Rose-Colored Glasses

I passed by a family I saw sleeping on the road my first night today. The little baby boy was running around naked. When he saw me he screamed and ran up to me with his arms held out. It broke my heart. I wanted to pick him up and wash him and clothe him. I was already passing by when he saw me and ran to me. He grabbed my skirt and clung to my leg. I smiled down at him but I could not take him with me.

We go to the bars every day and spend time with the girls. They squeal in excitement when they see us coming and we play several games of pool with them. Sometimes we bring them bread from the market. We buy them pineapple or orange drinks too. We have a great time but foremost in our thoughts are the masks they wear and the lives they are being forced to live.

Sometimes at night we go to the GoGo bars and walk around Nano Plaza. Hundreds of girls are there for sale and they walk around with numbers on. At some of the places the girls walk around upstairs without clothes on. All the men who buy them can see are the numbers on their boots from down below. They buy them without ever seeing their faces.

We talk to the girls at the bars and they are animated and sweet. Then when they have to get up and dance on the stage naked or mostly naked with bright neon lights and mirrors filling the entire room, with all the men saying and doing various things, their faces turn into masks.

Vacant eyes stare out from the faces that pray they will please Buddha enough in this life to have a better spot next go around. We see Buddha's everywhere with food, drinks and incense surrounding them. They girls pray to be purified constantly and for forgiveness for the lives they are living. It is truly so tragic.

Several of the girls have responded to our invitations to check out beginnings and one even came home with us. Beginnings offers them a different chance at life away from the bars. They finish school and are taught trades. They are given allowances to send home to their families. It's not much, but some of them don't make much. They are basically indentured servants to the bars and all their pay goes to the bars. They have a quota of customers they must meet every month and most of the money made from that goes to their demanding families.

Often, even if they would make more money at Beginnings the families will not allow them to leave the bars. They still obey their parents even when they are 43-years-old and still prostituting at a bar half-way across the country.

Two girls we met (one was 36, but we refer to all of them as girls) have become Christians, but they cannot leave the bars because their families told them Beginnings might traffic them and they were not allowed to leave the safety or lifestyle the bar has provided them. Their families are hoping they will find foreign husbands who will provide for the families. When a Thai woman marries a man, he marries her entire family and he become his responsibility to provide for them. The girls asked us to pray for them and we did. They asked that we pray for their families-- their parents health and for their brothers and sisters. They never mentioned any specific need they had or asked us to pray for themselves at all-just for others.

Now I understand why the Lady of Shallot in Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem died after she turned from the rose colored mirror through which she saw the perfect and beautiful world. She had known her whole life that if she were to stop seeing and weaving the beautiful images she saw of the world through her rose-glassed mirror that an unknown curse would come upon her. So she ignored the true world and kept weaving in her happy oblivion. Then one day Sir Lancelot came riding by on his beautiful noble steed with his strong armor, flashy shield, shiny helmet, coal black hair and dashing smile. She couldn't stop herself. She ran to the window and looked at the world as it truly is for the first time because she had to truly see him, and not through a mirror. It was beautiful. She saw the water lily bloom and she saw the love of her life. But the magical mirror cracked side to side and her loom broke in two. "The curse has come upon me" she cried. She could never go back to the other world she had known because she realized it never truly existed and of course her mirror had cracked! She left the tower for the first time in her life and gazed down towards Camelot in a strange, somber and quiet trance. She stepped into a boat and floated down the river towards Camelot. Floating down the river and singing in her song, she died.

Now, I'm not going to float down any rivers in a boat as the mythical Lady of Shallot, nor do I have any morbid dates with my Eternal Destination at this particular moment in time that I am aware of. But I love the poem in which the Lady of Shallot lives and the truth behind it, even though it has a most tragic ending. Unlike the Lady of Shallot, however, my story and the story of all those who know our Lord ends differently. It is a far cry from tragedy.

But so many of us live as she did, with our rose-colored glasses, not seeing the world as it is but as we want it to be. We do not see the destitute or the child prostitute on our doorstep because it would just ruin the rose-world in which we live. As I'm with the girls and see the things going on I think of how in a month I will leave them and return to my lovely parents and friends and to my beautiful home and most blessed life. They will still be here. Years from now, I will stop and wonder if they made it out or not.

I think this verse over and over again: Psalms 46:10-11
Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations,I will be exalted in the earth.The LORD of hosts is with us.The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Truly we are blessed people. We have so much opportunity at our fingertips and when we simply open our eyes to the truths of the world their is so much good we can do. But we cannot help those around us and right before our eyes if we do not look to see them. When we do see them, our world will be forever altered. It does not have to be a death or a horrible change. We cling to the promises that God has given us and do the best we can to love and obey Him and lead others to the freedom and hope we have found in Him alone.

James 1:26-27If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.