Anna's Story [part 3]

It's Tuesday and I'm fighting again.  Praying and fasting for rescue and not only that, but restoration.  Human Trafficking is not acceptable to me.  As Christine Caine says, "Not on my watch!"  Amen.

I hope you've learned some helpful information about the realities of this global crime through the past installments of Anna's Story.  I've been partnering with The Exodus Road for the research and prompts of this fictionalization of a realistic victim of sex trafficking.  Though these events didn't actually happen in exactly this way, they do happen to lives all over the world every day.  To tell the story of one individual is to remove the distance of statistics and to see into the heart of an individual and care.  Which is precisely what Jesus does for us every day.  He amazes me in his omniscience. 

Click to read Part 1 or Part 2 of Anna's Story 

[3] ... Several months had passed and Anna didn't really know how she survived another night.  Bruises of different colors washed under her skin all over like clouds, and as much as they hurt, she almost thought they were pretty, the way they colored her pale skin.  She liked how they demonstrated her pain. A visual representation of the violation.  It was only when her face was hurt that her captors cared, though.  She'd learned their names through careful listening, and had even written them down on a piece of paper she found on the kitchen floor. Why she thought this mattered she was unsure.  She probably wouldn't live long enough to tell anyone who cared.  Even the men in police uniforms brutalized her.  Sometimes they were the worst.

"Put some make-up on your eyes!" Rurik shouted and hurled a bottle of cover-up at her.   Dodging it as it hit the bed beside her, she laughed at the irony.  Make-up and pretty clothes were once all she dreamed of having so she could impress the handsome boys at her school.  Now, the only things aside from bread she was ever given, were now the farthest from what she wanted.  Rubbing the cream under her blackened eyes, Anna looked in the tiny mirror on the wall at what had become of her.  A gaunt, pale face stared back and she barely recognized it as herself. As she met her own eyes she suddenly felt queasy.  That girl was gone and here stood someone else.  A product of this horror, a mere skeleton inside of a shell.  Even her eyes were empty of all light.  

"Please - just die," Anna pleaded with the reflection. Deliberately she turned away and tried to pull on the seductive clothes for another customer.  What she couldn't have known is that this one was different.

He walked into her room but kept his distance instead of grabbing for her flesh.

"What's your pleasure, Mister?" she repeated the only line she knew of the local language.  The line they'd made her learn by kicking her until she said it just right.  The line that brought different twists of the same disgusting thing sex with strangers would always be.

Only this man didn't answer or move to show her.  "What's your name?" he asked in broken Russian instead.

My name? she thought.  Had anyone asked her name since she'd been here?  Did anyone even care?  She couldn't remember telling the other girls her name even.  Why does he want my name?  Do I tell him my real name or not?

"Sarah," she lied.  Suspicion drowned the little skip in her heart that the gentleness in his eyes brought.

...

Please join me on Tuesdays for more of Anna's Story and more about fighting for the freedom of our world's slaves.   

For real stories of real rescues, please go here and see God's good plan at work.

And today - let's pray, asking the One who can end this, the One who has called us to be a part of bringing His justice and love.  

Jesus - You put on flesh for us so You could die to set the world free.  But still, so many are not.  The urgency of this makes us frantic, but You are not afraid.  Give Your wisdom to us as we fight, Lord.  Help us to count every cost and make war with strategy and the Guidance of your Spirit.  God, You are so holy and so loving.  We want to honor Your Son by following Him.  He came for this, and for this we go too:

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
    for the Lord has anointed me
    to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted
    and to proclaim that captives will be released
    and prisoners will be freed.
² He has sent me to tell those who mourn
    that the time of the Lord’s favor has come,
    and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies."
                 -Isaiah 61:1-2 (NLT)

Lord, may it be so.