When God asked me to write this blog, I said no way. It is too personal. It is my story. It is mine. I don’t want to share it. What will people think? But God said…write it anyways because it is the story that I have written for you. This is freedom that I have purchased for you. This is awareness that needs to be brought to so many people. This blog is hard for me to write, yet I write it out of a place of complete freedom with no condemnation for others. I write it out of my burning passion to see others set free and for us to wake up and realize that what we do impacts people we do not even know.
I came on the race struggling with a 4 year addiction to pornography. I know, that is shocking to so many of you. Forgive me for hiding it. I walked carrying a lot of guilt and shame because of it. Part of me thought that I could run away from the problem when I left America, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. God made me face it head on. He declared freedom over me from the start. I just did not truly believe it for myself. I felt unworthy of His grace and forgiveness. I felt ashamed, because women aren’t supposed to struggle with it and it is definitely a taboo topic in many churches. I faced it (with the help and support of some amazing people) and month by month, I found just a little more freedom and a little more of my identity rooted in Christ alone. I sit here today walking in complete freedom.
The past two months have been spent ministering to the women (and the men) in the bars. I was never actually supposed to have that as my main ministry. But bar ministry is also what brought the most healing and freedom. Month 8, my team was assigned to find new contacts for World Race and our hostel randomly happened to be in the middle of the Red Light District so my team felt called to minister there. This month, my team was told we were teaching English and doing Bible studies (which we are), but we are a 15 minute walk from Bangla Road in Patong. I have met some of the most amazing women and had some of the most amazing “God moments” over the past two months. I have realized how free I am. Because of what I have come through, I have been able to minister to the men I meet with love and not out of condemnation. I can honestly sit here and say I have never once had a condemning thought towards the men I have watched purchase my sweet friends for a few minutes of pleasure that will just leave them feeling empty again. My heart for the women is so huge. They are my friends. This is the ministry that I have felt most alive in.
Something in your Spirit changes drastically when you are forced to put a face and a name to the women forced into porn. To know that they have children. Dreams. Families. To know how unhappy they are. They are sisters and mothers. Daughters and granddaughters. They have names. They have a longing to be loved. To be truly loved by someone but have no idea what that looks like because intimacy has been so twisted. They don’t really want to be exploiting their bodies. I know. Many of you are thinking that all the women in porn choose it. They choose to be put online for people to see. While that might be true, I beg to differ that it is the majority vote. Every single woman I have personally met over the past two months feels like they have no other choice. When I ask them if they like their job, they smile and say they do but then they give you the look that says they don’t and look you up and down to decide you are a safe person to share that they really aren’t happy.
Fact for the day: Pornography is keeping women enslaved to the sex industry. It is a form of human trafficking and when you watch it, you are increasing the demand for it. Supply and demand. When the demand is high, the supply goes up. When the demand is low, well, the need for the supply goes down. Basic laws of economics. I am sure that most of you have never even really thought about that fact. Women are being forced into making films. Some women know it, other trafficked women have no idea that they are making internet porn. They are lied to, abused, coerced into making it. It is sometimes used against them, being held over their head to keep them from fleeing the bars and the industry. They are promised money or great jobs but they really have no idea what they are getting themselves into. It is used to train younger girls to have sex with men. Then they are also used to make it.
They are used and abused. Their bodies are nothing more than objects. Looking them in their eyes tell you a lot. They need to make money for their families. They are working off a debt for someone else. They don’t have the skills to work a different job. They have been sold by family members to work in the bars. They have been promised amazing lives by their boyfriends who are really pimps that pursue them and then use them. Sitting at my favorite bar is the perfect people watching place. It sits right on the edge of Bangla Road. People walk with cameras down the road and take massive amounts of pictures. They take pictures and videos of the women that are dancing on the poles with every intent to post them online. Tell me that isn’t actually adding to the supply/demand for porn.
I have heard so many people participate in the End It movement in February. Red X’s go on hands and pictures are taken and put on social media. Awareness and money is raised and then we go back to our daily lives. Here is some awareness…Americans are the top consumers of porn. Imagine if we put actions to stopping human trafficking by starting with the elimation of porn in our lives. Imagine if the church rose up and just those addicted within the church took a stand and said no more. I am fighting with everything in me to stop this addiction. Yes, I am aware at how difficult that is and you cannot do it in your own strength, that is for sure. But if we want to see the solution and freedom of these women, we have to realize how many of us are causes of the problem that exists. You can’t say that you want freedom from the women enslaved and continue participating in their enslavement. And now that you have read this, you cannot say you did not know. That you did not know that women being trafficked is serious. That it impacts the daily lives of so many. That they only have sex with customers in the middle of Thailand in the Red Light District. When they are online in the houses of people that you know.
I am free.
I want you to be free.
I want my friends here to be free.
I want women that are being used to be free.
