How can we cope with the suffering we hear about? When we learn of issues affecting women and girls in the hardest places, it’s hard to wrap our heads around what they have to go through. Even if we can understand, how do we process the pain without sinking into despair?
A team of SIS staff recently returned from Indonesia, where they trained local partners to run self-help groups among the women and girls of Sumatra. While their time offered breathtaking glimpses of what God is going to do through She Is Safe, they also came back with stories of the wreckage left by spiritual, moral, and economic poverty in the region. Their stories included some of the following issues:
- Alcoholism: A combination of devalued women and alcoholic men makes for homes filled with verbal and physical abuse
- Sexual Abuse: Girls are often married in their early teen years, but even before that, they suffer from incest and rape in their own homes
- Religious Persecution: Beliefs often mingle with race and economics to spark violence, and many people in the region live in fear of their neighbors
Our team was touched by these issues, but we engaged the women and girls in the region in a positive way to offer helpful training and support. Suffering can overwhelm us, but we connect with hope by participating in the solution.
As we engage, we bathe our thoughts and work in prayer. Prayer is how we release those things which would otherwise crush us. We witness pain, but it does not dwell in our hearts. We lift it up to God, who has the capacity to carry the weight of the world’s ills. And when we pray, He offers us a bit of his capacity to forgive, to hope, and to heal.
If you would like to join She Is Safe in caring for those who suffer around the world, please visit our Work page to see what we do. You can begin by praying for an initiative or nation that moves you. If you would like to engage by becoming an advocate, please contact us at info@SheIsSafe.org. We will provide you the tools you need to join us as we prevent, rescue, and restore women and girls from suffering abuse and exploitation in some of the world’s hardest places.