I’ve been drifting at the edges of the human trafficking issue for a year or two now, joining my church in the Hope for Freedom cause, reading, talking, networking. I have sat with prostitutes who were trafficked into the trade by relatives and “safe” friends. I’ve heard their stories and seen their redemption. I’ve seen homes for restoring the souls of young girls. And I’ve read. I’ve read news reports of raids, successful and not. I’ve read books that were released, both secular and Christian. I’ve done what I could, within the confines of my suburban life, to engage in the fight for those with no voice, no justice.
Somehow, however, that deepest well of emotion that lives inside me has not been tapped. Maybe it’s the words we use: human trafficking, modern day abolitionist, modern day slavery. They are cold, distanced. Maybe it’s the size of the numbers: 27 million in slavery. It’s too big a number, and it seems unreal. Maybe it’s just my own selfishness and blindness, living in my insulated life. I have cared about the issue. I have worked for it. I have prayed over it. But I haven’t really lived it.
Until now.
I just finished reading God in a Brothel, An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue by Daniel Walker. Somehow this book has hit me harder than any of the others I’ve read. For one thing, the book is written in the first person. There are few dry statistics here: most of the book is first hand experience. Walker infiltrated the kinds of places we’ve only seen in movies, the dark and dangerous corners of the world. He put himself on the line to covertly photograph and record financial transactions. He looked into the eyes of the six year old girl offered to him for his own pleasure, and he lived with the grief when he couldn’t find her again to rescue her.
Somehow, I felt it. I felt it in the pit of my stomach.
This is a dangerous book. It will wreck you on many levels. And I need to warn you, it is not a pretty book. Walker doesn’t spare us. He shows us how the go-go bars in South East Asia operate. He lets us feel the fear of girls who refuse to talk about their captors. Perhaps most gut wrenching, he talks about the temptations for him, bombarded on every side by the moral perversion of the sex industry.
And oh yes, just about the time my American soul feels self-righteous about the standard of our country, Walker takes us to Las Vegas and Atlanta. Ouch. Worse, he tells us why investigations in those cities will never go anywhere.
It’s a complicated world we live in. Some of these girls are in their industry by choice, and so do not fall under the umbrella of trafficking. Some of them were deceived by friends, or kidnapped by strangers. Saving them isn’t always easy, and the right answers aren’t always the obvious ones. But the cause of justice — the cause God gave to all of us — demands that we try.
I end with a card given to Walker following the rescue of 13 year old Melissa — a girl who now wants to be a lawyer to help fight the injustice of trafficking.
I wish that you will never be tired of helping such many children like me. I’m so lucky for the opportunity that you gave. Thank you for all the help and support that you have given and showed me. I promise I will try my best to achieve all my goals in life. I’ll reach for them, I’ll try my best to succeed. I will never forget you, never.
I heard a great story on Fox News yesterday morning while I was getting ready for my day. Since the story involved human trafficking, an issue that I care about deeply, I stopped what I was doing and watched.
I loved what I saw!
It seems that a group of nuns in Indiana is (rightly) concerned about the increased potential and reality of trafficking surrounding the Superbowl tomorrow. But these nuns didn’t hold a prayer meeting or a candlelight vigil. Ok, they might have, but that wasn’t the point of the story. The point was that they chose to get smart and creative in fighting evil. They used their investment funds (who knew?) to buy stock in the major hotel chains, and then used their leverage as investors to get the hotels to train their staff in spotting, repairing and stopping trafficking incidents this week.
Clever!
Is it possible we are too busy praying about the issues…and perhaps we need to get a little smarter?
I’m not saying don’t pray!!! In fact, I’d suspect thats where the nuns got their innovative idea in the first place. Watch the report below if you want. And kudos to the nuns who are savvy enough — and gutsy enough — to leverage their investments into an eternal investment. Well done!
I just finished reading Mark Batterson’s latest book, The Circle Maker. If you have followed Coffee Shop Journal at all, you know that Batterson is one of my favorite authors in the current Christian landscape. So I have been slowly savoring The Circle Maker, letting its message sink deep rather than skimming the surface of my mind.
The premise of The Circle Maker is simple: God honors the prayers we pray. Hardly ground-breaking! But Batterson frames The Circle Maker in an ancient Jewish tale that takes prayer to a new place. There was, once upon a time, a Jewish prophet named Honi. Honi lived at a time when drought was torturing Israel, and it was time for Honi to pray on his country’s behalf. So Honi literally drew a circle in the dry sand, stepped inside it, and pledged not to leave until God answered his prayer.
