I realized today that I’ve been trying to put the race into a nice neat box. I made my list of things I learned so far and it was all positive . I understood it all and honestly I WAS content with that.
But what about all the other stuff that happens on the race? Not the spiritual growth or the 100 other things that change who you are. I’m talking about the stuff that you wish you could turn a blind eye towards and forget you ever saw. The stuff that engraves itself in your heart and mind and never leaves .
What do you do with that stuff ?
During debrief we were asked how we will respond to questions about how our race was, what we want to share and so on. I realized I hadn’t allowed myself to process any of the hard stuff.
So here it goes.
When I think of explaining to people what I’ve seen it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit into a neat bubble .
How do I tell you about the way the kids in Botswana had ropes tied around them claiming them to satan or the cults chanting all night long, how do I explain to you the dark heavy feeling you have walking through town seeing all this .
How do I explain the horrific poverty we saw in Madagascar, poverty no one should ever have to experience. Walkways littered with feces, children begging for a morsel of food who haven’t showered in week, And a Demonic presence so strong it’s terrifying.
Praying our armour on everyday because without it we felt helpless.
How do I explain the number of women we’ve seen who were sitting at lunch with a john and it was normal .
How do I explain the heartache I feel when I think of what their lives have been and will continue to be, or the way they look at you with eyes that are hopeless and you feel helpless .
How do I explain walking through the streets in Vietnam and hearing men being offered cocaine and prostitutes at the same time.
How do I explain feeling like we haven’t done enough, I mean we go into countries were sex slavery is right in front of us and our ministry is to teach English
Seriously. English!
How are we doing enough, how are we helping? These are all questions that drive me crazy sometimes.
I was thinking about how God didn’t allow us to go to the red light district in Thailand and we didn’t work with the sex trade, that was something I hoped to help out with on the race and we didn’t do it .
But we didn’t need to go to the red light district to see broken people buy other broken people, all we needed to do was go to breakfast at any restaurant and see it right in front of our eyes . All we needed to do was watch a young girl in front of us not be able to look the man she’s with in they eyes to know what was going on.
We didn’t need to be in the red light district to see what is going on .
The reality is the same thing is going on at home too .
The difference is around the world they are open about it, we hide it , we pretend it doesn’t exist when it so clearly does. The hard truth is it goes on in our own home towns, it is a problem that happens everywhere but we don’t like to talk about it .
Think about this; porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. That’s outrageous! Most people don’t care to know that when they are watching porn they are supporting the sex trade
It’s almost normal!
And it shouldn’t be that way!
You don’t need to buy a girl to be supporting the corruption going on around world.
My heart is in pieces because we have seen all this and for months I wouldn’t even acknowledge what we saw. I wouldn’t allow it to break my heart and tear me to pieces because what I believed is that I can’t do anything to change it so why would I want to break my heart for it? That would hurt to much. I can’t do it.
But if we don’t do it who will?
Why don’t we stop living this lie that this only happens in the red light district in countries far away from ours?
Why don’t we put our foot down and say I refuse to be okay with this and I want to make a change. It might not get every girl out of it. But even if it’s just one. Isn’t that one life worth it ?
Isn’t that one life worth fighting for?
I believe it is. I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know what God is asking me to do. But I know he’s asking me to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves and bring this whole subject more into the light.
I believe on this journey we see things and have a choice to fight to make things better or wait for someone else to do it.
But what if God is asking you to be that someone?
God allowed us to see these hard things so they would change us forever and help others in the process
