An angel named Joseph

A little boy named Joseph captured my heart today.  He has been at the Children's Hospital for 3 weeks for malnutrition so severe that his skin is peeling and he is incredibly weak.  I picked him up and he snuggled into my shoulder and buried his head in my neck.  When I tried to put him down, he began crying so I held him again while he was fed some "plumpy-nut" (500 calorie peanut butter-like paste that's fortified with extra protein, vitamins, etc.)  The dietitian looked in the drawers beside his crib and found that his mother had stashed away 17 bags of plumpy-nut instead of feeding them to him.  Her child is slowly dying of starvation and she is not giving him the free food given to her in order to save his life.  When she came back to the ward and they confronted her, she just laughed.  It was disgusting.  It is so difficult to avoid judging her, but at the same time it's so difficult to understand how a mother could do that to her little child.  To top it all off, she is pregnant.  I wanted to take Joseph home with me to love him and protect him.  I heard one time that 30,000 children die every day of preventable causes.  That's 30,000 beautiful kids who are as precious as the little boy that now has my heart.  Putting him down and leaving the hospital was so difficult today.  Please pray that he will survive (and thrive) and that his mother will change.  Life is so unfair and I wish I could fix it for that sweet little angel boy.