When you look into the eyes of a beautiful young girl and see hurt, what do you do?
When you look into the eyes of a beautiful young girl as she is dancing on a bar trying to make it through another night of endless work, what do you do?
When you look into the eyes of that same beautiful young girl as she is being whisked through the door by a stranger that she will have to give yet another part of herself to, what do you do?
You sit down with her in the middle of the raging party scene there at the bar and you love her. You hope that she will see her true self in the reflection of your eyes. That for one moment she would be able to breathe and relax, knowing she is beautiful regardless of what she is wearing or drinking.
This is what our nights have looked like here this month in Phuket, Thailand, where forced sex, excessive drinking, and perversion are lurking down every corner. Where can she go to escape it all? Where can she go to just be herself without the pressures of pleasing men and her peers?
Our hope is that the nights we come and sit with her that she feels safe, even if for just two hours. If for two hours she can escape the pressures of her everyday life, if she can feel like a girl that can be herself than every hour spent is so worth it.
What makes someone worth it?
Their job? Family? Outer appearance? Intelligence? Personality?
Is it enough for a person to be worth it simply because they are regardless of who they are or where they come from. That is what people have to know and feel when they meet you. All the other things don’t matter. When you look into the person in front of you whether that is your sister, friend, or a stranger, they should know that they are worth it; worth your time, your energy, your love. One of our first nights in the bars we were playing Jenga with two of our now good friends and after many intense games of Jenga accompanied by many coca colas, they handed over a few blocks and said we could write something on them. Now these blocks don’t have the most uplifting messages on them as I am sure you can imagine at a bar like this where women sell themselves to ensure their job. But right there at that table surrounded by 3 to 4 girls we wrote the word “WORTHY” in big bold print on the block and when we showed it to them their eyes lit up!
“yes, yes! Worthy!!”
They knew what that word meant and the power it held and maybe for the first time in a long time they felt the power that it carried. The nights that we kept returning we would play Jenga again and see that block with it’s big letters shouting “worthy!” out to the world of that little bar jammed in between countless other bars. We weren’t able to get those girls out of that lifestyle but we were able to tell them their worth and show them that nothing could change our love for them.
So as you go throughout your day today and the days to come, challenge yourself to look at each person with the worth they deserve. Don’t see just their faults or the darkness that they live in — see the Light in them, the worth that God already placed in them.
And always remember:
You are worth it.
