Lost but no longer alone.

There is no way of knowing how many of us remain, wandering. But as JRR Tolkien once said, "not all who wander are lost".

Sometimes I wonder if our previous lives weren't in some way a preparation for all of this. Struggles making each strong enough in one way or another, to keep us alive when so many others have died. Some would call it "luck", but our little group over time has shown an exaggerated variety of unexpected but crucial abilities, experiences, skills and strategies that, without, we'd never have made it so far.

Is it our genetically coded instinct to survive that reminds each of us just how much a mind really can retain and blend into creatively cunning ways to fix whatever is thrown at us? Our desire to win a challenge, to prove life wrong in its assertion that death be imminent?

We find ourselves relearning what resilient creatures we humans can be when properly motivated. We are unafraid, though often unwilling at first, to fight; but fight we will when survival is threatened.

That's more than likely part of why we have become the adopted family to so many children. In our travels, we find them - alone, barely fed, dirty, cold and afraid. But so many come to us with their tales of parental heroics in the face of insurmountable odds. Tales of sacrifice, barters with the world for the life of their young in return for their own.

We all seem to share that human value that puts our children's lives above all else, especially in these times. I am proud (yet saddened of course), but always deeply and soulfully indebted to those who have come before us and passed into the unknown after this life, to hear their stories of a child saved in the direst of moments by the love of a mother or father or both. To hear of another human, holding onto a faith in the rest of their human race, that this sacrifice would not be in vain. Holding onto a hope that these children, so dearly loved, might be found, saved yet again by the next who is able, to live and to love, and maybe even laugh again one day.

And to carry the lesson of love and survival to the next generation to come. That we shall stand, and we shall sing, and we shall wander, lost for now, but no longer alone.