truth. Every single person needs these core messages to survive: You are loved, you are valuable, your needs matter, you can trust others, you can trust God. For orphans and foster children, the baton of truth has dropped, and so they believe lies.

The kindergarten experience with Collins was a good reminder that the wounds of these children are very deep, and it confirmed once again the urgency of the vision God has called us to.