Oppression

Imagine growing up in a home where you lost your dad at a young age.  Your mom remarries and chooses her new husband over you, her only child at the time.  You slowly feel more and more edged out as she has other children who are more well-loved.  And then it starts... around age 9... your step dad making advances and eventually it leads to more than that.  No one knows and you don't trust anyone enough to tell them.  Years later you muster the courage to tell you mom and she doesn't believe you or do anything to stop it.

What do you do?  What are your choices?  There is no way out.

You go to church, but it is just rules after rules... you decided to accept the God they speak about, but eventually being in the same church building with your mom and step-dad week after week knowing what goes on at home... its just too much.  So you leave.

And you do everything you can to try to forget.

And then there was a boy and he offered you a way out... a new life.  So you took it.  Its not the dream you thought, or maybe you really didn't dream at all, or think it through.  Maybe you took the only out you thought you may ever get.  But now you're not sure its better... life is like a prison because he is jealous and possessive and doesn't trust you to even go for a walk through the neighborhood.  And sometimes there is food, and sometimes there isn't.

And now there is going to be a baby.  Do you even know how to be a good mom?  And do you stay where you are?  If you leave where do you go?

In the back of your mind you also know that you know God, you met Him that time long ago in that legalistic church.  You feel far away from Him, but you know He is loving and you don't feel like he is judging you for your life and decisions.  But how to know more about Him when you can't leave the house to even go to church?

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I have said it before and I will say it again.  I know there are people in the States who feel oppressed, but it is not anything that I had experience with before moving here.  And as I meet people and hear their stories it makes me so desperate to fight for them.  I want them to know that there are options, that they don't have to live in fear and feeling like prisoners in their own homes.  I want them to know Jesus and be able to freely learn about and worship Him.  I want them to know that He is loving and full of forgiveness and grace.

But there are so many obstacles.  I want to tell them that they are options, but it is not always true.  What are their choices?  Where would they go?  Who would help them?  There are no food stamps or homeless shelters... if you don't have money, you just don't eat.  Is being a hungry pregnant woman living on the street worth leaving the man who mistreats you?

A girl I met last week shared her story with me.  She doesn't live with us at PDE and I may never have a chance to love on her again, her life is a mess.  But for a moment I got to sit with her and tell her that her baby is precious and a gift that God has given her.  That Jesus loves her and doesn't judge her for the things that she has done.  That she should fight for the freedom to go to church and know more of the Lord.

PDE gives us a chance to reach girls that have stories like these.  But not all of them.  There are so many that cannot come for one reason or another.  There are those that don't even feel the freedom to make the choice to leave the oppression they are living under to come.  There are those that don't even know what living in a healthy environment would even look like because they have never done it.

But some do come.  They come hurt and broken, rebellious and oh so difficult.  But we want them to have hope!

Do you see why this ministry is important?  I'll be honest... sometimes I'm overwhelmed and I feel like its too much, its too hard.  They have so many issues before they even come.  (see why a psychologist is so important?)

I listened to a sermon this morning that spoke directly to the discouragement that it is so easy to feel in the light of such an overwhelming Spiritual battle.  And I was so encouraged to focus on God's faithfulness.  HE has put this ministry in place.  HE has enabled us to work here.  And HE has already shown us fruit from what He wants to accomplish.  So I look at that faithfulness in the past and remember His promise that He never changes and I trust that He is so much bigger than physical and Spiritual oppression.  His is the victory!