I’m angry. Angry that while I type this blog post, women in Africa, India, the Congo, and all over the rest of the world and United States, are being kidnapped, raped, beaten, tortured, and humiliated to think they deserve to be where they are.
I’m angry I didn’t sleep well last night because all I could think about was storming into a brothel in Kenya, Rambo style, and taking out the men committing these grotesque, shaming, hideous crimes with a smirk on their faces. I’m angry I slept in my queen size bed, snuggled up with my four pillows, while little orphans in Phnom Penh are lucky to sleep on a piece of cardboard.
I’m angry Ashley Judd’s childhood was stolen from her and I just want to hug her and say, “I know. I’m sorry.”

When you can’t go back.

I just finished Ashley’s memoir, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, and I can’t go back. I can’t pretend I don’t know what’s happening in our world. I already knew some of it, as God has called my heart to those sexually abused and beyond. But this is different. Now I know more.
I can’t pretend life is sweet and great all the time, when I hear stories of  Ouk Srey Leak and Solange from Ashley’s many trips to Africa and beyond (as an advocate for Population Services International) and wonder if they’re still alive, or whether HIV/AIDS has taken their live because of the injustice done to them by savages.
I can’t pretend I don’t relate to Ashley when seeing the pain of others triggers your own pain so deeply in yourself until it finally boils to the top and you have deal with it. Oh.. I do.
But God uses our pain, if we allow Him to. He changes us. He mends our hearts. Then He says, “Go and be my hands and feet.” I am reminded in the midst of Ashley’s book why I started Esther’s House. God is using my own pain to bring healing to others. God, forgive me for my second thoughts.
Ashley walks you through many mission fields, as well as the travesties and adventures of her own childhood. As I read the pages, I didn’t see Ashley Judd, one of the greatest actresses of all time. I didn’t see the daughter and sister of one of my favorite Country Music duos, The Judds.
No… I saw a little girl, desperate for the love of her mother. Desperate to understand whether or not her father wanted her. A little girl seeking a sense of belonging somewhere, wishing she wasn’t invisible to the world. A sweet child using her imagination to remove her from the reality she was stuck in. A little girl whose innocence was stolen. Again, I am angry.
I saw me. As I read, I yearned to reach through the pages, hold her hand, and say, “You were made for more than this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Where there is brokenness, there is healing.

God comes to us in the midst of our brokenness. He holds our hands in the memories and pain. He rocks us gently as a sweet father does for his crying baby. If we let Him.
He says, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28.
He came to Ashley and gave her burdened and weary heart rest. He healed her. He used her pain to have compassion for a hurting world. Then she took that compassion and turned it into action, going into the trenches all over the world, refusing to allow her past to define her.

God redeems the time.

As I read about her first day of graduate school, her father by her side, packing lunches and making dinner, my heart was full. You’re never too old to long for your daddy to be by your side in the important steps.
What Satan stole from her childhood, God gave back in her 40’s. It reminds me of the last time my dad held me before he died. I was 24, but in that moment, just a little girl longing for the love of her father.
We may long for things of this world – fame, a husband, friendships, a house with a white picket fence – and those things aren’t bad. But whether we’re an actress or a single mother trying to make ends meet, at the end of the day, we long to be loved. That’s what really matters.
I want to pack my bags and head to Africa. I want to embrace Ouk Srey Leak. I want to hold her and tell her she is loved. In the midst of my anger at injustice and asking God why I’m not on a plane sneaking to Africa to kick butt and take names, He says, “Be still. You will embrace many Ouk Srey Leak’s. You already have and there are many more. I am using you where you are. Be still.”
Ashley writes in the Epilogue, “Do the next, good, right, honest thing. Keep it simple. I am responsible for the stitch, not the whole pattern. Turn the outcome over to God.”
[Tweet “We are responsible for the stitch, not the whole pattern.”]
Yes. May I work on my stitch and let God create the pattern.