Sometimes when I wake up in the night, I think about them. The girls who are lured in, and trapped and then repeatedly raped and brutally beat and they can’t get out, for years, they can’t get out, because they’re victims of sex trafficking. I think about them when I’m safe in my bed next to my kind husband who protects us. And I think about them when I go in to check on my kids who are tucked in their beds all peaceful and resting and safe.

And I feel so helpless to help them because I know that as I go about my life with my laundry piles and my wrecky house and my laughing, energetic kids, that they’re out there somewhere and bad guys are in control of their lives and horrific, unspeakable things are happening to them. And some of them are just little kids, a lot like mine.

Little kids, I read, right here in the United States. Young girls, sold for $400 an hour on American streets. Many of them sold an average of 10-15 times a day, 6 days a week. That means they’ve been raped between 9,360 and 14,040 times a year. The girls receive none of the money. They are trapped, brutally beaten with the lives of their loved ones threatened if they try to escape. 

The other day, Gideon was playing in his floor and he asked me where the bad guys were. And before I could answer, he assured himself that they’re very, very far away but someday he’ll grow up to fight them. I don’t tell him not to fight them. I don’t want to raise a nice guy. I just wish there were no bad guys to fight, but there are, and if good guys don’t fight the bad ones, then the bad ones will always win.

I don’t know why God lets these awful things happen, I just know it hurts Him, too. And I know that He’s in us and He’s a God who rescues and He tells His children to stand up for the weak and fight for the oppressed because there are people who aren’t safe and this is how God helps the world. He uses our hands and our feet.

I don’t know yet how to get to those girls. How to pull them out and provide a place that’s safe. I just know I can’t not do something. For now I pray because I believe in a God who is there, and who has angels that intervene and who can move hearts as hard as mountains. I believe He can change hearts of pimps and He can redeem the soul and spirit of a girl who has been robbed and ruined and He can make her whole and pure again.

So, I’ll teach my boy how to treat a girl with respect and how to stand up and fight the bad guys who would take advantage of any person smaller and weaker than them. And I’ll speak into my girl that she is loved and she is worthy. And I’ll pray for the women and children who are trapped in sex trafficking, that God will send angels and people to rescue and that He’ll even use my own hands, my own feet.

Because there are people around me who aren’t safe. God put us all here at the same time to take care of each other, and I’ve only got this one life to do something. I cannot not.