Tuesday's child.

Do you know what it is to ache with tenderness for a child?

I do.

Every Tuesday our newspaper publishes a little blip, including a photo, about the weekly "child in need".

What exactly is a "child in need"?

These are children in need of adopting families. Sometimes a single child, sometimes a sibling pair/group, but they are always children who have been damaged by their previous living situations. Sometimes this damage is perpetrated in utero, other times it occurs in their birth families.

Every Tuesday, I cut these children out of the newspaper and I put them on my refrigerator. Every day, every time I open my refrigerator, I am reminded of these innocent ones and I pray for them.

Do you remember that old Mother Goose rhyme?

MONDAY'S CHILD IS FAIR OF FACE
by Mother Goose

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

I'm a Wednesday's child. Do you know what that means?

No, I'm not a walking "woe" machine. I don't go about life trying to create misery and suffering. What this means is that I am sensitive to the injustice of the world. If anything, I have this inane tendency to try and take the misery of the world and to pull it into myself.

I think this is why I ache with tenderness for every Tuesday's child.

I think this is why I cut out their pictures.

I think this is why I place each picture in prominence above the photos and pictures of my own children.

I think this is why I pray so fervently for my wall of Tuesday's children.

I can't take them all into my home; but I can take each one into my heart and into my soul.

And I do. After all, what else can a Wednesday's child do?

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