The Secret of Being Content

As I sit here adding to my ever-growig "To-Do" List once again, I sigh deeply in anticipation of the week to come, as I remember that this is a week of rest for me. Just rest, Courtney! The day will come (sadly, quite soon actually) when I am thrown back into the chaos of day-to-day life as a college student, working women, and activist. Though part of me longs for the daily drudge of life back at school, I desperately needed this week of relaxation and precious time with friends and family back home. To learn to just be content with where I'm at is such a challenge for me. I am always in dread or anticipation of the next day, the next season, the next trip, the next break, the next test. Today, the Lord assurred me I could just be content with today. What a beautiful place to be.

As I close out the week in the Lou, I am excited for yet another packed-full day of sweet time with friends and even a couple meetings mixed in there. So, for just one more day I will withstand the overwhleming urge to knock out some of that heaping pile of school work and work work in pursuit of the much-needed break I have been blessed to experience this week! 

Just thought I would share a bit from my time in the Word this monring... 

A Word from Philippians:

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have take hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.

…many live as enemies of the cross. Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame…BUT HE TRANSFORMS!

I am not an enemy of the Cross, so…

I will not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, I will present my requests to God and the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

I will think on whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—I will think about such things.

And I will learn to know what it is to be in need and to know what it is to have plenty. I will learn the secret of being content in every and any situation.

Preparing the Tabs

As some of you may know, I am a part of a campaign to raise $100,000 to build a safe home for girls waiting to be rescued out of the Red Light Districts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This campaign functions on multiple levels, but one very practical fundraiser I am promoting as a student on a college campus in particular, is selling these soda tab bracelets.

I have been busy recruiting volenteers to help get some of the bracelets made since there seems to be an increasing demand which my own hands cannot keep up with! The bracelets are such a great product to market, since they cost pennies to make but then are sold for $10 each, all of that money going to fund this safe home.

While I'm home on Sping Break this week, I decided I better try to get some good headway in producing these bracelets, so this morning I began the process of preparing the soda tabs for bracelet making.

I washed all of the tabs in bleach/water mixture.

 

Then rinsed them off and layed them out to dry.

 

This was quite the process, especailly considering the need to clean thousands of these tabs at once!  

For the One

Do you know misery? Do you know darkness? Do you know pain? Do you know hopelessness? Do you know worthlessness? Do you know torment? Do you know that feeling, the one that makes you wish you could just disappear?

Do you know the desperation, the burning and gnawing wretchedness that leads one to truly believe that the brightest alternative to this hell on earth, the easiest way to disappear, to escape from it all, is to bury oneself alive…literally?

A while back, I heard a story that comes to mind right now. Tonight I have been wrestling mercilessly in my head with this desire to have mercy for the ONE verses this calling to fight for justice for the HUNDREDS. Either way, there are cons. Sure, I could help the one, but in doing so would I harm the hundreds? How much help could I really offer to the one, that is after she was taken to a safe place…then what? I could help the hundreds over months and years, but what about the one that is being raped and beaten as I type this?

Mercy or Justice? The proper proportionate mixture of the two. It is a war that wages in my head continually these days. Whose side I am on, I honestly could not tell you.

But tonight as I was spending some time crying out on behalf of the ONE, the Lord gently confirmed my pleas by reminding me of a story I heard a bit ago. I changed it up a little bit and added my own take on it, but the concreteness of it is factual. It is utterly gut-wrenching and certainly inspires a sense of mercy for even the most heartless of persons.

A man was visiting a brothel. He was actually an undercover cop, but no one knew it. He was walking through the building, getting the lay of the land within this prominent Red Light District. As his eyes darted from room to room, corner to corner, he took up notes in his head as to the placement of everything. He knew in a few months he would be back here; the next time, he wouldn’t be undercover.

A few weeks prior, the authorities had several reports of possible cases of trafficking. It led to the discovery of a large trafficking ring, actually over 30 brothels intertwined, in one way or another. This was one of them. He was here on a mission; one which he could not act on until it could all come down at once. He was doing justice. It took time. But the payoff, well, the payoff would result in the HUNDREDS being set free.

