GM not mine though

I'm sharing this because I don't like to keep making negative posts so this is positive. Sure made my day a lot better. Some minor facts in this story that don't affect the story may have been altered by me to make sure no one can find their identities.

There is a guy I know (I'll call him M). When I first got to know him he would comment about how there should be more people helping others because there was so much bad in the world. He said he tried to help but he would quickly feel a little overwhelmed when he realized how many people needed help. He even stopped for a little bit saying what was the point? Its changed since then and now he spends a lot of his time helping others and inspires everyone around him to help others too. He's the reason I started working at charities and I now thank him for that.

But back to a few years ago. He got married and he and his wife decided to adopt a kid from an Eastern European country instead of having their own. The adoption agency ran them through a list of kids and got to a girl around 5 or 6 and told them that she was having problems after seeing someone she knew brutally murdered in front of her. (The adoption person would tell them something about each child). He immediately went on to the next child assuming that they would not want that girl. After seeing just the one picture and hearing what happened to the girl though they immediately decided that she was the one they would adopt.

When the girl came to their house from the country she was at she acted like she was in shock. The doctors assured them that in just a few days she would start acting like any normal kid. But it didn't get over in a few days, it kept going. She would sit staring blankly ahead at nothing for almost the whole time she was awake. She could speak the language that her new parents spoke supposedly, but she never said anything more than yes, no, and a few other small single words if she spoke at all. She never cried, she never laughed, and she never got angry. She never looked sad either. She always had a blank disinterested expression.

Instead of in a few days it getting better it looked like it was getting worse. She wasn't walking around anymore and other than maybe taking a few bites to eat her parents were having to feed her like she was a baby. They started getting desperate to help her out and started trying anything; vacations, buying her stuff, sleeping with her in bed but nothing seemed to be working. This went on for over two weeks.

One day when M came in with supplies he couldn't see where he was going and banged into an object with his shin hard. Knowing the girl was in the room he said nothing to try to cover the extreme pain. (If you've done it. You know this hurts a lot.) Then he noticed he heard giggling. He looked up and was shocked to see it was the girl. The pain just instantly went away. He smiled back at her so happy she was showing some kind of emotion. She smiled back at him for a brief second but then her eyes died down and the disinterested expression came back as her eyes focused on some distant unseen object again.

M then said to her "I'm going to end up bruised on every square inch of my body but I will run into things for the rest of my life it will keep you laughing. This guy was 100% serious too.

The girl then focused her eyes on him again. She just stared at him for a little bit. He didn't know what to do but just stare back as he felt something was happening. Then he noticed tears rolling down her checks even though she gave no other sign of crying. All the sudden without warning she ran to him as fast she could knocking him back to ground hugging him. She was sobbing without stop now.

He carried her over to a chair and rocked and sang to her for a little bit. She finally stopped crying and he was worried that she would take on that same disinterested look. But she didn't. She laid in his arms while he rocked staring up at him with a look that was closer to being content.

If I had seen the girl in the picture and then seen her now I would never believe that they were the same person. When I came over to their house she was in the yard running with other children laughing and screaming with no care in the world.

As he told me the story it was getting dark and the other children had gone home. The girl came in and curled up in her new father and mothers laps. She quickly went to sleep with a look of complete peace on her angelic face.

He said "Remember when I asked what was the point? You can't help them all." He looked down at his little girl and gently stroked her hair with his fingers and said "You do it one life at a time.

"One human life at a time".