I wanted to share part of my journal with you after a night spent in Pattaya, Thailand at a place called The Walking Street. Walking Street is full of bars, strip clubs, and prostitution. Women standing on the streets with barely any clothes on leaving nothing to the imagination, family’s taking pictures of the street as if it’s a common tourist attraction, men looking at each woman and deciding which will satisfy his hunger within, young children sitting on the sidewalk waiting for their mom’s to finish their shifts. The heaviness and darkness of this place will be with me for a long time. The hollowness behind the eyes of the women and the smiles of the men as the women grazed their legs is an image ingrained in my memory.
“Lord, I dont know what to do with all these feelings and thoughts going through my head. I feel like a crazy person; going from extreme anger to fear to brokenness to hopelessness but reasurred in my own life of how great my God is. My anger dwells in me because I’m no different than these women or men. A year ago that was me storming the streets of bars being blind to all the brokenness because I was broken and brokenness was my reality. But stepping into that world again and watching women being used nothing more than an object for pleasure, watching men and women seeking moments of pleasure at the cost of someone else was too much for me to carry. Having menus with women’s pictures and sexual acts they will perform shoved in my face like it was just the average food menu to order your dinner.
How did we get here? How did we screw up and pervert what God intended to be good turn to such evil and brokenness. Lord, I don’t know what to do with this. Lord, take this from me and use it for your glory. I don’t get this and I don’t know if I ever will. But this is bigger than me or another person. The enemy’s game is getting so many people to play in his game when we could be playing in the biggest comeback game in history, the Christ’s victory.
Lord, I am mad, I am heartbroken, I am hurting because I know what it is like to be longing for that pleasure or that quick fix and I know that feeling of wanting it to all go away, wanting to numb the pain, numb all of the unknown, numb the reality of not being in control of any of this.
I find myself caught in these world’s of extremes. This past year and a half I have experienced heaven on earth, I have experienced His freedom in this world that can’t be taken away by another person because it is eternal freedom. But I also have experienced the darkness and brokenness of this world.
“Take one more shot and then you’ll be able to really let loose and forget, feel more like yourself.” Allowing someone else to hold my freedom in their hands by telling me if I am worthy or not and in a blink of an eye they take it away again.
We are all broken people and it manifest in each of us differently. Lust for one person and codependency in another.
We aren’t meant to live in two different world’s light and darkness,
we are meant to be an unified force walking in the light and casting out the darkness so we can walk in our fullness for His glory.
I am on the path of learning how to walk this out. And I know I will fall again but a truth I can hold onto is my story. The redemption the Lord has walked me through in my life is proof that it is possible. As the darkness in our world overwhelms me, I can stand firm on the foundation of our Almighty God. My God has lifted chains of shame in my life, My God has walked me through healing in my heart from past relationships. My God can do the same for these people caught in the darkness of this world.”
It’s time that we stop turning our faces away from the brokenness. It’s time to stop acting like this isn’t happening. Women, men, and children are being sold and held captive daily in sex trafficking. This isn’t just happening in Thailand, it’s also happening in the United States and possibly right down the rode from you.
After leaving that night with a heart full of anguish and despair, tears flowing down my face I cried out to God to replenish My spirit. I woke up the next morning with a new perspective. That night I felt helpless, what possibly could I do to fix all of this? How could I help these women from being used as an object and gain a sense of worth and value again?
And it hit me. I need to share this story because just a year ago I was turning my head away from all of this brokenness. I may not have been buying women or men but I was contributing to help this type of environment thrive by ignoring my part in it all.
I may not be able to get all these women out of sex slavery today but I can help bring awareness of the problem and have people ask themselves are you contributing to this booming industry by watching pornography or objectifying women or simply minimizing the weight of this problem in our world.
I can begin helping these women by stopping my community from engaging in these things and who knows if this can create a chain reaction by stopping the need for prostitution because people are no longer searching for fulfillment or pleasure at the cost of other human beings.