As he finished up touring the inside, he noticed a door leading out back. He had come in broad daylight, so many of the young girls, free from the demand of their clientele, were playing outside on this sunny day. The door banged shut behind him as he took several steps out onto the back patio. His eyes skimmed the surroundings, as he immediately envisioned the troops surrounding the tall wooden fence, which currently served to lock these girls into this hellish nightmare. His plan of action was just about complete.

As he turned to head back into the darkness of the brothel, something caught his eye. He glanced back, as if his eyes were playing tricks on him. After all, there is no way he just saw what he thought he just saw. Slowly, he rotated his body back in the direction of the east end of the yard. Much of the terrain where the little girls were playing was sheeted in lifeless brown grass. Then there were certain parts of the ground encompassing the fence that were simply covered in dirt. Sitting deep in the shadow of the fence, he wonders how he even noticed her. Her skin was a light hazelnut, her tattered brown curls fell well past her shoulders. She was hunched over a bit, sitting in the dirt.

He watched her for a few long moments, as his eyes seemed to struggle to transmit to the proper signals to his brain to process what he was actually seeing. After all, this wasn’t the kind of thing they prepared you for in the force. This wasn’t the kind of thing they prepared you for in parenthood. This was just not something you would ever think you might need to be prepared for. In fact, nothing could prepare you for something of this gravity.

Hunched over, he watched as she leaned forward took up a handful of dirt into her palm. He felt his legs beging to wobble a bit, as he seemed to be losing his balance. He could not take his eyes off of her, though everything in him wanted to. He wished to run…to close his eyes and run away, like this wasn’t happening right before him. And yet, something kept his feet plastered to the ground beneath him. His eyes, wider then they ever have been, continued to watch her with great intent.

She sat back a bit, her bottom gently landing in the little pile of dirt that she rested on. He watched as she took the handful of dirt she had just picked up from the ground and proceeded to dump it right onto the top of her head. He watched her pale face expressionless face as she continued reaching forward and sweeping up large handfuls of dirt into her palms, and then piled it atop her curly locks of hair. It began to sweep down over her eyes, some piling up atop her sharp shoulder blades. Her white tank top was completely dusted in the russet dirt, its red undertones disguising her lighter complexion.

After an hour or so, of just being glued to that spot, one of the girls who had been playing with a ball walked over to the man. She followed his eyes which were still glued to the little girl covering herself in dirt. She tugged on the bottom of his shirt, breaking his trance and getting his attention. He looked down at her, her big brown eyes gazing up at him. Broken from his state of denial, he hesitated before proceeding to ask the childlike teenage girl what exactly that young girl was doing over there by fence.

Having already seen the child of whom he was speaking, the girl refused to unlock her eyes from his. She solemnly replied, looking straight into his eyes. She was taken from her maw when she was five years old. She new here. Last night, madam asked me to take her upstairs and get her ready for her debut. Her whole body, it was shakin as I applied the pink blush and dull lipstick. I tried to tell her she had to stop those tremors or they were gunna beat on her, but she didn’t seem to hear what I told her.
I took hold a her hand and escorted her to the line up. Several of the customers fought to have her. She was new, pure. Her kind was in high demand round here. Madam knew it too. It doesn’t happen this way much, but madam let them all have at her at once. Ten of them maybe. I sat outside the whole time. We could all hear her cries as they slapped her around her, the screams as they each got their go at her. Madam had me drug her up afterwards. She was pretty bloody, pretty darn messed up. I tried to talk to her, to tell her it would be okay. She just kept on staring away, gone to another place it seemed.

I guess she already gone and lost all her hope because now she over there trying to bury herself in that dirt pile. She done can’t handle the pain no more. She tryin to go on disappearing. I guess we all try to. She just out here makin it happen in the physical.

He stood, perfectly still, the tears pouring down his cheeks, as he realized that this one, this precious little girl, did not have enough time for him to do justice. He could not wait a month, a year, for the go ahead to save the hundreds. This ONE would not make it til then. The ONE needed him today, right now. He was overwhelmed by mercy. As he began striding towards her dirt pile in the corner of the yard, he decided that in this moment, right now, SHE mattered more then the hundreds.
Again I ask, do you know the desperation, the burning and gnawing wretchedness that leads one to truly believe that the brightest alternative to this hell on earth, the easiest way to disappear, to escape from it all, is to bury oneself alive…literally?

