Violet Voices

Happy Birthday…

…To ME!

I am 32 years old today, and determined to never feel like I need to hide my age. I’m glad to be another year older. I’ve got some hard-earned life experience that I value, and lots more to be had. And I’m in better shape than I was last year, and I have my own career and business. My children are doing well, and I’m crazy-in-love with my husband (and we’ll be celebrating our 10th anniversary in December, so that’s saying something). Life is GOOD!

I am meeting with my pastor this afternoon to discuss my determination to do something to help the prostitutes in our city get out of “the business.” It’s a tragedy that in a smallish city like ours, there’s a solid sex-trade industry. Even more tragic is that there is currently only ONE program in town that focuses on reaching out to the prostitutes to help them.

It’s not enough. Not when I see them around my neighborhood, looking pale and tired. Not when one comes to my door, just to ask if she can stand in our sprinkler and cool off. Her name was Jeanette. She’s a drug addict and has three small children. She wants to get her life back together and work with her hands, in carpentry maybe. She loves my roses in our front yard.

I can’t get her out of my mind. Who is going to help Jeanette and my other sisters who are working the street? This is what I have to tell our pastor today. WE have to do something! I’ve lived in this neighborhood for four years now, and these women tug at my heart constantly. It makes me angry that most people in our city have the attitude of “as long as they aren’t in MY neighborhood, I don’t care.”

Jeanette and the other women out there are real women. They have children and they have life hopes and dreams. They’re broken, suffering people who need help to get out of this trap that they or other people have gotten them into.

Did you know that the average age for entry into prostitution is FOURTEEN?

They usually run away from an abusive home life and end up on the streets. Most of them are drug addicts, either because someone deliberately got them hooked or because it’s the only thing that helps make their existence endurable. Now they’re trapped–the street work supports their habit, but offers them no way out of either one.

Anyway, I’m going to tell my pastor that what I want for my birthday today is for our church to start researching and looking into how to help these women (and some men as well).

I’ll let you know what he says.

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Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: Women's Voices .  Email This Post