I awoke this morning after a frightening dream.
In my dream I was with my mother at a large gathering of people. I ended up being separated from her, and tricked and forced into staying in a house with a woman and two men. I was forced to do what she told me to. If I refused, she would try to poison me. After a few small events, I was finally able to make a run for it. I went to my car (which was not far away from the house) only to realize I didn’t have my keys.
So I kept running.
The two men were pursuing me. It was such a terrible feeling, knowing someone is chasing you only to take away your ability to make decisions for yourself. To live. To be a human being. Despite the fear, I continued to run and was eventually able to lose them.
I still needed my car and ended up with a group of loving people who decided they would go back with me to get my keys from the woman. We returned to the house and the woman and two men were unable to do anything to stop me. With so many surrounding and protecting me they no longer had the power to control and manipulate me. We walked in, I picked up my keys, and we left the house.
I was free and no longer afraid.
I believe that this is a small picture that God has given me in order to get a slight inkling as to what it is like to be trapped, to be unable to live your own life, to be treated less than human. There are so many who live this, day to day. For those people, conditions are much more abusive than anything I experienced in my dream. It can be anything such as beatings, starvation, sexual abuse, forced labor, or drugging. I also believe that the ending of my dream is a beautiful picture. We need to stand up for the ones who are persecuted, abused and trapped.
I consider it my job to let people know that slavery still exists. This is not something we think only happened to the Jews in Egypt, or African Americans in England and in America. Children, women and men are being forced to use their bodies to perform sexual acts to bring in money for a pimp. Being forced to work long ours in mines, fields and factories, living on little to no sleep and food and being beaten and tortured if you are too slow. These things don’t just happen in third world countries. They happen right here in the United States. There are stories of children who have been used as household slaves; cleaning, washing and taking care of a house, with no chance to go to school, being kept a secret so authorities won’t find out. There are so called “massage parlors” where the girls are tricked and lied to and brought from their foreign homes to these places to give more than just a “massage”.
There are thousands of stories.
Each one making my stomach twist and turn.
But there is HOPE. We can help to bring about change in the world today. There are things we can do to make a difference. And the most amazing thing of all...
...we have a loving and just God who sees everything. All of the abuse, injustice, SIN. And he has a plan to restore all things in the end. This cannot and will not forever continue. There is hope for the hopeless. There is love for the unloved.
If you don’t know much about modern day slavery I suggest you check out these websites:
ijm.org
slaveryfootprint.org/
10 things YOU can do to help:
http://news.change.org/stories/10-things-you-can-do-to-fight-human-trafficking
Photos from a trip I took to India in January of 2010.
