now that i have seen...

Well hello everyone :) It's been a month since our team's last post and I've had so much on my heart today...I just needed to write something. It's 1:30 am and I've only just put away my homework (which I've decided to finish in the morning..probably not the smartest idea but oh well) because I haven't been able to concentrate all night. I've been overwhelmed with a sense of love for the girls we met in Cambodia. One scene continues to play over and over in my head. I remember sitting on the floor after one Friday's church service with two of the girls holding my hand and desperately trying to say something to me. Finally we got someone to translate and I learned that they wanted to know that we wouldn't forget them when we went back to America.

How could I forget them? How could any of us forget those beautiful, precious girls? It's possibly been the longest 2 months since I came home from Cambodia. Every single day has been filled with thoughts of the girls and the center and the country. Part of me wishes so badly that I was still ignorant to what goes on in the world. Now that I know it's impossible for me not to care. Like Brooke Fraser sings in her song, Albertine, "Now that I have seen, I am responsible." I feel so responsible and yet so helpless. I can tell people what I've experienced all I want, but it seems like they'll never understand the urgency of human trafficking until they see it first-hand. I certainly didn't understand.

Today I looked through the Daughters website (recently updated, by the way). It was almost surreal seeing pictures and recognizing girls. Before I went the girls in the pictures were faces to a story that I'd made up in my mind. A depressing, yet successful story - rags to riches I guess. Now the girls in those pictures are girls that I've grown to love. Girls with stories that I still don't fully know. Girls that laugh and cry and bake cakes or sew aprons. Girls that give the best hugs and the most encouraging smiles and love to take pictures. But those girls are only a few out of hundreds of thousands. My heart breaks for every one of them. Sometimes it's so hard to care so much though - I almost wish I was numb to it all instead. But I try to remember that God's heart breaks so much more than my small, human, selfish heart ever could, but He's allowing me to feel a little bit of how He hurts for them. It reminds me of the importance and the urgency of the situation our world is in right now.

So now that I've seen and I understand a little more, I am responsible to do what I can to bring change. Whether that be through telling others or sponsoring a girl through Daughters or going back to Cambodia, I have a God-given responsibility that I will do my best to fulfill.