It sprinkled.
Honi prayed again.
It rained cats and dogs and threatened to flood the nation.
Honi prayed again until a gentle rain fell.
Using Honi’s story mixed with stories from Batterson’s National Community Church and his own life, Batterson encourages us to circle – metaphorically and often literally – the dreams we have for our own lives, the dreams God planted. Pray, think long term, let your prayers build your legacy: Batterson encourages us over and over to do the hard work of bringing ourselves and our lives into harmony with God’s plan for us.
I spent some time recently thinking about the “circles” in my life.
While Mark Batterson was walking circles around the city of Washington DC (and I say we need more people walking circles and praying in Washington DC!), I feel as if sometimes I’ve just been walking IN circles. May I be honest? Sometimes I’m not so sure that my prayers are much different than the “positive affirmations” that pop psych gurus like to peddle off on us. I pray them, regularly, but I sometimes forget that someone is LISTENING to them.
God honors our prayers.
But do our prayers honor God?
I pray — most of the time — wimpy little me-sized prayers instead of the kind that have me shaking in my boots. At church this weekend we called those kind of prayers audacious prayers. Batterson reminds us that God loves those kind of prayers, because everyone knows that only he could accomplish them. Only God could possibly have one such a thing.
I don’t want to live my life missing out on God-sized answers to prayer.
I need to be drawing audacious circles and then standing in them.
If you want to get more information about The Circle Maker and watch some cool trailers, go to TheCircleMaker.
I’m not sure when trimming the Christmas tree dropped out of the top ten Christmas activities in my opinion. Somewhere along the line I lost the magic of transforming the green bush into the sparkling personification of Christmas. It may have been, now that I think about it, back in high school when I realized my mom was tricking my friends and me into doing “her” job by offering pizza and cookies. It was a brilliant ploy, and one that I’ve used successfully around here, as well.
But today is the day. And by the end of the day I will be thrilled with it all, entranced, sitting in my living room with the lights low thinking about how it was all worth it. And it will be, once again, magical.
I read something today about Christmas trees that has me thinking.
We bring an essentially dead tree to our home. We water it and give it fresh cuts to keep the water flowing. Some people swear by misting their trees. Yet no matter what we do…the tree is dead. At best we’re giving a form of life support to keep up appearances. Without roots, without a healthy, though essentially unseen, delivery system for nutrients and contact with the ground, the tree is dead.
This Christmas as we’ve been contemplating the Advent Conspiracy and ways to celebrate Christmas differently, I want to make sure I’m not like my Christmas tree. I want to make sure my roots aren’t severed from the source of life. There’s no sense in making myself appear decorated with a bounty of tinsel, ornaments, garland. I’d rather spend the time rooted and grounded, connected to God and my family and the things that matter the most.
I want to live more this Christmas.
Our friend Timmy Allen created this video for Advent Conspiracy at Christ Fellowship this year. I think it’s awesome. And someday (tomorrow, I think!) I’m going to make my acting debut as a stick model in one of his productions. Check this out. And then think about ways to grow your roots deeper this Christmas.
Blogging is a vulnerable act of radical writing. Never underestimate how terrifying it is to bare your soul for anyone who happens to put in the right search words to Google. This is one of those vulnerable posts where those of you who know me may snicker to yourselves and make some snide comments. Go ahead: I’m going to deserve it!
But I have also learned that stating something publicly is often the tipping point to dredging up the determination to follow through. So…
I finally figured out that I am happier when I am traveling, in some ways, because my world fits in my backpack and my suitcase. On rare trips there may be a tote bag. That’s it. No bookshelves, no clutter piles, not laundry piles, no corners in out-of-the-way rooms waiting for me, condemning me. It’s a lesson I had better take to heart. If there’s one thing I’ve learned its that God often speaks in those inner longings of your heart, the half-heard and half-feared whispers.
I need less stuff.
Other people need more stuff.
I need to spend more time and money helping the other people get the stuff they need just to live.
Another truth in establishing any new habit — and less stuff would truly be a new habit — is to smart with a small victory. I’m combining these two habits and blogging my first challenge. Hopefully in a few days I will also blog my first victory.
