Thoughts from a restless mind…

I’ve been following the stories and media coverage about the raiding of the LDS compound in Texas and the apparent abuse.

The story goes that one of the underage girls was tired of being beaten to a pulp and repeatedly raped by her 50-year-old “husband” so she borrowed someone’s cell phone and turned the whole place in. The authorities have gone in and removed children and underage “wives” (we’re talking 14-year-olds here) and placed them in protective custody. All of the women old enough to string a sentence together are all saying the same thing – that everyone (meaning the men and the older brainwashed women) told them repeatedly that everyone in the outside world was immoral and away from God. That was what was used to keep them quiet and in one place so they could continue to be the human punching bags for these jacka**es who dare to call themselves “men.”

Now the thing that has really struck me in all this (besides the fact that men continue to enslave their fellow human beings for their own sick gratification whenever they get the opportunity ) is that these men CAME from that very immoral and “apart from God” broken world we live in. How else would they know how bad it was if they had never been part of it? And how can you be part of something so bad and NOT have it affect who you then become? Luckily, some girl finally realised that what was “out there” couldn’t possibly be any worse than what was “in here” and she took her chance at freedom.

I’ve been thinking about her and all the other young girls this past week who have been living inside the reality of that huge polygamist ”compound.” I wonder what it has been like for them to sleep through the night and not be woken up to be raped and beaten. I wonder what its been like to have men (police officers) treat them with quiet respect. I wonder what it’s been like for them to realise that everything they thought of as true in life has now been proven false – and I wonder what that’s doing to their sense of self, their sense of family, and their sense of God.

What if YOU woke up tomorrow and were confronted with the fact that everything you’d ever been taught about God and life in general had been wrong? Would you stick to the old ways just because you were fearful that this might all be a sick ploy of the devil to lure you into some false sense of security or would you be able to break free and realign your thoughts with what every new person was telling you?

I wondered how all these young girls would handle this transition into “real life.” I wondered if their little minds would be able to open up and take in all this new respect and freedom and not end up letting it crush them into further enslavement. I wonder how anyone could ever survive having their world turned upside down by the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.

But then I remembered that this literally happens to all of us at one point in time or another. We might not have all walked out of an evil den of inequity but we all walked away from something, somewhere, that told us life could never be anything more than pain and hurt and ugliness – and then each and every one of us walked head on into the blazing light of God’s love for us.

My prayers are with those girls and their children as they realign themselves with this “immoral and Godforsaken world.” I pray that they find the REAL truth and not some false version waiting to set them up again. I pray that they step outside their comfort zones and look for the peace and truth that is found in The Word – the REAL Word – and that they come to know the peace that passes all understanding.

And I pray that all of us who call ourselves God’s children remember that faith should NEVER be blind. You must think about it, pray about it, read about it, grow into it, stumble from it, advance into it and grow larger because of it. Faith is a verb – not a noun – and it calls for us to be active in it or else risk being enslaved by the one who cannot wait to feed us a bed of lies. No matter what you believe the truth of your faith to be TODAY one must always remember that the light of God could turn that on its heels tomorrow and we must be ready to take that step if that’s the step God calls for us to make.