Smith From Congress to the Brothel

A Journey of Hope, Healing and Restoration
1. Auflage 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9896451-4-0
Verlag: Shared Hope International
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 119 Seiten

A 13-year-old girl crouches in a dark corner of a filthy brothel, her hair dirty and tangled, her eyes hollow and lifeless. The scent of a hundred men clings to her. One American woman, a member of the United States Congress, reaches out a hand of help and hope. In this unscripted, unexpected moment, the dynamic global anti- trafficking work of Shared Hope International is born. You'll encounter the astonishing, heart-rending accounts of victims of sex trafficking ... but you'll also witness their thrilling transformations. This is a shocking story - at times, you may want to turn away - yet it is a story of real hope, the kind of hope that changes the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Linda

Leseproben

CHAPTER 3 Mud,
Straw,
Dung I take action whenever faced with need. It’s what brought me to India. I can’t just hear about a problem. I must do something about it. And I couldn’t witness the horror that I saw on Falkland Road without doing whatever I could to help. But this was a difficult thing to act on. I struggled deeply. I wrestled with the culture. I wrestled with my own insufficiencies. I wrestled against time. I had to move quickly to set the plan in motion before my plane returned to D.C. Only a few days remained. Despair crept into my thoughts. As I looked over the countryside just outside of Bombay, contemplating how to set up the first safe house for the girls, something caught my eye. Odd-looking thatched houses dotted the fields. I asked about them and learned they belonged to groups of families who were brick-makers, an actual societal class in India, handed down from generation to generation. If you were born into a family of brick-makers, then that was your caste. You became a brick-maker, as would your sons, daughters, and grandchildren. Bricks are an important building material in India and are always in great demand. But as I learned that day, brick-making is dirty work, requiring a blend of patience and back-bending labor. Brick-makers work long hours gathering mud, straw, and dung. They mix it together in trenches, form the bricks one at a time, bake them in brick kilns, and then set them in the sun where the bricks season further, becoming hardened — and useful. And in that very moment, I had a clear picture in my mind. God reminded me how the whole of my life — up to this very point — had prepared me for what He was now asking of me. My life was Romans 8:28 in action: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” God doesn’t just work the good stuff for good! Sometimes, it requires the mixing of some tough stuff — the mud and the straw and the dung — to make something useful. I began to think back over my life. I started working pretty young. I love to work. I am a natural entrepreneur. As an 11-year-old, I used these skills aggressively and started my own business, going door to door and doing chores for senior ladies in my neighborhood. My family wasn’t affluent, so I needed to work, and I quickly learned the value of work. GOD REMINDED ME HOW THE WHOLE OF MY LIFE — UP TO THIS VERY POINT — HAD PREPARED ME FOR WHAT HE WAS NOW ASKING OF ME. Soon, I began thinning pear trees in orchards, picking fruit, working at a fruit stand, cleaning houses, taking in ironing, and working in a day care center, among other things. Working was my way to get the things other kids had. But when I was a young teen, my mother became ill. She spent years battling heart disease and cancer. I had four younger siblings, and when my older sister married and left home, the others were often left to my care. Suddenly, I found myself with a lot of added responsibility. I was an honors student and drove myself to get good grades in school. Every moment of my day was spent between school, work, and home. I started early and worked late. At times, it exhausted me. Those early years served me well as I developed a successful career as a tax consultant, built on long work hours and determination. Looking back, it is as if I picked up a lot of straw and did my fair share of back-bending labor. So why would I add the dirty mud of politics to my happy and relatively successful life? Two things led me to run for office. I was not politically involved until my husband became a pro-life activist overnight. One Saturday he came home from a men’s breakfast at our church and immediately sought me out. He very deliberately explained how the speaker that morning had taught from the Bible about how God viewed the unborn. Vern then made the statement that changed our life: “Linda, I prayed this morning and made a commitment to God that even if there were only one man left standing, that for me and my family, we would fight for life.” He proceeded to become the president of the local pro-life group. The second thing that got this businesswoman’s attention was the Washington State Legislature’s vote that doubled my business taxes! So I went into politics — the mud! I survived eight political races. By the grace of God, I was successful, but each of those campaigns held its share of nasty accusations, personal attacks, and crushing negativity. It’s hard to stand up and brush that off over and over and over again. There was a lot of ugly mud. And mud is sticky — it doesn’t clean up so easily. It hurts to add — but I must — I was molested periodically as I grew up. I spent years running from some people in my life. There is still healing going on in my relationships and with members of my family. It was only a couple of years ago when another family member and I came to the point of revealing to each other what had happened to us and discovered that our experiences had been tragically similar. People hide things for years. But when those issues re-surface, you are forced to face the same raw pain and heartache, just as real and still so tender. And in that first encounter with the girls in Bombay, I remember not wanting to face that — face the horrors of abuse they had been through and replaying the nightmare of those I had suffered as well. I, too, had been penned, blocked, lured in a way — awful memories that still give me shivers. Yet God painted a new picture in my mind. It was as if I were stooped over and struggling, carrying all of this junk — guilt, fear, awful memories, distractions — all piled high on my shoulders. Yet as I carried all of the mess in my life, “the gunk,” God gently reminded me: The strongest bricks have manure in them. That “manure” — the experiences I would consider the very worst in my life — those were the very experiences that had made me ready. “All things work together for the good.” Not just the good things. All things. Then I saw myself standing on a pile of bricks. I was no longer struggling, and I couldn’t smell the dung, the rancid mixture that had gone into making the bricks. Now, I realized, He was holding my chin up so I could see. He had lifted me up — far above the trenches filled with mud and straw and dung. MOLDED IN GOD’S OWN HAND, BAKED UNDER THE HEAT AND PRESSURE OF LIFE — IT HAD BECOME A PLATFORM FOR ME TO MINISTER FROM. The mud and straw and manure of my life had become something new and usable and strong. Molded in God’s own hand, baked under the heat and pressure of life — it had become a platform for me to minister from. And let me tell you something: you can see so much farther standing on a pile of bricks than you can while stooped over, struggling with their weight on your back! That thought changed me forever. I still might struggle with how to do it, but no more questioning, no more wondering “What if I made a mistake?” He drew a line there for me as surely as He sent me to Congress without me even filing for office. Yes, you read that right: I did not decide to run for Congress, but was elected after a spontaneous 10-day grassroots write-in campaign that was started while I was out of town on vacation. More than 40,000 people wrote my name on their ballot in the September 1994 primary election, swamping the incumbent. I knew this was a miracle that only God could carry off. No mortal can organize 40,000 people to do anything, and do it right, in such a short time! Yet as it turned out, those years were not the point of my life story, but rather a valuable springboard to this ministry. I look back now and realize I never would have known many of the people who are helping us in this ministry today if it weren’t for my years in Congress. And I couldn’t effectively influence laws that impact those enslaved if it weren’t for my years on Capitol Hill. I’m not making it happen — I know I’m nothing on my own — but because of what God has brought me through, I can be a catalyst. I can let God use the straw and mud and dung to make something useful. Something strong. If I just show up. If I’m just obedient to God’s calling, by taking the steps He asks me to take and seizing the opportunities He places before me, the grace He pours through me is limitless! That day in Bombay, India, I decided to be obedient. I was going to help prostituted girls find new life. I was going to help them...