This precious little girl, made in the image God, birthed into this world with a divine purpose, plan, hope and future, set apart, beautiful in His eyes, is hurting so much that she sits in a pile of dirt, attempting to bury herself in it. This is when mercy for the ONE matters. Her life matters.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." -Jer. 1:5

Reality of Modern Day Slavery

My family was so poor. I had no future, she recalled. When he came to my town and offered me a job in America I knew this was my way out. I left with him the next day. He told me I could achieve my dreams. He even reminded me that I could send money home to my family. I could help them! My dreams were coming true. When we arrived in America, I was amazed by the homes and cars and children playing outside with toys. It was a world which I had never seen. We pulled up to a building in the city which didn’t look as kind as those houses we’d passed by. But I was happy to be here—to start a new life. He brought me inside and told me to rest here while he went out. He said he would be back after a bit. They fed me and I slept. After several hours, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. I sat on the bed waiting for him to come for me. But when the door opened, it was not him. A tall man with a large belly walked in. He grabbed me by the arm and began dragging me into another room. I fought him—kicking, screaming, and biting—but he was relentless. With a single blow to my jaw he knocked me unconscious. Days later when I woke up, I was locked in a room, chained to a bed. In that moment, I realized my dreams were not coming true.

            Many believe slavery has ceased to exist in the modern-day society in which we live, but this is simply not true. Each year, 1.2 million girls are forced into human sex-trafficking. Often referred to as modern-day slavery, the sex-trafficking industry has a current market value exceeding $32 billion.

By the end of this year, human sex-trafficking is predicted to be the number one crime world-wide. This is no suprise because right now the buying and selling of drugs is the highest crime, but with dugs you can onl buy and sell one time. When it comes to women and children, however, you only buy once but sell over and over again.

With girls being trafficked from 127 countries around the globe and exploited in 137 countries, there is no end in sight to this horrific form of slavery. Hearing this statistic made me wonder, okay this seems like a lot of contries, but aren't there hundreds and hundreds of countires in the world? Actually, it turns out there are only 194 countries in the world today, and girls are being trafficked into 137 of them. This is astounding to me.

While this is a world-wide epidemic, it is happening in our own backyard as well. Believe it or not, between 14,500 and 17,500 young women are being trafficked in the United States alone each year. The average of these girls is a mere fourteen year old, but recently there have been increasing numbers of girls being trafficked who are merely 5 and 6 years old in the US. Over 300,000 children here in the States are currently at risk to become victims of trafficking.

Every TWO MINUTES a child is being prepared for sexual exploitation through this miserable industry, some being forced to have sex with forty different men a night. How does one’s mind even comprehend such slavery?

These statistics are difficult to read and even more challenging to comprehend, but we MUST remember each one of these precious girls has a story to tell. They are someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s friend. It is the responsibility of this generation to stand up and give these girls a voice when their own has been taken. Through the uniting of women with a passion to see these girls not only rescued, but set free from the physical, psychological, and emotional pain inflicted upon them, an end to this modern-day human sex-trafficking industry can be attained.  

            Personally, I had no idea such slavery was in existence within my generation until about a year ago when I heard the testimony of a young girl who was victim to such crime. Hearing the horror of her story and past was indeed horrendous and sickening. But as she continued to share about the freedom she had found in her life after being rescued out of the trafficking world, I became very interested in somehow being involved. Not only did she speak of physical freedom, but also emotional and psychological freedom which she found was only possible in coming to know Jesus Christ as her savior. I knew from experience that Jesus was the only way for me to overcome my past as well. It was in this moment that the Lord began the process of breaking my heart for these women.

Mercy or Justice?