Challenge
I will clean out my makeup drawer and reduce it to only what I usually shove in my travel bag for a longish trip. Then I will only replace those items (when they are used up), not add to their number.
That’s it. Nothing profound today, just a glimpse of where my life is.
Bonus: This is a quick post I found on how to actually clean out the makeup drawer. Why reinvent the wheel? http://www.luuux.com/node/2930066
A year or two ago I bought some amazing organic shampoo from my stylist. It was the same product she used in the salon, and I loved what it did for my hair! So optimistically, I shelled out the price for the lovely product and brought it home.
You know this part of the story: I used the shampoo and loved the smells, the feel. I loved the shine in my hair, even though I couldn’t quite make my hair do what my stylist could do. Great — expensive — shampoo.
On the second day I looked at my new shampoo and conditioner and thought “Wow…I paid a lot for that. Today I will use my regular stuff, and make sure I don’t run through the shampoo too fast.” So I did. And my hair looked pretty much the same…like my hair.
Fast forward a year or so. There I am standing in my shower reaching for my normal shampoo when I saw “The Expensive Shampoo.” By now those words were written in capital letters. I rarely used it. But this was an important day of some sort (can’t remember now), so I reached for my organic shampoo.
It had died. The cream had separated into components. The lovely organic ingredients didn’t smell happy anymore. In fact, it was such an icky experience just getting that stuff out of the bottle that I rinsed it down the drain and threw out the whole bottle. I hated watching that bottle go away. I had never even used it! All that potential was left to rot in the bottle.
Not long ago I bought some other, different expensive shampoo, this time recommended by my sister-in-law. And on that second or third day, when I was tempted to skip over the bottle in order to save it, I remembered my lesson. I remembered the nearly full bottles in the trash. Shampoo has only one purpose: to clean your hair. If you don’t use it, there’s no reason to keep it. I vowed to use every last drop of that expensive stuff, and so far I have.
Life is pretty much the same way, isn’t it? God gives us talents. He gives us creativity, insights, stamina, relationships, love. And he gives it all to us so that we will use it. But sometimes it’s easy to hold some back, to want to save for a rainy day. Like the Israelites trying to hoard daily manna, we don’t allow ourselves to be emptied.
We stay in the bottle.
Lately I’m trying to remember that my true life is outside the shampoo bottle. I don’t want to hold back what can’t be kept. I don’t want a container of moldy manna or ugly shampoo. I believe that God is able to refill that jar, able to refill me.
I believe it. Now it’s time to act on it.
So I guess today I raise my theoretical glass in a toast to those who venture outside the bottle with me!
Not very inspiring, is it? It’s kind of a useless thing. It can still plug into the current, but it can’t produce the light it was created for.
On the other hand, perhaps it is no surprise that’s how I’m feeling, because my most recent prayer has been simply this: Unmake me, Lord.
I want to be unmade, so that God can start putting back into my life the bits and pieces that HE wants, not the pieces I’ve picked up over the years and hugged close to my chest.We all want to be made over, refashioned, step into the big reveal as a new person, made in His image.
But sometimes we forget that before the big reveal comes a lot of unlearning, unmaking, letting go. I’m not so good at that, but I’m trying.
It’s been awhile since I have done a book review, and this isn’t one either. Not really. But I recently read The Pixar Touch by David A. Price.
I picked up the book a week or two ago…but wait…that isn’t true. Sitting in my QEpiphany conference I realized I wanted to read more about Pixar. After all, we were deconstructing Toy Story 2 and learning the backstory of the process. I wanted to know more. So I grabbed my iPad, searched Amazon Kindle and downloaded what looked like the most appropriate book. I have never held the book in my hands.
A perfect illustration of the first lesson I learned from both the book and from Pixar: technology disrupts. It makes the “good old boys nervous.” Some people will tell you that the technology is ruining the integrity of what came before. What would animation be without hand drawn cels? It would be different. But equally amazing. And that gets people’s feathers ruffled.
Lesson: When you are going to venture into a whole new world, be prepared to spend some time bringing others along and smoothing down their feathers.
The second lesson quickly follows the first: yesterday’s skill set may not be enough to meet today’s challenge, but it will probably provide the foundation for the skills that will meet the challenge. Without the skilled hand animators, Pixar would never have been able to hit the right balance in their computer generated characters. It required the eye, the deep background and the artistic sense that only animators possessed.
