I go out to the mailbox and the letter has come, the one I've been waiting all week to get, the one from AHOPE, telling us who our sponsored child will be, and as I rip open the envelope I wonder who I will see: a boy or a girl, tiny or older, healthy-appearing or gaunt like HIV+ people on TV in the 1980's before the good meds were available.

And there she is, tiny and adorable and bright-eyed, with round cheeks and a shaved head, and after I stare at her picture for a moment I read the letter that came with the picture and find out that she's only 5 and has been there at AHOPE along with her sister for over a year, ever since both her father and mother died.

And though I thought I was prepared for a sad story, suddenly I discover how incredibly different it is to be looking at the person while reading the story, and my heart sinks deep into my stomach and rests there, rock-like, as I go about the rest of my normal day, stealing glances at her photo in between stirring soup and making biscuits and hugging my kids, with my tears welling up and then receding all day like waves on a beach.

And I try, but I cannot fathom how it must feel to be living in an orphanage, even a nice orphanage, with no guarantee that you'll ever have someone to think you are special just because you're you, no one to take the special care that a mother takes, to laugh over the silly phrases and the goofy antics, and to tickle and tuck her in at night.

And there's a cowardly, comfort-loving part of me that wishes we'd just sent the money without asking to be assigned a child, so I wouldn't have to see a picture, wouldn't have to imagine this little one so far away. But even as that thought surfaces, I feel a stern-jawed indignation, an anger. By God, if a 5 year old is orphaned, someone should be feeling her pain, someone should know she is suffering. Someone besides just that child. And if that person be me, then so be it.

Because if I know of her existence in the world, if I am praying for her at bedtime, then maybe she is not quite as alone, not quite as bereft.

Even if all I am doing is praying and sending measly McDonald's money.

Even if she still doesn't have what she needs most.