The Courage to Know

I didn't want to know. I intentionally chose not to know. I changed the channel, turned the page and clicked passed anything that had the word. I knew enough to know that I didn't want to know, couldn't bear to know.

ISIS.

For months I've been living in a world of loss. Maybe for years. My dad died. My dad. It's been 25 weeks and it's just now sinking in that there is no remedy for this loss. This loss is oh so permanent. This loss is so huge none of us could bear it alone so we decided to move back to our hometown but that decision created more loss. Our home, our community, our friends, our church, our ministry. Lost. There has been gain and comfort and love but its the loss that stings and prickles around the edge of every moment just now and because of that I just couldn't bear to know.

Until tonight. Tonight I had the courage to know. The courage to click the link and read.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to share about my life journey and my passion to fight human trafficking at a church just outside town. I spoke for a total of nearly two hours about our responsibility to educate ourselves, to pray and to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Our responsibility to be real followers of Jesus and bring freedom and hope into the darkest places of this world. I'm grateful for that opportunity but my own words challenged and convicted me. I knew I needed to know. But I wanted to know gently. I wanted to be told with care and compassion. I wanted the real story, not the sensationalized media spots. That's how I wanted to know and that's what I got from Ann Voskamp.

If you've not read Ann's writing you should. She writes of things that touch the soul and lift the spirit. She speaks words of comfort as if God is dictating His heart to her as she writes - probably because He is. She writes with beauty and sincerity and hope. She is gentleness and affection. She is light and depth. And most importantly, she is an artful truth teller. And this morning she was telling the truth about That Thing I needed to know.

I'm not going to paraphrase or rewrite her story. Why would I when she has done it so well? I am going to encourage you to be courageous enough to know, to be brave enough to click the link and read for yourself the truth.

Ann went to Iraq. She sat with women and children and heard their stories. And then she came home and told them to us. She is a deliverer of a sacred message - be bold enough to hear and to know.

This is the link to one of her entries. There are more entries about this truth that I've not read yet. I will. I will read every word of this message Ann is brave enough, strong enough to carry. I will know but for now I will sit with this one message. For now I will think of the nine year old girls I know, of my thirteen year old daughter sleeping safe and peacefully just upstairs now and I will think of the girls - the hundreds, the thousands … the one - who know too much, who feel too much. I will think of them and pray.

I will pray as I never have before because now I know.

This could be us: Defy evil with love. Defy trafficking by trafficking hope.
~Ann Voskamp