people for sale

so this week, the reality of why i'm here...the fact that the sale of women and children exists (in Cambodia and around the world)...has hit me a bit more square between the eyes. it's really one thing to know statistics. and read stories. but it's another to put faces to the statistics. many young faces. to sit across from them and talk about how they're rebuilding their lives. or to sit in a public place trying to enjoy a book and watch an old white man hand over cash to a young Khmer woman no older than my baby sister while fondling her leg and then walk off with her...


(for the record and in confession: i maintained a steady staredown to say "yes i see you" as he kept looking over his shoulder uncomfortably at me every 20 seconds, all the while imagining myself pulling a Lorena Bobbit...)  

throw anger, helplessness, and my menstrual cycle in a blender and that about sums up how i've felt about these things this week.

poverty and trauma make women, boys, and girls so vulnerable. wealth and lust take advantage and cause incredible damage. 

and then remember why i'm here. why this work is so important. justice for the oppressed. i follow a God of justice. who sees. 

a psalm: O God, lift up your hand. Forget not the afflicted. Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, 'you will not call to account?'  But YOU DO SEE, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands. To you the helpless commits himself. You have been the helper of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer, call his wickedness to account till you find none.