Lifeless eyes

Whenever I take spiritual gifts tests, my scores for compassion are always the highest. I've got a lot of work to do on some other departments, but compassion never fails to dominate.

Basically, this means I have a lot of emotions. (Right, mom?)

It also means that I tend to empathize with people to a pretty high degree -- too high of a degree sometimes. I've found that there's a fine line between caring for another person in their sorrows and becoming burdened by their troubles yourself, which often disables you from actually being able to provide help in the situation. I often fall on the wrong side of this line. Things can be perfectly great in my own life, but tell me of someone suffering, going through a hard time, and it can take an toll on me. If it's ever possible to get too emotionally involved, I often do.

That happened last week.

I read a book that catalogues a young Nepalese girl's story of being sold into sexual slavery. (Sold by Patricia McCormick). The images it presented were horrific, the story it told was hard to read. It was raw, it was real, it left me with tears running down my face and a million questions in my mind. How can this happen? How do we stop it? Who will speak for these children? Who will save them? Who will bring the perpetrators to justice? Who will love these children back to life? Who will bring light to their lifeless eyes?

Sexual exploitation has been an issue that I've felt drawn to this past year, ever since a friend told me about her experience in Cambodia volunteering at a safe house for girls who had been rescued from sexual slavery. These are young girls, some not even yet teenagers, who are sold so that their families will have food to eat. Girls sold because their culture doesn't value women.

These girls are physically tortured and psychologically scarred.

These girls are raped day after day after day.

I cannot imagine the horrors.

I cannot imagine the violent disregard of something that I value so highly, a gift that I guard so closely.

I often insulate myself in my nice little safe bubble. We, as a culture, insulate ourselves, often blocking from our minds anything that makes us even slightly uncomfortable. Sometimes when people talk about issues like this, they're met with the response, "Just don't think about it" or "Stop being so emotional" or "It's not going to change, just forget it." Well, we can't just forget about it. We can't simply ignore atrocities happening all around us. Is that what the Bible means when it says to "seek justice and defend the oppressed"? To "speak up and defend the rights of the poor and needy"? 

The commercial sexual exploitation of children is a multi-billion dollar industry. UNICEF reports that more than one million children enter the sex trade every year and that in the past three decades about 30 million children have lost their childhood through sexual exploitation.

30 million.

That's ten times the population of my home state of Iowa.

I'll admit that maybe I get too emotional about some things, but I don't know if we can be too emotional about this, if it could affect us too deeply. I do think, however, that maybe emotion can get in the way of actually doing something about the issue. Instead of being solely entrenched in the emotional side of compassion, I want to take action. I want to raise awareness, I want to be a part of the fight for these children's freedom. I'm not really sure what that looks like, but I think it starts with actually talking about the issue. It starts with acknowledging that things like sexual slavery, extreme poverty and human rights abuses exist, and then loving the people of this world enough to do something about it.


"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18.

Not for Sale Campaign