Sometimes it hits home anyway

I don't watch the news.

The news usually makes me sad.

I don't like to be sad if I can help it.

So, when I saw headlines everywhere about the quake in Haiti, I didn't even click on the links. I ignored everything about it, hoping not to hear stories that would make my heart break.

Then, a friend from high school who is also a Facebook friend started posting status updates about her brother who had adopted two kids from Haiti, but hadn't been able to bring them home yet. They were two years into a process where they have to go to Haiti to hang out with their children, and where the children know them as Mom and Dad. In my friend's status updates, she said that after the earthquake, the kids were missing.

As if it weren't bad enough to adopt a couple of adorable kids, and then not be able to bring them home. Now they had to deal with their children being in an earthquake ravaged country, and to not know if they were alive or dead.

About a day ago, they got word that their son has been found, but not their daughter. The parents are flying there tomorrow to do everything they can.

*

There is a family that I love that go to our school. There are fourteen kids in this family, and most of them are adopted. I aide in the fourth grade, and this family has FOUR fourth graders. One of the fourth graders, a kid who I absolutely love to chat books with, told me yesterday that everyone in their family was wearing red because four of their siblings--- four that were blood siblings that they adopted--- were from Haiti. Their birth mom is missing. He sang me a song that his dad wrote about it, and about the country, and about the adopted kids, and I wanted to cry.

I guess some things that happen in the world are so big, they hit home-- right in the heart-- whether you want them to or not.