This post is by Rebekah Kimminau from her blog Adventuring to Love. She volunteered at TLC in 2016.
There is something both beautiful and tragic about working in an orphanage. One minute you will be sitting on night shift snuggling a 3 day old baby, feeding them their bottles and singing them songs. You may occasionally think that you wish their mother could be doing this, but for the most part you are so busy with endless feedings, laundry and dishes that in the moments you get to sit and snuggle the babies you just think about how much you love them. A day later you can hear their back story (or the back story of any of the babies) and your heart will break into a millions pieces for all the things they’ve had to endure in their short little lives. There is sometimes this sense of heaviness that comes over me as I breathe in their newborn scent, or witness their first steps; in these moments there is a deep aching in my soul like no other – I want so badly to be able to see more of these milestones, to be a steady presence in their lives. Yet I also wish in the moments that their future parents could be there having the exact experience I am. Seeing the beauty in this child that I see throughout the day. And so, my heart breaks over and over on a daily {sometimes hourly} basis. I rejoice in the children and I mourn for all that they have lost, all that their parents have lost, and all that I will lose when I leave this place or they leave me. Having my heart balance that depth of a tragedy yet the beauty that is found in the circumstances is not an easy or a light task, but it is most certainly a worth-while task.
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Rebekah has such a poetic way with words. Her accounts of her time at TLC are a refreshing and raw testament to the deeply moving and life changing experience that volunteering can be if you open yourself up to it.