So. Let’s rewind for a second back to debrief.
One of the things we focused on was going home- a topic that’s exciting and scary and surreal and just plain crazy.
When we get home, we have three choices of what we become:
An Assimilator: This is the girl who says, ‘I saw too much to know what to do, so rather than process it and figure out how who I was on the Race matches up with who I can be at home, I’m just going to go back to who I was.’
An Alienator. This is the girl who says, ‘Everything in America is wrong. People don’t understand what the rest of the world is facing, and I don’t know how to make them, so I’m going to live above all of that and look down on them for not getting it.’
An Integrator. This is the girl who goes home and says, ‘I saw a lot. Some of it was good, a lot of it was hard. People back home may not get it, but I’m not going to lose the things I learned this past year, instead I’m going to continue to grow as a mature woman of God and draw in as many people as I can with the ways I continue to seek His will on earth.’
I want to be an integrator. I absolutely refuse to go back to who I was- the lessons this year came at much too high a price. I don’t want to be an alienator because those people tend to drive people away from the very causes they’re trying to champion. I want to be an integrator.
We’ve all been talking about our kingdom dreams- that one thing that the Lord is tugging on your heart to go and do. Surrounded by talks of people going to start coffee shop ministries, saving prostitutes and rescuing little boys off the street, I’m starting to feel like my own plan of going back to school is inadequate, less than, not enough.
They say comparison is the thief of all joy- and that was before they even met me.
So it’s our last night at debrief and some of us girls go out as a final goodbye before being split for the month. As we’re walking back to the tuk tuk that will take us home, we pass a little girl selling flowers, and I ask how old she is.
She’s only 8 years old.
She’s only 8 years old and her life is defined by the nights, by the streets she walks and the tourists she looks up to, pleading with them to buy some flowers so she can go home before starting over tomorrow.
She’s only 8 years old and she probably doesn’t know what it means to be a little girl- not in the way that I knew, that any family would wish for their precious child to experience.
She’s only 8 years old.
Something inside me snapped.
I have had enough.
I am sick of seeing little girls on the street. I hate knowing the women behind the bars are there because it’s their only choice. I’m embarrassed to be part of a culture that stands by and watches the genocide of a nation.
She’s only 8 years old, and she’s starting a revolution.
I’m coming home in 70 days- just over two months, and I fully intend to hit the ground running. Saddle up, prayer warriors, because I’m going to need all the cover I can get.
We’re at war, and the stakes are too high to back down now.
Because she’s only 8 years old, and there are a million others like her.
