It started a few years ago.  It was winter, almost Christmas, and we were looking through the Samaritan’s Purse Gift Catalog.  You could donate to help rescue girls from human trafficking.  Matt said something like, “I think maybe, someday, God will want us to do something like this.”  I thought to myself, “Seriously?  That’s a whole world of issues we can’t understand.  If I’ve got issues from what I’ve been through…those poor girls….I can’t imagine.”  But having been abused myself, my heart breaks for girls mistreated.  The idea is not dismissed, just shelved for the time.

First I read this book…..

….and I know I must act.  But how?  Life is so busy.  But I know that’s no excuse to ignore the needs of those created in His image.

Then Haiti happened.  We prayed for the safe return of Matt’s brother and sister and their team.  They came home and seven Haitian children were (legally) united with forever families.  We watched news reports of fathers and mothers in Haiti selling their children because they could not care for them.  I wept as I tried to fathom the despair a mother must feel to believe selling her child is her best option.  And I wept for those children who have no mother or father to hold them at night, who were sold by those God ordained to protect them.

This summer I picked up this book….

….and I begin to find ways to act.  I highly recommend it.  I’m about halfway through it.  It is varied in it’s scope and highly practical with countless ways to practice “kingdom justice” in the midst of our already busy lives.  Please pick up a copy.  Today.

This weekend I read this post and God struck something in my soul.   I talked to Matt.  We agreed to pray about how to be involved.  Maybe not in this particular ministry.  But something.  Somehow.

This morning I woke up to this post.  (Do you think God is trying to tell me something???  I’m not even kidding.)

My Jesus has set me free from so much.  From sin, bondage, bitterness.  He carried me through the storms of my own abuses and has placed me forever under the shelter of His wings.  I do not know how I can stop human trafficking from my home schooling, middle American life.  I don’t know how I am to rescue girls the age of my oldest daughter, bought and sold to be used by men while I keep up with laundry or get my groceries or take my own girls to ballet and horse back riding lessons.  But I know those are someone’s girls.  They have hearts and souls and dreams.  They have a heavenly Father who loves them.

I know this happens here in America and around the world.  I know it’s not just girls affected.  I know I cannot ignore it.

I do not yet know what the Lord has planned for us in this area.  For now I will pray and wear awesome jewelry.

What about you?  What are you doing with the freedom God’s given you?