what if

Today is my day in the 40 day fast and my team blogger is Jonathan. Click here to read his post.

I am not a mom. Yesterday I turned 41, my husband and I have been married for ten years, and so far we have been unable to conceive. These past few months, though, we have made the decision to try and adopt a little girl, possibly from China. And even though I still do not know what it feels like to be a mom, I am starting to look at children in a different way. What if this were my child? What if this was happening to my child and I could not protect it?

A true story:
“Panida*, a 14-year-old girl from rural Northern Thailand, had just finished her 8th grade studies and hoped to spend her summer break
earning some extra money. Panida thought that the potential earnings
from a summer job could bring her family some stability. Her family
needed the funds badly: Her father had died and her mother was
stricken with AIDS. When a local man approached her offering a wellpaying job that would last four months, she accepted. However, the man’s intentions were never to give her a job: He instead took Panida through a border checkpoint into Malaysia, where he sold her to a local brothel owner.
The brothel owner told Panida that he had paid an enormous sum for
her, and that she must reimburse him by selling her body to the brothel’s many customers. She was told that she would have to service five to 10 customers a night and that if she failed to meet her quota or refused customers, she would be beaten and abused.
Panida was locked in her new living quarters – a house crowded with
other trafficking victims, secured by guards, barred windows and doors
that locked from the outside. Terrified, Panida awaited her first rape.”

What if this were my daughter? What if I could not protect her?

My organization for today is the International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression. They advocate for victims when they are left without one: little girls sold into prostitution, widows whose homes get taken away, people sold into slavery to replay small debts. IJM was able to intervene in Panida’s tragedy.

Here’s the rest of the story:
“However, on the very night on which Panida was to be sold for the
first time, Malaysian police, prompted to action by information
provided through IJM undercover investigations, entered the brothel and released Panida and 94 other trafficking victims.
An IJM caseworker contacted Panida’s mother in Thailand, who was
overjoyed to hear that her daughter was safe. IJM paid the cost to reunite Panida and her mother and to sponsor Panida’s continuing education. Panida is now home again.”

Today, I will be fasting and praying for children affected by injustice – war, slavery, oppression. For children like Panida, who could have been mine. For perhaps my daughter. I hope you will join me.

~ by jeanineguidry on July 13, 2008.