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Just the other day I was walking to work and passed by a woman who, if I was the betting kind, I would put money down had either been in a strip club or prostituting herself the night before. It’s not every day you see (unless you are on a college campus unfortunately) a woman walking down the street alone with stilettos on, a leopard print outfit, and hair and makeup that looked leftover from the night before. In that moment there was so much I wanted to say and do, but the only thing I felt I could do was pray for her and continue to. A few weeks prior I had been walking my usual route to work and was completely caught off guard by the window display of a ‘fantasy shop’. I must have driven or walked past it countless times, but that day it hit me like a ton of bricks; I literally began to cry. I was completely overwhelmed by the thought of the lusts and distortion of God’s beauty in the world, specifically in the city of Portland.
  
With concern of completely losing you now as a reader, I am going to continue on. On that same day, still feeling tightness in my chest and fully engrossed in prayer, I neared my building. Two men walking in front of me lit a joint. When I walked quickly past them to move beyond the smell of skunk, they cackled at me, “Hey honey, is that a good smelling cigarette? *cough* *cough* (in a mocking tone) You like that smell?” Straight faced I marched on.

Just this week, my roommate and I were taking a back road to get home and drove past this small group of people off the beaten path. We caught a glance just as a woman opened her robe to reveal what they had been up to. She was posing in her underwear for this amateur photo shoot. It took my breath away and we immediately launched into prayer.

*Broken*

I am broken for my city.

 

For those of you reading, I probably sound like a conservative, up-tight, naïve, suburb girl who just doesn’t get that this ‘is just how it is’. Who knows, you might be right, but I refuse to accept these things as being ‘the norm.’  All I know is I have never, in my life, cried some much over a city. Maybe individuals, but crying for a city as a whole just did not occur to me as possible.  Yes, I was moved to tears one late night in Thailand as I held a sweet girl who couldn’t sleep because she was scared and confused by entering into a strange place that we knew to be the prevention home for highly at risk children for sex trafficking, but all she knew was she was away from the familiar whether it was a hard situation or not. I was moved to tears by the graphic imagery I read while getting too far into my research and writing for a sexual exploitation prevention manual. I was moved to tears for the brokenness in Africa, the devastation in Haiti, the orphans in Philippines that I desperately wanted to take home with me; but never did I think I would be so moved by my own city. You can ask my closest friends, I am not quick to cry but lately I have been as sensitive as ever to the hurt around me.

Do not get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE my city. Portland is easily my favorite place on earth to live. I have been to more than 1,000 cities and over 40 countries, and yet Portland still captures my heart in so many ways.

I am incredibly blessed to be living in a beautiful neighborhood close enough to downtown to walk to work. So blessed to have a job that allows me to bless others with hopefully finding them a job (www.campuspoint.com)! The 2.2 mile walk allows me to be right in the thick of the city, not driving by but really getting to see Portland from a whole new perspective. Now on my walk though, I have resorted to taking a different route to avoid that fantasy shop because it wrecks me very time. I already try to mix it up to get to see different places, but if I can help it I won’t walk past that store. It is my prayer that the fantasy shop, the strip clubs, the ‘adult’ stores, brothels and anything exploiting others’ sexuality and distorting something God made to be beautiful; pray all of those things would be torn down. Portland is an incredibly lenient city when it comes to our laws on sexual content…I mean, we have the Portland Naked Bike ride once a year for goodness sakes…we are not exactly a modest city. I can’t stand it though. I cannot stand the apathy to pain, suffering, disrespect and outright exploitation of others. There are so many children, women and even men hurting so desperately over the pain that has been afflicted on them from these perversions. Portland is a beautiful city, absolutely gorgeous, but within her there is some serious hurt. This became even clearer to me after attending a Mending the Soul training facilitator just the other weekend.

*Healing*

Mending the Soul is a program people can go through to help them heal from abuse that has happened in their life. This could be anything from verbal, physical, mental, spiritual or sexual abuse. Hearing again stories of survivors, watching hard videos and a lot of deep table and group discussion; it’s enough to move anyone’s heart and leave you exhausted. It was powerful though, and I will probably blog later about the healing God so strongly desires for all of His children and some of the ways to help with that healing journey. For now though it is just important to know that healing, of any kind, truly is possible with a Father who is the ultimate Healer, but it can take time, and in a lot of cases, a significant amount of time.

*Prayer*

What’s so beautiful is during this season of hyper sensitivity to my city, we have a wonderful prayer week at my church that begins today!

Every day for the next seven days we are launching into what we call Seven. Seven days to pray for the city of Portland. What’s so fun, it isn’t just my church, but we are partnered with churches all over the city! Scriptures show all over them the power of prayer and how it literally ‘moved the hand of God’. Imagine if we believed that, really believed that, we would be so moved to prayer that it would encompass a greater part of our day.

I ask you to join with me this week. A lot of you cannot physically come to the different areas we will be praying at, but I ask you that throughout this week to spend some special time prayer for the city of Portland. For the leaders, the Church as a whole, the broken, the children, the homeless, the unemployed, the lost, the hurting or whatever is heavy on your heart. I believe in prayer, I believe that our prayers make a difference, and I believe that after this week lives will be changed in the city of Portland.

I love you all, thanks for reading 🙂