When [Not] Helping Hurts

A year ago I remember writing about the colors covering up the dirtiness of this bustling city in the heart of this nation that I love. I remember being captivated by them, in fact. I remember the beauty of the women and the promises of God to bring redemption to these people being so near to my heart, an undeniable really.

This time though, I am met with a darkness behind the colors and I feel it lingering tonight, feasting away at the light inside of me.

It’s obvious in the men that gawk and smirk my way, as if a quiet message of my belonging to them or something. Not as evident perhaps, but I see it in the women scampering along the street edges with their eyes down, quiet and out of the way. I recognize it in the little boys on either side of our taxi uttering pleas that transcend language with fingers outstretched.

Sometimes, it’s too much and sometimes I need to remember I cannot save the world—nor is it my job.

We took a walk just several blocks out from our hotel last night. It felt safe and these legs were begging to move, these eyes hungry to see. There are so many people on just this little street in this one small area of this one huge city in this growing nation. We’d made it several blocks before I saw them ahead.

These mammas with babies on their hips. Earlier, they’d stood beside our taxi uttering desperate pleas, fingers pinched together and hands outstretched. Sometimes language is irrelevant. Poverty speaks a language of it’s own, and I am learning I would often prefer to read it through a lens of my own good rather then that of another. So I sat there in the back of that car, fearful even to gaze their direction knowing my own brokenness would overwhelm.

Sometimes helping hurts, and at one point I gazed up and my small understanding of how much I could hurt the impoverished here in India by giving all flew out the cracked window, swallowed up in that humid air humming to the tune of horns. I started digging around in my purse for those little coins like my life depended on it. The taxi thumped to life again as it maneuvered down the road, taking both of us and our American money with it.

Her face continued to haunt me though, well into my nap and afterwards. I wrestled with the helpfulness and hurtfulness for giving or not giving, for both her and myself. 

And now here we are walking from our hotel, down this strip besides the three lanes of traffic expanding into five. My eyes lock with hers this time, a few blocks down, no matter how hard I try to point them elsewhere. This time there is no car door between us and suddenly that feeling of safety is gone. She still holds that little baby. Up close, her eyes are sunken in and hollow inside. She has a little girl, who reaches for my skirt as I quicken my stride back towards the hotel. I didn’t know what else to do really.

Settled safely onto the hotel steps a few minutes later beside Syd, all I knew in my head faded as India’s darkness overwhelmed. I remembered classes and seminars and sermons on this stuff. When Helping Hurts was buried in a bag a few stories up in our room and its presence made me angry.

What would a mom so desperate and broken do if her situation demanded more? To what extent would she go? Selling her daughter, for a  better life with husband or job, perhaps? Her story is echoing through my research pages and it's all too common.

Giving money might feed the issues underlying, so I remember the candy upstairs for the kids we’re going to teach, and I think we should go get some and bring it back to this little one, sent out to beg. Somehow I picture the treat a re-claiming of her childlike innocence and I for that I want to fight. I say it aloud and realize how incomplete my supposed solution sounds. My teammate ever so gently reminds me of reasons we just shouldn’t go back there and I nod my head in agreement, though my heart is screaming out to do something, anything. 

It’s in this moment I don’t care whether my helping hurts them; I just need to relieve the war waging inside of myself. We sit beside one another and I feel humidity drip down my back. I watch buses and cars and men pour in and out of them. I remember God is here and He’s working and I wish we could just catch a glimpse of it for ourselves.

It’s barely 5am and I sit crouched on this bathroom floor to wrestle with Jesus, I just know it possible, likely even, that that precious little girl, those big brown eyes, she could be sold into sexual slavery and her innocence robbed. In time those precious brown eyes suddenly appear sunken in like her mothers. I want to stop it but I can't. 

Syd reminds me of Jesus sending out the disciples in Luke 10. He tells them to greet no one on the road, to remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide, but to not go out from house to house. Not long ago, a wise woman walked me through this passage and I see God was already preparing my heart to trust in His words and to rely on them here in India. 

He sent them out two by two and it’s no coincidence Syd and I have been sent together into this overwhelming harvest.

As we continue our journey to this house where God has called us to stay, please pray for continual discernment in how to help (or not help) in ways that wont hurt these people. Pray for my heart as it is leaning a bit far into the darkness of human sex-trafficking here in India, and losing sight of the glory of  how Christ is being magnified. 

As we continue to hear creation groaning and yearning to be set free from the bondage of corruption [Rom 8:18-25], pray that we would seek and trust in Christ’s huge plan of deliverance and promise.

We are thankful to be reminded of the way God hears the desires of the afflicted and strengthens their hearts; how He does justice for the fatherless and oppressed so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. [Ps. 10:17-18] This really gives us perspective that God is ruler over all and He is sovereign. We trust Him to teach us to to do good, seek justice, and plead for the widows cause, but ultimately yielding to His holy spirit at work in and around us. Not of our own strength or merit that we may boast, but completely dependent upon Christ!

In His Grace,
Courtney 

In Which 82 Girls are Trafficked Daily & My Thesis [all while in India]

We were walking down the narrow dirt road, in the dust of the rest of the group up ahead. This faithful servant and I were taking our time as her English grew in confidence and the words shared were teaching me. I had been watching around me the whole week at this point, looking for any signs of women enslaved. With a list of the red flags continually strumming deep within, I knew this overpopulated, underprivileged, idol-worshipping area would support the statistics like no other.

