Warning: this is longer than normal posts and intense, but the issue deserves it. Please read if you feel uninformed.
Children are being repeatedly sexually exploited today…here in the US, everywhere. 27 million people are enslaved today. Slavery is not something of history, it is bigger than it has EVER been. African slaves were worth $40,000, today you can BUY SOMEONE for less than $300.
This past weekend COMPLETELY ROCKED ME. I’m one of those really blessed people who can sleep anywhere and fall asleep in like less than 2 minutes max. I couldn’t sleep well for 4 nights. I’ve had to force myself to stop sitting awake thinking and lay down around 3 or 4 am. I’ve preoccupied myself with blog posts to distract, but I eventually had to contend with the thoughts.
Friday night: I watched Saving Private Ryan. I now know that I do not handle war movies very well. So much blood, pain, trauma, horror, death. I watched Gladiator over winter break, but the goriness did not affect me as much as this did. The guns and tanks dehumanized the horror of war. I cannot begin to imagine what these soldiers dealt with. I never really thought about post-traumatic stress disorder before this movie…it makes absolutely perfect sense. I am traumatized on a small level from just watching a FILM. It was and is REAL LIFE for so many right now. The guys I watched it with were commenting on how cool the sniper guy was. He did have amazing accuracy, but that accuracy was to take life. To take precious, breathing souls. How can I not be tremendously affected by such a film? A film that challenged me to think about whether I had truly reached the potential of living each day to the fullest. Each morning we awake, we are given a new day to live. I do not appreciate that and I still have much to learn from Matthew 6:34.
Saturday night: Watched a film at the Bitahr Human Trafficking Film Forum called “Very Young Girls.” I have never experienced such intense emotions in my life. It made the pain of academic probation seem painfully small. I saw a desperate mother searching for her missing child who eventually got an anonymous call informing her of her daughter’s location. She proceeded to the police with the pimp’s address asking the police to go get her daughter. The police told her her request was invalid without proper warrant. That’s the nicest way I can put it…they basically told her there was nothing they could do. I got so angry I wanted to punch a wall and yell WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH THIS SYSTEM?! I surprised myself with my reaction because I don’t really curse, but I found myself lacking the language to express myself. I heard the personal accounts of how disgustingly evil sex slavery is…how the pimps psychologically manipulate the girls so much so that the girls LOVE their pimps and do not want to leave. How some of the girls live to maintain the feeling of worth by being loved by their pimp. I surprised myself with my strong guttural reaction to puke. A lot of other things made me want to puke, but I am going to have to try to keep this post from becoming a book.
Saturday night, back at Tufts: to distract myself from what was going on in my insides, I write a blog post at 2:25 am. I find that I am actually not tired because my insides have been churning, but I am so incredibly unfamiliar with these feelings I do not deal with them and sleep at 3:45.
Sunday morning: early to church. The message and worship songs are so incredibly perfect that I am greatly encouraged. It was Highrock’s 12th anniversary as a church and we celebrated with a message on what the “Holy Catholic Church” means. A Church that is set apart to be a light to the world. “God never commanded the world to go to church. He commanded the church to go to the world.” Therefore, “Come Church arise…Love with His hands | See with His eyes…Bind it around you, Let it never leave you, And they will know us by our love.” May You “Open our hearts to see the things that make Your heart cry. To be the church that You would desire.
Light to be seen [...] LET HOPE RISE AND DARKNESS TREMBLE in Your holy light, And every eye will see Jesus, our God, great and mighty to be praised.”
Sunday afternoon: Saw “Call+Response” by Justin Dillon, which is crazily the guy on one of the panels at Passion who talked ‘about his film’ but I didn’t put the two and two together until Saturday *mind blown* It was a rockumentary that encouraged a response more so than focus on the horror, so it didn’t pain me as much since the facts were not completely new to me. That 27 million people are trapped in modern day slavery, with 79% of those being used for sexual exploitation. That young girls trapped in this evil system are at the average age of 12-13, while some even enter the system as young as THREE. They are repeatedly raped day after day after day. That this is a $32 billion industry [more than Nike, Starbucks, and Google combined]: after drug and arms trade, HUMAN trafficking is the 3rd largest economic force. This force is also connected as well to the horrors of child soldiers in Africa, slavery is slavery. Oh look, the horrors of war for adult men in Saving Private Ryan seem even MORE horrendous if these are children we are talking about. We finished watching the film, and they told us that many people go from ignorance to complete grief and paralysis. At this point, I am paralyzed.
Sunday dinner: I realize I was in a different place on the inside, but I am appalled at dinner by the insignificant conversations that are occurring. Someone says ‘tramp stamp’ and I am paralyzed to say something about this language even though that was a simple step they gave us at the forum. Two friends jokingly talk about how children are not people. I know they were joking, but it was just incredibly bad timing. Maybe I think it’s not even a joking matter in any situation…they totally matter, so I had to leave the table once those jokes started because it was breaking my heart into another few pieces. A friend notices that I look like I’m in a daze, and I realize that I cannot handle human interaction.
