This evening I sat with two young people and a retired friend as we listened to an amazing woman share about the hard work–the good work–she is doing to help women and men who are in the human trafficking industry. It was a very eye opening and hard discussion. It is heart breaking, and despite what we might have previously thought, it is very much happening right here in our community. Not just Atlanta, or even Macon. Right here.
All the brokenness.
As we listened, the young man who sat next to the speaker looked at her with his eyes wide. He asked, fumbling at first to find the right words, in a quiet voice, “Is there, I mean, is anyone–I mean surely–is anyone doing anything to stop this from happening at all? How can we stop it? What are people doing to make this better?”
Bless him.
He is not even a legal adult yet. He is hearing about heartbreak and brokenness and darkness that has been going on since before he was born, and it was as though for the first time, he felt the weight of what is before him–and all of his generation–that needs to be fixed and made better.
Bless him. Bless all of them.
They are looking at those of us who are of my generation, most likely, wondering why we let it get this bad. Why the human trafficking industry is the fastest growing one, right behind drug trafficking. They are asking us, “What have you done to make this better?”
Many will say they didn’t know. They weren’t aware. That they didn’t realize it was happening here in our country, our community. Many see it as a foreign issue, happening only in countries far, far away.
As I heard the stories tonight, any misconceptions like that were shattered and blown away.
I can never say again I didn’t know. And now that I know, I have a duty to answer this young man’s question–
What am I doing to stop this?
I have a lot of thinking to do about what I heard tonight. And about the look on that sweet soul’s face, his puzzled pain over what he was hearing. It’s wrong, and if we stand by and do nothing, it will continue to grow. That one thing is certain.
Will you join me in thinking on this, and working on the answer to “What are people doing to make this better?”
For more information, you can visit http://outofdarkness.org
Love, much love, to all.
I Might Need A Nap 