Seven years ago, God was knitting together our first child in our womb. Feeling we’d have a girl, Matt and I named the growing baby “Lucy.”
In early May, during my second trimester, I kissed my husband good-bye and boarded a plan for Europe to research for my book about God’s work in red-light districts.
On a drizzly Monday night in Amsterdam’s historic red light district, I walk cobblestone streets past brothel windows displaying women posing in skimpy lingerie. I’m trailing a Dutch woman who leads weekly visits to these women from dozens of countries.
A young girl opens the first glass door we knock on. Her freckled face and brown eyes bear no make-up, and she’s wearing a modest one-piece white swimsuit. She looks like she could be my neighbor. We introduce ourselves and ask where she’s from. “Hungary.” She says her name is Lucy.
I feel my stomach turn. I hear God whisper, “She could be your daughter.” Suddenly, this research stops being about “those poor women overseas.”
When Lucy was a little girl, I’m sure she never dreamed of selling her body to strange men in a foreign city, far from home. In a tough economy, maybe she was deceived by an ad to waitress or nanny abroad, then forced to submit to a violent pimp. Or, maybe Lucy was desperate to cover medical bills for a mother battling cancer and supported siblings back home.
Millions of women and girls like Lucy, and even boys and men, are sexually exploited around the world every day in brothels, strip clubs, massage parlors, karaoke bars, dark alleys and false storefronts. Many give up hope for a life of dignity. But like the son I eventually gave birth to, they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13).
To learn more about the problem of human trafficking, join us at Church of the Resurrection from 1:00-2:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 1st. You’ll hear what you need to know about human trafficking and how you can make a difference. A free lunch will be served in the St. Gregory Room. Please bring a small gift bag item for New Name’s local outreach: a nice chocolate bar, small lotion, Caribou or Starbucks gift card ($5 or $10), lip gloss, or trendy jewelry item. Items are used in New Name’s gift bags for outreach to locally exploited women.
adapted from Dawn Jewell’s article, ‘Red Light’ in ‘Tending the Soul: 90 days of spiritual nourishment’, edited by Anita Lustrea, Melinda Schmidt & Lori Neff, Moody Publishers, 2011