            For the past eight months, as God has been breaking my heart for these girls who are enslaved by human sex-trafficking, I have spent hours, days even, brainstorming, planning, thinking, and dreaming of ways to get them out of their enslavement. My mind has so deeply focused in on the girls trapped right now. The girls waiting for us to come for them…to get them out. As a result of this mindset and vision, all of my efforts have always been focused on after care. I mean, here I am knee-deep in trying to raise $10,000 to build a Safe Home for the girls trapped in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It has truly become something I live, eat, and breathe at times. And honestly, I would not change it for the world. I love what I get to do. It is a privilege and gift to play just a small part in doing SOMETHING.

            And yet, somehow, my thoughts have never migrated to consider any methods of helping these girls in any way outside of after care. For some reason or another, I have never taken time to consider that perhaps getting them out of the red light district may not be the only answer to the growing crisis. Of perhaps, even the least effective method of helping them. I don’t claim to have all the answers…this is something difficult for me to come to terms with, difficult for me to rationalize really. But I think that it IS something we need to be talking about…we need to be thinking about. Even if the truth is painful.

            I heard an activist, Rob Morris (founder of Love 146) share some profound and challenging truth regarding the battle between after care and prevention of human trafficking. Rob strongly believes that we need to focus our efforts on prevention.

I want you to consider this story. Picture a huge cliff. You are standing at the bottom of the cliff taking in this scene before you. Many people are falling off of the cliff. There are ambulances waiting at the bottom, to rescue the people after they fall off of the cliff. The ambulances drive in a continuous stream, picking up the dead or injured victim, racing them to the hospital, then returning for the next victim. Just picture an ongoing cycle of ambulances circling from the bottom of this cliff to the hospital and back again. Then we must ask ourselves, how much good are the ambulance drivers doing? I mean, yes they are rescuing the people and sometimes saving a life. More often then not, however, the fall proves to be deadly, leaving the paramedic helpless to save the individual. There is no doubt, the ambulance drivers are continually fighting for the victims, working as hard as they possibly can to save them, to fix them. They are truly brokenhearted for the injured and dying. But there comes a point, where they can’t play God…they cannot bring the dead back to life. There is only so much they can do to manage the situation.

Suddenly, one of the ambulance drivers stops what he is doing. The others yell to get his attention, urging him to keep fighting for these victims. He resists, still paused in mid-action. His eyes have drifted from the plight of the hurting patient who lies before him, as his eyes move upwards. He is frozen, gazing up at the edge of the cliff. He sees another one fall. Hears the thud as the young woman’s body collides with the hard ground. He hears the paramedics racing to her aide. And then it hits him.

A hard, unimaginable, incomprehensible truth. He stands up and walks away from the man he was supposed to be saving. He gets in the ambulance and drives away. Everyone is astounded, confused, angry even. How could he just abandon the hurting, the dying, the broken? This man needs his help!

Several hours go by and the paramedics, still cycling through and helping the hurting victims, feel the ground begin to tremble. Some rocks begin to tumble down the side of the cliff with the great vibrations. A continual humming sound fills their ears. Their attention is drawn upwards. As their eyes move to the top of the cliff, they are completely astounded.

They see the man. The one who abandoned his patient. One of their own, up atop the mountain. In his hands he holds a large machine from which the noise echoes down. He is using it to dig a hole in the earth. They yell for him to stop, stop because the rocks are falling on them! He ignores their pleas, once again.

An hour goes by, he has plowed several holes into the rocky earth. He finally sets his machine down and returns to the ambulance. Out of the back he removes a wooden post. He walks to the edge of the cliff, gazing down at the men still completely confused by his blatant lack of obedience to their commands. He raises the wooden post into the air. A large thud sounds as he slams it into the hole he had drilled into he rocky earth.

At this moment, it clicks. In this moment, the paramedics realize that he left his ONE injured patient so that he could go to the top of the cliff and build a guard rail so that the people would stop falling of off the cliff. He abandoned the ONE to prevent the imminent injury and death of MILLIONS. He stopped reacting and decided to think.

Often times, especially as Americans, we just react to things. We see the face of an 8-year old girl who has been sold by her dad in exchange for $50. We hear how she is raped by 40 men every single night. We are told that we can help her, we can save her. So naturally, what do we do? We REACT! Of course we react. If someone didn’t react to something like this, honestly I would think something were wrong with them!

