I grew up knowing the world needed saving. Once when I was nine or ten, I wrote a message of salvation, or so I thought, onto a piece of paper, rolled it up, tied it to a blue helium balloon, and let it go. I watched it float over the corn and alfalfa fields across the street and disappear, praying that it would reach some boy or girl who needed saving from the torments of hell.
I’m older now, and my ideas of salvation and hell are different, but there’s something of that little girl that I’ve always retained. There’s the belief that the world is broken and hurting, and the strong impulse to be part of its healing.
When I became a mother, the knowledge of the world’s pain became infinitely more intense. I’d hear a baby crying in the grocery store and would have to track the cry down to see for myself that the child was okay. If I witnessed a parent being harsh with their child, I’d feel sick to my stomach for days. When I learned about the genocide happening in Darfur, I didn’t sleep as well at night.
The first time I learned about sex-trafficking was when my son was five months old. We were over at our neighbors’ house for dinner. Our friend shared with us a fact that I was blissfully ignorant of: there were children who were captured and kept as slaves, slaves for sex. Children who were raped for adult pleasure.
Sometimes the body reacts to information faster than the mind can process it. I remember how the bile rose in my stomach. I broke into a sweat. My heart started pounding, and I couldn’t breathe well. I told my husband and our friends that I needed to run home for something. I ran through the front door; grief and anger overwhelmed me. I ran for the stairs. My body needed something to fall on, a toilet or a bed. The stairs caught me instead, and the sobs heaved out, along with my screams at God. Why?! Why?! Why?! No! No! No!
It would be several more years until I would learn about International Justice Mission, until I would feel that there was any hope for these children at all. I would learn that sex-trafficking existed not only in developing nations that lacked the legal infrastructure to protect the vulnerable, but even in the United States. I felt helpless and devastated.
It’s been fifteen years since I first learned about human-trafficking. I’ve spoken with students in high school, even some in middle school, who now know about this terrible phenomenon of human exploitation. Awareness has grown tremendously. They know about child labor, bonded labor, all forms of modern day slavery. The statistics are staggering, but I now have hope.
I also now believe every-day-people, like myself, can be a part of the healing. I believe that every small drop counts in making an ocean of peace and justice. Two drops become a trickle. A trickle becomes a stream that becomes a river and eventually builds into an ocean. I believe that the world is in desperate need of healing, and that each person is invited into discovering what sort of drops they can add to that healing process.
When I wrote Quite the Same, it was with the same wishful intention of sending a message of hope to children who were suffering around the world. The magical letter that travels the globe from one child to another is the letter that I would send to every child who is hurting to let them know that they are cared about, that they are not alone in their suffering. They are as connected to myself and to other children as the blue yarn is connected to the beige yarn in the old afghan that is wrapped around me as I write. This world and its inhabitants are intimately connected—more the same, than unalike. And that, I hope, is what young readers will learn.
The drop that I am now focusing on is to raise money for International Justice Mission by donating the proceeds of Quite the Same to this brave organization, while inviting young readers to a greater global consciousness and empathy. I couldn’t do this by myself. This intention has been amplified as others—friends, family, and strangers—have donated their resources to raising funds to publish the book, have bought copies to share with their nieces and nephews and libraries, and who have helped me to develop a website and to get my books into more hands. Human-trafficking won’t end by one person’s efforts. Injustice is big and greedy. But all of us, one drop at a time, one book at a time, one person at a time, can help heal the world.
