I Am Mother, Sister, Friend

There are moments when the knowledge of what goes on outside of the four walls of my home is enough to send me into despair. When I stop to let the facts sink in it is overwhelming. When you read this information there will be so many reactions, anger, hate, doubt, fear, and sadness just to name a few.
I try to ask myself, what if it happened to me, what if my six year old was taken as a sex slave for tourists. I looked at Maris and really let myself go to a place I have never gone, to try imagining her with a man 30 years her senior. To see her tiny body being taken advantage of, her spirit crushed, the innocence I fight so hard to protect tore open. It sent me to a despair that was beyond what I could imagine and yet I know that there are thousands who live this nightmare everyday.
There are countless numbers of people who fight their own battle daily. They are all around us if we choose to see them and put ourselves, if only for a moment, in their shoes. Imagine being forced to kill or be killed, to be desensitized by watching a sibling or friend brutally killed in front of your eyes. To be so desperately thirsty that you are forced to drink the very water that you know may kill you. To watch “the disease” take first your father and then your mother…to fear going to the clinic because you might also be infected. To be so proud of your loved one and the sacrifice they gave and yet at the same time to miss them with every breath you take.
I urge you to truly feel these emotions, question God, your beliefs, the world as you know it. Be angry, hate the injustice, grieve the innocence that is brutally stolen, fear what is in the heart of man and what he is capable of doing, sorrow with the mothers and fathers whose children have been abducted, despair with those children forced to carry a gun, scream, cry, yell, let your soul be torn apart, there is only one thing that I beg of you to not do. It is truly the worst thing that you could do… nothing. Do not turn away, listen, do you hear their voices cry out for help. This is a part of your story now, a moment in time that you choose to act or turn away, it is entirely up to you.

“Having heard of all of this, you may choose to look the other way… but you can never say again that you did not know.” --William Wilberforce, British Politician, Abolitionist.

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