Sunday, my room: I enter, expecting to just sit and focus on breathing. Instead, as soon as the door is closed I begin to weep, sob, heave. When I first heard about child sex slavery, of course I knew it was wrong so my heart broke in half maybe. As I learned more about the issue with Love146 at Tufts and at Passion Conferences, I knew I needed to make more of an effort to fight. The films provided stories to this issue. It became real. Faces that will forever be imprinted on my heart. Let’s say that the films took my two broken halves and hammered them into about a million pieces. My insides hurt like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. My insides burned with pain and hopelessness. I’ve never encountered the EVIL of Satan this powerfully before. I came to face with him through this evil force. For this $32 billion dollar industry to end, there must be a complete economic, social, cultural upheaval of society. We must be willing to pay more for everything we own so that these people of worth will be paid, not enslaved. There are very broken people enslaving people who are getting more and more broken every day. Who are getting lost in what they think is normal around them, think they aren’t worth it, that they deserve it somehow, that this was the purpose of their lives. I couldn’t stand it. The hours between 9:30 and 1:30 are a blur. I cried on and off for hours. My eyes swelled up. My heart ached like I’ve never felt before. I had no hope, what was I going to do? How will sustainable change happen?
I do not share this to say you’re a bad person if you haven’t ached for these people or known about this or whatever you might be thinking. This is simply the only venue I can think of to INFORM. Having so many thoughts that I cannot sleep has NEVER happened to me. I am HORRIFIED with the disgusting, immense evil in sex slavery today, but I MUST hold on to the HOPE THAT IS IN CHRIST JESUS. Without Him, I am utterly doomed to be depressed, hopeless, and paralyzed.
Monday: I needed rest for my eyes the night before so I did not do my 100+ pages of reading for my 1:20 pm class. I snoozed all 4 alarms so I got up at 11:15 which gave me no time to get ready, eat lunch, and read all before class. I admitted defeat, checked my email, and SAW THAT MY CLASS GOT CANCELLED. Why does God love me so much and reward the hurt like that? No comprendo. *Mind blown* Still lost in thought all day and into the night, feeling a bit hopeful and feeling His love welling up on the inside of me…went to sleep at 4:30 am.
Tuesday: The hope was rising within me, but considering all of my classes are about children, it only took one sentence like “adolescents struggle with sexual…” and I went into a downward thought spiral. I feel like my whole outlook on life has changed. I wake up in the morning wondering how children wake up trying to block out the repeated rape that happened the night before. I go brush my teeth knowing many don’t have a toothbrush, rather they continue to make money for their pimp to get minimal amounts of food. I was feeling pretty depressed until I had a healthy conversation with my mom. I realized that Satan had been speaking lies to me, even using the Word against me just as he did when Jesus had been tempted by Satan in the desert. As soon as God helped me get through how incredibly scary it was that I had been listening to the wrong voice, which further explained the depressing, oppressive feel I had the past few days = the familiar peace + hope restored in my soul. He led me beside quiet waters, he restored my soul.
I realized all of this was because I have been praying a stupid prayer since Passion. [stupid prayer meaning like when you ask God to use you which gives Him free reign to challenge you like crazy] “God, take me deeper into your heart. May I surrender all to You, all for You. For your love has won, your love has come. Whatever it takes.” Welp, HE ANSWERED. He completely united my heart with His that cries for those women and children in sex slavery.
I’m talking to myself here as much as I am to you: Don’t remain paralyzed. Find the hope, clench onto it for DEAR LIFE, and FIGHT. My blog is “The Stand: to love and learn for the One who gave it all.” That is exactly what I must do. STAND and FIGHT for JUSTICE. For freedom. God’s heart aches for His beloved children, and I was blessed to experience the power of that pain of His heart. “Break my heart for what breaks yours”
Well, if you’re privileged to have internet access to read this post, attend a university like Tufts with me, and attend film forums like I did, then you should also walk over to Sophia Gordon on Thursday to hang out with Love146 Tufts Chapter from 7:30-9:30pm. We are celebrating something that I fully understand now: broken hearts. Come and learn more about how to join our fight to end child sex slavery and exploitation. [like us on Facebook: Love146 Tufts Chapter, follow on Twitter @Love146Tufts, read WordPress at http://love146tufts.wordpress.com/! tech-savvy ftw] I am so excited for this event, and so much more so because I’m fighting something that I can’t stop thinking about. I’m moving out of paralysis.
Now, this is an incredibly long post completely absent of many things I still wish to share, so continue to read as I share more posts. The thing is, I still have much to learn myself. For now, I must take advantage of this blank page to inform, to bless, to encourage, to inspire, to teach, to learn, to grow, to stand, to LOVE.
Anisha, DON’T LOSE HOPE. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