I asked her point blank eventually, if she'd ever heard of human sex-trafficking. She shook her head and smiled a bit, anxious for a new topic. I  I eased up and changed the conversation and she relaxed. Later in the night, I was finally allowed to enter beyond the curtain that usually separated us from the fabulous scents that lingered for miles.

No, no sister, you don't need to stay back here, she prompted. It is too hot for you! You are our guest!  I laughed and begged and pleaded for the chance to learn something. She couldn't very well turn down a teaching opportunity, as I know it is her heart. It worked, of course. For the next several hours these women had me plastered to a chair with a large fan encircling me. I was limited to that spot, but I'd made it beyond the veil, that little box that consumes hours of their day cutting and frying and rinsing, all to serve us.

One asked me about my degree and my future. I prayed and felt the Spirit prompting as I shared. I explained in more detail this concept of human sex-trafficking, the gravity of the issue, and the girls in need of help, a future I felt called to pursue at the time. I will never forget the sweat dropping down my cheeks or the butterflies swarming inside. This same woman, the one I'd made uncomfortable earlier in the day, she paused at her cutting board and turned to face me.

You know sister, she hesitated, there are women, many girls and women, they grow up in these villages. And one day, well, they're just gone. We don't really know where they end up, but we don't see them anymore. I think this is what you are talking about?

I never knew it was possible to feel chill bumps flood my entire body at 110 degrees Fahrenheit until that moment. I was thankful though, as the truth is painful but freeing in long-term.

In 2005, India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) estimated that 44,000 children go missing in the country every year. Of these,11,000 are never traced. A 1998 report noted that children constituted more than 40% of those trafficked into sexual exploitation in the country.

The overwhelming majority of girls pushed into exploitative sex work come from rural pockets of India hit by extreme poverty. Social structures and deep-rooted gender bias mean they are the poorest, most disadvantaged people even within their own communities. The traffickers prey on vulnerable young girls from impoverished households and pushing them into sex work and slavery across the country. Promises of marriage, employment and even food are used to lure girls from their homes, only for them to find themselves forced into the sex trade.

And that was when the ugly reality of twenty-seven million being bought and sold in our world today swept down and shook my own little world. I tend to react in these moments, with big dreams and little follow through. This time, I chose silence as I knew the paralyzing feelings of helplessness as one single Western white girl thinking she could change the world would prove far more detrimental then life-giving in the end.

I processed a lot this past year, and have sought Jesus more. He has redeemed much of my own brokenness and in the process lessened the desire to fully immerse myself once again into the darkness of the world of human sex-trafficking and many agree there is wisdom here. He is however, sending me back to India for this month and my love for her beautiful people has only grown.

I still see God's heart to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound and feel that I have a responsibility in that as well. Part of that in the flesh is addressing the issue of these women disappearing from these villages. We intend to do so in a manner that might not yield as instantaneous results as we'd all like, but lasting ones. We hope to equip LifeChange International with some resources and education in the area as well, further promoting long-lasting change. God has opened up an incredible opportunity for me to complete my college degree through twelve weeks worth of research, writing and application through a thesis I have begun working on.

A thesis that I already see the hand of God completely penning out before my eyes. Though this wasn't exactly [at all] my plan, I will be working on my thesis while in India. As it turns out, the timing of it all is quite perfect. I will be investigating the cultural causation and preventative application of human sex-trafficking in the rural villages of Orissa. I am thankful for this trip coming so soon, to see God use this silly college degree [which I really haven't wanted to complete] to impact lives, lives of women and children with real faces and names. If this was His purpose in these four years, then I say it was worth it and may His name be lifted high.

Up until departure, I continue to research the causation of these women's increased vulnerability. The lasting results will most deepen by pinpointing the root short-comings and then addressing them. This could flesh out in increased education and employment opportunities for women, a long-term hope. I also tend to ask lots of questions and just examine the way these tribals' specific culture plays into the vulnerabilities of their own women and children.

I also believe there should be a very practical portion offered during our short time there, which is where the preventative and awareness seminars come in. As God allows and leads, we hope to offer handouts and teaching on the red flags to look out for which could indicate a potential trafficker and emphasizing the importance of leaning into the community.

With 82 NEW girls being trafficked in India every single day, please continue to pray for God to provide supernatural resources in these weeks before leaving and wisdom in the unique and complex dichotomy of this culture. Pray for these men, women, children to hear and respond favorably, and for His glory to be manifested among them because seminars and causation better understood aside, only Christ can offer lasting hope and eternal security.

If you know of any awesome organizations already on the ground fighting for these enslaved men, women, and children let us know as the more resources, the more efficient we can be.

In His Grace,
Courtney

And a Quick Support Update:

We are nearing the two week out mark and my support is about $400 away from the full amount! Praise God. It has been one of the most humbling few weeks of my life to watch the body around me give so generously, both financially and prayerfully. Syd is still needing a good amount of support, so any of you who are waiting until the end to give, please do so as she will also be so blessed by your gift.