I’ve been following you since Laura wrote on A Deeper Story about sending her husband Matt into a Southeast Asian brothel.
Paradise?
At first, I didn’t know he was the founder and undercover investigator for a non-profit organization fighting human trafficking, or that Exodus Road has 348 prosecutions to date.
Can I help you?
I traveled through SE Asia and the Indian Subcontinent for two months in 1994 and six months in 2000 – Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India and Nepal.
One night in a red-light district, I was dying to approach a middle-aged European man, wearing a 12-year-old girl on his arm, and punch him squarely in the face. I was not following Jesus at the time, but wrong is wrong is wrong.
My fists are ineffective, my blog is not.
I’m older and wiser now, a dedicated follower of Jesus, a writer, a blogger and a women to whom much has been given. I have blogged about Chris Caine’s A21 Campaign and worked with the LA Dream Center – two other leaders in the battle against the second largest organized crime syndicate in the world.
I picked up The Bible a few years ago and began reading it because I wanted to be someone better than I was, and I couldn’t figure out how.
I wanted to be someone like evangelist, author and human trafficking activist Christine Caine; a woman who knows her role in the Kingdom of God and is relentlessly pursuing it.
But here I am two and a half years later, I’ve read the whole bible, twice, and wrote a book about the sea changes it inflicted on my soul, my brain and my smart, smart mouth. But those changes, while real, are still maddeningly incremental. Everyone else seems busy going forward and I feel like I’m standing still, by myself. The most exciting thing I did today was go to the grocery store, and after nine months in East Texas, I still didn’t know anyone there.
Jesus said, I came so you might enjoy life and have it in abundance. Umm hey Jesus, this isn’t enjoyable. It’s hard and lonely, and I miss my tribes in Colorado and California. What am I doing in Texas?
Maybe I’m a lonely because I have moved twice in four years in a state where family is king, and I have exactly one household family member, if you don’t count the dogs, and he thinks I am losing my mind, which I probably am.
Or maybe God had to kick a few things out from under me in order to gain my full attention, to see if I really want to be the person I say I do. That, I’m afraid, isn’t going to come cheap.
My teacher said this morning, sometimes God holds us back until we are well-prepared to handle the consequences of our prayers.
What do I expect? I make one good choice two years ago and God has to give me everything I think I want in 18 months or less? Christine Caine has been at it for years, steadfastly moving in the will of God, working, praying, trusting the God who redeemed her sexually abused and abandoned self and made her a living epistle, the good news wrapped in a little blond firecracker. It’s clearly a process.
I heard someone say once, I’m glad I don’t know what God is up to, because who wants to serve a God they can figure out? That would mean he’s only slightly smarter than us.
So, in the meantime I remind myself not to complain, I pray and just do what’s in front of me, all the while encouraging myself with things like this:
But those who wait for the Lord (who expect, look for, and hope in Him) shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up (close to God) as eagles (mount up to the sun); they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired. Isaiah 40:31
Going to the Sea 