I personally have a deeply driven sense of need within me to help others, as if should I not do so, my life would then seem meaningless. I truly feel this way. Flipping through a news magazine at the dentist’s office this week I was appalled by a picture of a young injured girl in Baghdad, one eye either completely destroyed or bandaged beyond redemption.

I forced myself to stare at her and to think of how petty I’d been that morning when I’d run out of my favorite Light Plain Soymilk. I’d literally felt sorry for me, poor old me having to endure the skim milk carton that had been left out all morning while I dressed and fed the kids.

This girl in this photo stood in the ruins of her house, bloodied and crying, no parents evident, and the roof and walls gone, while I whined over momentarily losing our electricity and cable TV.

What’s wrong with me? When did I lose my perspective or my idealism of the 1960s?

I'd entered adoption as a way to help, I felt truly called to do so, excited, challenged, and annoyingly full of ways to change the world.

Now, emotionally beaten and battered, a raggedy wisp of who I once was, tired of continually fighting the system in my attempts to find help for some terribly wounded children, some days I have to reach down pretty deep to find my strength.

This photo helped me snap out of it.

I was with my darling 12 year old gifted son who’d never have had dental care if he’d remained in his earlier netherworld bouncing between two sets of folks who did not want him either in El Paso or Juarez. There’s be none of the college dreams that now fill his soul, no soccer team, no excellent school system, no mom who dotes on him, and no full belly in a warm, loving house that soothes him, full of mama’s houseplants, books and produce from the garden.

I’d do all this again just for him. I’d risk the physical damage I’ve sustained from his disturbed older brother, and I’d re-visit all the financial losses from the constant thievery of another birth brother of his, just to see this one child bloom.

I’m more than deeply confident that so many more of my children will also pull through. And today I’d received a brief email that cracked me up, “Thanks for your honesty in writing about all the trouble your kids go thru. I would lose my mind without things like that to read.”

This woman has no idea how much her words also helped me today.