I watched a movie last night.
That’s actually a pretty rare occurrence for me. I don’t make time for TV, so movies are usually out of the question. But this one was different. It’s been sitting in my kitchen, staring at me for almost two years.
It’s not a popcorn and soda kind of show. I received it as a perk during a crowdfunding campaign for End Sex Trafficking Day. I’ve been wanting to watch it, but for someone like me, actually ending up on the couch with a movie (that isn’t a cartoon) is so unusual. Make that a documentary about the darkness of human trafficking and the sex industry, and it might take me two years!
But last night it finally happened.
It’s the story of a journey around the world to try to better understand the entire system of human trafficking, it’s roots in prostitution and ultimately it’s effects on our lives. They traveled through Europe, Asia and the United States learning about everything from legal brothels, to kidnapping and fathers literally selling their daughters so they could sit around smoking during the day without having to work.
It was heavy.
I can’t help but share it with you today because of the impact of the lives of these women and children. Their stories are so full of shame. They literally believe they have no value. They’ve been conditioned to believe this from such a young age, that even after their rescue, restoration is such a long, hard road.
I can’t help but wonder, if you know.
Do you know the depth of the depravity of the sex industry? Or do you turn and look the other way?
Have you looked in the eyes of a woman here, in the United States, who was prostituted for 26 years, until she was 40 years old? A women who was somehow pleasantly surprised to find out, at 14, that men would actually pay her to have sex. because up until that point, it had been repeatedly taken from her against her will.
Did you realize that if we dealt more severely with the men and women who are the customers in the sex industry, we could literally save the lives of thousands upon thousands of women. Women right here in the USA.
Are you interested, as long as it’s something you can do from afar, and not really get your hands dirty?
“The world does not need more interested parties. It needs incurable fanatics.” ~ Nefarias, Merchant of Souls
Once you watch a movie like that, you can choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you didn’t know. You are supposed to be part of the solution.
I don’t know your story, but I know you have one.
We all do.
I recently heard Lisa Bevere say, with so much strength and clarity, “You are an answer to a problem. There is a problem out there you are an answer to.”
She’s right.
So today, whether you’re in the middle of a mess yourself, whether you’re on the road to healing, or finally in a healthy place, look around.
Who is in your path?
What experiences, resources, connections, or access do you have that others don’t?
Sex trafficking might not be the problem you are the answer to, today. Although, I believe it’s going to take a lot of us, staring it in the face, to see it end in our lifetime.
Maybe you’re the answer to a mom who needs help caring for her kids.
Maybe you’re the answer to a child who’d give anything to have a mom at all.
Maybe you’re the answer to a friend who woke up today feeling really down and lonely after a holiday weekend.
Maybe you’re the answer to a co-worker who needs to know someone sees her.
Maybe you’re the answer to a village in Uganda.
Whatever your story is, it’s made you an answer. Notice I didn’t say, It’s making you an answer. Wherever you are right now, you are an answer to a problem.
When you see the problems around you today, you can know for sure, you are supposed to be part of the solution.
Be an answer.
To more love,
Crystal
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