I have a dream.

I decided what I want to do with my life. So listen [read] up.

A little background first. Growing up in Africa, I used to work in an orphanage. Every day after school, my mom would pick me up and we'd go out to the orphelina for a few hours. It was the highlight of my life. I had no friends because the girls in middle school were cruel and I didn't fit in. But at the orphanage, as soon as I opened the door dozens of kids would run to me, yelling, "Mama Mélissa!" and bombarding me with hugs. I seriously could not walk for the first five minutes of being there.

I loved the kids there, and they loved me. Those innocent young children had the saddest stories and all I could do to help was play with them, change their diapers, feed them, and hold them. Somehow, that was enough for them. I could tell you about the kids individually for hours but that's not the main point of this blog entry. If you want to hear some of their stories, just ask and I'll talk your head off.

My favorite baby was a little baby girl named Stephanie. She was the light of my life. She still is, and I think about her every day. Well, on my thirteenth birthday, I didn't care about anything except going to the orphanage to see Steph. I didn't care about presents or a party or anything, I just wanted to see my kids. So just like every other day, my mom picked me up from school on April 30th, 1998 and we headed to the orphanage. As soon as I walked in, I knew something was terribly wrong. I greeted all the kids as usual, but when I went to Stephanie's crib, she wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere. When I asked the ladies where she was, they told me that Steph had been adopted that morning. A couple came in, chose her, and left. That's it.

I did my best to keep my composure because I still had to be there for the other kids. I played with them for as long as I could but I couldn't talk because I knew I would start crying. Finally, my mom and I left. I ran to the car and when she got in, she looked over at me to see tears streaming down my face. I remember that we just sat in the parking lot crying for the longest time. I don't remember if my mom was crying with me or not, but that day was the saddest day of my life. My baby was gone, and I didn't even get to say goodbye to her.

After that day, I didn't go back to the orphanage for several months. I couldn't even think about the orphanage without crying. When I finally did go back, it brought the same joy to my life as it had before. Something about those kids is amazing. They have nothing, not even parents, but somehow they have everything.

A couple of months ago, I started thinking about Stephanie again. Well, I always think about her but this time it was nonstop. Whenever my mind wasn't occupied by something else, I was thinking about her. I have no idea why. I haven't seen her since the day before my thirteenth birthday, and I'll probably never see her again. I'll always remember her, but she'll never remember me. It's one of those sweet sorrows in life that can never be changed.

Well, one Friday night in church at Calvary, we were having a contemplative low-key college night service and I started praying about Stephanie. It was then that I realized why she had been on my mind so heavily. I had always felt pain about losing her, and only pain. It was my loss, and I didn't see it any other way.

In that moment with God, I realized something that I had never realized before: Stephanie is eight years old right now and she has a mom and a dad who love her. That may seem evident to you, but it had never ever occured to me. I always thought of her as my baby that I never got to say goodbye to. But I realized that she's not my baby. She's God's baby, and He gave her to waiting parents. I still get teary when I look at pictures of her - you would too if you knew how cute she was. But it took seven and a half years for those tears to turn from tears of sorrow to tears of joy.

So that's my story about Stephanie. But the subject of this post is "I have a dream." Because I do. I finally decided what I want to do with my life.

Of course, I would love to work in an orphanage in a third world country. But I haven't decided yet if I want to live in the third world or not. Maybe that decision depends on who I marry, because it's his decision too.

But if I live in America, I want to live in the country and have a huge house with a lot of land where I can start a kennel. I want lots of dogs and I want to be able to give a home to any stray, wounded, or abandoned animal. In my huge house, I want to take in foster children. Maybe some of them will turn in to adopted children, but I also want to have my own birth children. I want my foster kids to take care of the animals, because animals have amazing healing powers that I can't even begin to comprehend. I want the kids I take in to have the responsibility of keeping the animals alive, and I want the animals to depend on kids who haven't been given a fair shot at life. That's what I want to do. That's my dream. How I'll do it, I don't know. When it will happen, I don't know. How I'll finance it, I don't know. But that's what I want to do.