But this creates a problem. We react out of emotion, out of our pain, out of a desire to help this young girl, but we don’t think. We just instantly want to do something, anything. I find myself doing this all the time. And if I am really vulnerable, I don’t think that I REACT for her. I think that I react for me. I react by doing something because I know that I could not live with myself if I didn’t. Do I truly desire to help this broken young woman? OF COURSE I DO! It sickens me to think that she should have to spend so much as one more night in such a hell as she is in. But I react for me. Instant gratification, in the most unspeakable manner. I react so that I can feel better…so that I don’t have to feel the deepening burden of her pain, that seems to mold itself into everything I am, everything I feel.

As activists, as givers, as believers with a heart and passion for seeing these girls walk from enslavement to the freedom of the Gospel, we have got to stop reacting and start THINKING. Americans never think, we just react. We are so much better at doing mercy then doing justice. Mercy produces immediate results. It lends a quick solution to a colossal problem. On the other hand, justice takes time. Justice is more complicated. Justice encompasses a need to actually go in and deal with the systems which could be unjust, the systems with protocol, the systems with bias, the systems with traditions and methods which have been standing for decades. Fighting the systems, the mindsets, the plan…that takes time. It takes it out of you. It really is a seemingly endless and ever-increasingly difficult battle to do justice for these girls. So, what do we do? We continue to do mercy, to do what is easy and gratifying to us.

This forces me to GO THERE…to that unspeakable place. Do we realize that by doing Mercy, we are essentially driving the ambulances in circles, saving one or two here and there, but bringing more to the hospital dead then alive? Do we understand that doing Justice means building the railing at the top of the cliff? And if we are able to grapple with this to the point of coming to terms with it, then will we have the selflessness essential to abandon Mercy in favor of Justice?

Let me explain what this means for me, and why it is such an unimaginable battle in my mind. A few weeks ago, I had this dream. I was in a red light district somewhere in another country. I was just watching a scene play out. After a few minutes, I realized who I was. I was posing as a client. I walked into a brothel where girls lined the outskirts of a large, dark, eerie room. I will avoid going into too much detail, but I saw one girl. She could not have been more then 6 or 7 years old. She stood out from all the others. She was literally burrowed into a very small hole in the wall. Her long dark hair gently covered a good portion of her face. I walked towards her. All I wanted to do was hold her and tell her it was all going to be okay. I was about six steps away from her, when a man stepped in my path. He wasn’t a stranger, but a friend. He was there with me, to help me. Excuse me, I nudged him gently, I need to go over there and get her, I explained. Courtney, you can’t go any further. We are not here to save these girls. We are here to get on the inside in order to break this trafficking ring. You cannot save her. You may not be able to save any of these girls here tonight. But when we get to the bottom, when we break this ring, hundreds of girls will escape. We are not here for the ONE today. We are here today for the HUNDREDS next month.

I mean, where do I even begin in what an incompressible horrific crisis this brings me to. It is a moment in which I must determine whether I will display Mercy or Justice? After care or prevention? I am still wrestling this out hourly, it seems. The ONE…she does matter. From the very beginning, I have always fought for people to understand that these are not just numbers, not just statistics, but that these are real girls with real stories with real feeling with people who love and care about them somewhere. I mean, Jesus cares about the ONE. He sees her, He knows every hair on her head, He has plans for her future, He desires to give her a hope, He loves and has compassion for the ONE. In His eyes, she is the most important girl in the world…she has value, she has worth, she has a divine purpose and calling on her life. As I have spent hours crying out, begging Him to give me HIS eyes, His eyes so that I can see the ONE.

So how in the world so I begin to reconcile the plight of the ONE in exchange with the plight of the 1.2 million girls who are trafficked every year? How do I reconcile the plight of the ONE with the reality that every 2 minutes two more girls are exploited? How do I heed the call of God on my life to tell the ONE that she is worth it, that she is a beloved daughter of the Most High King, that she has a purpose and this is NOT it, all the while heeding the call to prevent future ONES from ever becoming enslaved to such horror? How do I tackle Justice in the midst of Mercy?

"Victims of injustice don't need our spasm of passion; they need our legs & lungs of endurance." -Gary Haugen