Safe (part two)

(Find Safe Part 1 here!)

A pile of pastel coloured, small notes could be seen in the middle of the table. I searched for one that I had hand-painted with the word “seguro” written in bright orange letters amongst a mountain of colourful stripes. As I found the note I made, I grabbed the key necklace that I had just spent the last few minutes untying from my neck and used a piece of washi tape to attach it to the front. 

My team’s ministry today looked like writing notes for women who have gone through prostitution. The Dominican Republic is the third top country in the world for the amount of sex trafficking that happens, and Hope Ministry has been starting to work with women who have been apart of it. Eventually, bags of necessities and goodies that include our notes will be created to be handed out to the women they are helping. Our notes include a word or a verse or a short phrase that we prayed for and wrote onto some pretty paper in translated Spanish.  

When we began writing notes that morning, my first thought was my key necklace. If you don’t know the story of my key, it’s a necklace I bought at the beginning of my race from an organisation called The Giving Keys. If you don’t have a specific word you want on your necklace, they will pray for one of you. The word can speak meaning into your own life, but the point is to give it to someone you meet who also can relate to the word or needs a reminder of it in their life. It’s a really unique way to share God with someone. A lot of racers have ended their time on the World Race with the coolest stories about the time and person they gave their keys too. 

My necklace say’s “safe.” And I felt like someone who has walked through the in’s and out’s of sex trafficking could really need to hold tight to the truth that in our good Father’s hands, they are safe. 

And I realised in the moment of taping my key to a note that I had always imagined giving it away as some big, grand moment with some emotional story that I would tell everyone I know. But it wasn’t. I will never know who it goes to, what her reaction will be, or if the word will even speak significance into her life. And that’s okay. 

So instead of sharing some grand, emotional story like I pictured, I wanted to share my prayer for the women who receives it. I don’t know anything about her, but God knows her intimately. He’s the one that has the power to meet her heart exactly where she is at and that’s more than I could ever do.  

“Abba, thank you for being faithful in all the details I could never see. Thank you for using this key to remind me that my whole heart is forever safe in your hands. I am grateful that you care about our physical safety, but more than that you care about the safety of your children’s hearts. I will never know the women whose hands this necklace will end up in, but I will fight for her with my prayers. I am learning that sometimes that’s the most loving thing I could ever do. I pray that this key is a physical reminder of all the times that you have kept her safe throughout her life. I pray that she would look at the word engraved on the silver metal and be immediately reminded of a specific time in her life where she should not have been safe, yet you miraculously protected her. And from that moment on, she would carry the eyes to see all the moments you continue to pour your mercy of protection over her life. I pray that this key would speak of all the moments that you have been working for her good when you had no other reason for it but that you love her more than she could ever comprehend. I ask that this word would not only carries the significance of physical protection, but of heart protection. Let her know that the foot of the cross is the safest place to be broken. Show her that it was there that you were first broken for us. And that all her weakness, her uncleanliness, her impurities, her broken pieces can be given back to you as a sacrifice because that’s what you desire from us. You don’t want the dresses-up version of our hearts, you desire the real thing. Reveal to her that you could never look at her as different or not enough because you already know her inmost being and still have chased after her with unrelenting compassion. You died knowing already knowing that we missed the mark. Send a waterfall of overwhelming, undeniable forgiveness in all the unhealed parts of her life. Create in her new life; beauty that could only be woven with you hands. Thank you Father for not only all that you have done for us, but for all that you are. We love you. Amen.”