Lesson: Don’t despise the skill sets of yesterday. Figure out what they knew. It may be crucial to you today.
Finally (because research tells me your attention has already waned)…
Lesson: Nothing — repeat — NOTHING beats a good story, well written.
Great book...with some interesting background on Steve Jobs' time at Pixar.
The Freedom Tower...still only about 2/3 of its eventual height!
It was classic New York City: crossing the bridge into the city and watching the magnificent skyline against the perfect fall sky. I couldn’t have scripted the ride any better. I pointed out a few of the landmark buildings to Kylie and Jillian, even though both of them had been here before and were pretty much ready to roll their eyes in my direction at any minute. They do that once in awhile when I’m being, well, Mom.
“Over there, to the left…do you see the construction lights?”
I was startled by our cab driver jumping into the conversation. David found the lights he was pointing out.
“That is the Freedom Tower. At Ground Zero.”
It was obvious that the driver was proud of the tower. Having just watched Rising (a documentary about the tower project), I was, too. So thrilled to see it start to take its place in the iconic skyline. I pondered the tower. To me it represents the God-given drive in humans to create, and recreate, their world. It represents the refusal to let evil triumph. It represents the global community that coalesced around the project, and the people who lost their lives in that spot. It also represents the people who are giving their lives to healing. Healing the people, healing the city, healing the skyline. The Freedom Tower. What a great name.
The driver wasn’t quite finished yet.
“I’ve been wondering,” he said after revealing he was from Pakistan, “about the difference between some of your words. Can you explain to me the difference between Liberty and Freedom?”
Wow.
Not as easy as it sounds at first. David and I both took a crack at it, and the conversation filled the ride to the hotel. It turns out that our Pakistani driver had a master’s degree in American History, a degree he earned back in Pakistan as he anticipated moving to America. For just a few moments we were able to see New York City through the eyes of this man, the eyes of a man who worked hard and sacrificed everything to point out the construction lights on the floors of the Freedom Tower.
I think that’s what I love about New York City. Things aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes the epiphany — the moment of blinding insight — comes from the most unlikely sources. An epiphany can be around every corner. Probably is. If you look for it.
We were heading to a conference on using “Story” to create epiphanies. David and I would spend days learning from experts how to create compelling stories. It was amazing and overwhelming and full of useful information.
But the epiphany moment of our Qideas Epiphany Workshop was delivered by a Pakistani driver crossing the bridge into a city he couldn’t wait to show us.
Blanchard Hall, the "heartbeat" of the Wheaton campus.
David and I are in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton for my…ahem…25th College Reunion. Today was the warm-up day, the day for us to sneak onto campus, register, wander around looking enviously at the new and improved bookstore, the new and improved dining room, the new and improved student center, the new and improved….well you get the idea. It seems that all is new and improved except, perhaps, the returning alumni! For us there is nothing new and not much improved!!
Or is that true?
Nothing makes you think about the person you have become like your college reunions. If you are prone to a mid-life crisis, a reunion is where you are likely to find it! But as I mingle with these friends who started out on life’s adult journey with me, I’ve realized that I could never have predicted or scripted the course of my crazy life.
In the words of a friend of mine, Bob Goff, my life is inexplicable.
My mind works like one big set of tinker toys, connecting one person to another I just met. I connect books to people, people to projects and to each other. I file information away to be connected to other information at some other time, some other place. I find trends in the challenges facing people who are trying to make a difference in this world, and try to encourage them. I love the people under my wings.
These are the things I do. And as I stand in this rich soil of Wheaton, the place where I started to be who I am, I am coming to appreciate who God has seen fit to make me. Make no mistake: it’s tempting. It’s tempting to look for the new and improved version of everything. It’s tempting to find a new job title that maybe describes me, places me in a category so others can easily figure me out. It’s tempting to wonder about paths not taken, twists and turns.
But I love my life. And I loved standing in the bookstore among all the books I have read and loved. I loved that a faculty member stopped to ask me about our iPads, and whether she should get one for her husband. I loved that I knew the answer to that, and to so many other questions she asked.
David and I agree that we would have LOVED to do college with the technology these kids are toting around in their backpacks. It’s an amazing moment in history to be engaged in learning.
On the other hand, it’s also an amazing moment in history to be out changing the world. And you can’t do that by being jealous of the “new and improved!”
However that salad bar was pretty awesome…and the ice cream machines…and the ice cream topping bar…
