Fighting the evil root of injustice

I've been a wounded soldier. Too broken to care, too weak to fight, and too betrayed to stand.  In the middle of that, I wondered if God was ashamed of me for putting down my weapons for a season of unknown days.  When you spend time in the infirmary, healing takes as long as it takes. 

During the past year, God has brought me through spiritual rehabilitation, and I'm amazed at His love when I see just how weak I was by juxtaposing that with the strength I feel with His blood rushing though my veins.  I can't believe how strong I feel.  Can't believe the joy I have in wielding these weapons and shield again.  I'm astonished that I can do this again and I know it has nothing to do with me. Everything to do with His grace.

And so when I tell you that I fight on Tuesdays, I hope you know that I'm fighting every day.  Fighting against the devil and his evil schemes to rob me of all of this.  Fighting for my thoughts and my feelings to once again be brought under the submission of His peace (Phil 4:9).  I fight for justice, and I also fight for me.  I wage war in my prayers for my family, my husband/shepherd/leader, my family-flock, and the down-and-out all around.  Having risen from the hospital bed with a new heart, fresh with confidence and His power as my constant companion - I can't really even express how ready I am.  

Because I get to do this.

Today as we fight in prayer and awareness and action, let us once again visit our fictionalization of a real human trafficking story - that of Anna.  I'm writing her story here in 4 parts (about one per month as insert into my Tuesday series) for you, my reader.  Because I want you to know.  I want you to picture an individual soul among the 27 million victims of this horror.  Why do I want this for you?  Because God's heart is for people - one by one and all of us, and I want us to open our hands in willingness to let Him shape our hearts like His.

For Part One of Anna's Story click here

[2] ... Anna woke with a start as the bus lurched to a stop.  Three men stepped up into the vehicle and surveyed its passengers with menacing eyes full of scrutiny.  Two of them were large with rough beards and dark hair, and the other was smaller but just as foreboding as the others, with cold blue eyes and a nasty scar running the full length of his cheek.  Anna shuddered once again in fear and shifted in her seat as her stomach began to growl in hunger again.  Her lips were dry and she longed for a drink of anything.  
     "Let's go - out!" the smaller man barked.

One of the other girls, the one with light blonde hair, mustered the courage to speak. “Where are we? Is this were we get on the plane for America?”

            The blue-eyed man looked at the man who had escorted the girls and taken Anna’s papers when they left St Petersburg.  They glanced at one another and chuckled.  Blue-eyes asked, “What did you tell them, Kristof?”

            Grinning ear-to-ear, Anna’s once-trusted “friend” replied, “They’re going to America to be nannies, remember?”

            Changing his chuckle to a full-out guffaw, Blue-eyes looked back at the girl who had spoken and then clenched his teeth.  “You belong to me.  All of you.  And you will do everything I say, or I’ll send Kristof here to kill your families and feed them to my dogs.  He has your addresses in Russia, so don’t even dream of trying to run.”

            Anna shrunk in her seat and tried to stop the tears of fear running down her cheeks.  It was worse than she thought.  Her stomach began to swim, and she tried hard to swallow down all she couldn't bear.

            Kristof spoke again, this time to the five girls.  “The first gift of your new life is this,” and he held out a long rope.  The girls looked at one another in confusion. “Tie each other’s hands. The tighter the better.”

            Anna took the rope cautiously and began tying the girl next to her.  Blue-eyes took a gun out of his jacket.  “If one of you gets loose and runs away, I’ll shoot the one who tied her.  If you cooperate, I’ll give you a drink of water.” 

            Fine way to turn us against one another! Anna thought.  She tied the pretty blonde’s hands next to her while silently pleading with her eyes for forgiveness.  Horror struck all of them as they realized that without money, passports, or even a single word of this foreign, Asian language, they were absolutely hopeless.  

            The next days for Anna and the girls were worse than anything they had ever imagined a human could endure.  Once taken to an individual room that was little more than a jail cell with a small, dirty bed and one shared bathroom under constant guard, Anna was informed matter-of-factly that instead of caring for children, she would be entertaining men every night with no respite aside from a few hours in the morning to eat and sleep once the brothel’s clients had tapered.  In order to be “trained” for this work, they were subjected to repeated beatings and rapes every night for an entire week by the two dark-haired men, Blue-eyes, and Kristof.   Each night Anna pleaded for them to leave her alone and each night they were increasingly rough.  Screams came from the rooms around her and she knew without seeing that her travel mates from Russia had all been subjected to the same torture.  She stopped screaming after the third day and stopped crying after the fifth morning, as her shame and fear gave way to numb submission and hopes for death.

            Anna had lost count of the days of her imprisonment, but after what her best guess told her was about two weeks later, she overheard an American client refer to this place as Laos, and Anna began to hate herself.  Without the courage or strength to escape, she hated her body that man after greedy man stole.  In fear that Blue-eyes would be true to his threat to feed her dear grandmother, siblings, and mother to his dogs, Anna hated her memories of them that kept her from running.  She hated her light skin that caused her to be chosen first and most often every night from among all of the sex slaves.  She hated her own hands for trusting Kristof with her passport, and most of all – she hated herself for being a girl - weak, vulnerable, alone, and afraid.  Denying all hope and semblance of emotion, Anna tried to escape within the recesses of her own mind as she battled the deep desire to end her life and the nightmare she couldn't end.

... [more of Anna's story to come soon]

Human trafficking is our generation's nightmare.  More slaves are reported today than at any other time in history.  This globe cries for justice and you and I can no longer stand by and hope someone else stops it.  It's up to us.

So perhaps you're as fired up as I am, and maybe - just maybe - you want to do something too.  How about this:

India Rescue Mission and Exodus Road.  No gimmicks, just rescue.

Want to help too?  What better thing do you need to buy for $10 than freedom for a human being?

Bust 7 brothels in India, Rescue 40 girls 

Another interesting organization I found just today is fighting the root of this evil of sex trafficking: demand.  What would our world look like if God changed the hearts of men and brought them to a life of pure sexuality?  I can almost picture it.  Can you?  Maybe this will help ...

Unearthed: "The heart of the problem is the heart of the human being."

Lord, today my prayer is for all of us as humanity.  For young women and boys and girls trafficked all across this globe, I plead for rescue.  For men and women who care, I ask for courage, wisdom, and strength to fight.  Because we get to. For men, I pray for new hearts that want You more than they want the perversion our world offers.  For You - I ask You to show us how to overcome our sin so we can all glorify and thank You.  Because You really are worthy of every breath to be praising You.  I love you Jesus.  Give us faith.