Be moved.
/
Forgotten Girls: Stories of Hope and Courage
is worth reading and remembering, but this post is more than just a book review.
In other words, if you're one of my friends who skips my reviews (I know some of you do. and I'm okay with that and love you all whether you love book or not), this one is only review-ish. There's much more to be had, including random Shannon-esque musings, a semi-related movie clip, and talk of a sweet Guatemalan girl named Joselin.
So read on, book lovers and others! Moving on...
As I think about this book right now, I also think about the blog posts by my friends Lindsey and Ann and Amanda and Shaun on their recent Compassion trip to Guatemala. (Okay, okay, it may be a stretch to call them friends. I have exchanged a few emails with Lindsey, and we're Facebook buds, but I just like to read Ann's and Amanda's and Shaun's blogs and pretend we're friends. Don't shatter my illusion by pointing out that they don't know who I am. Thanks.) The pictures and stories were hard to consider. I wanted to close the Firefox window and move on to lighter fare from the interwebz. I wanted to walk away from their blog until the Compassion stuff was over and I could get back to their typical posts, ones that do challenge me but that don't regularly make me consider harsh realities. (Well, except for Shaun, because it's his job to post Compassion stuff regularly.)
I'm glad I didn't walk away from or ignore their posts. And I'm glad I didn't put down this book without letting it affect me.
I loved the stories in this book. And hated the realities that they showed me. I know women around the world face the harshness of starvation, displacement, illiteracy, sexual exploitation, and abuse to a greater degree than men do. Knowing that and reading stories of it are two different things. Knowledge doesn't always move me much; that knowledge with skin on in a story does.
At the end of each section, authors Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett include a list of action steps that could make a difference. Some are simple, including specific prayer needs and ideas for blog posts. Some are more elaborate. It's nice to have difference-making ideas after reading about awful circumstances.
One moving passage:
I didn't mean for this to be such a heavy post, but I'm not apologizing for it. This is reality. This is humanity, women and children created lovingly in God's image just as you and me and our children were. These are the least of these, who Christ compares to Himself in Matthew 25.
When you're faced with these realities, does it change you? Or do you, in the words of Joaquin Phoenix in the clip above, "say, 'Oh, my God, that's horrible.' And then they'll go on eating their dinners" or go on doing whatever it is you do? (As Lindsey wrote on her blog following the Compassion trip to Guatemala, do you let experiences that should be lifechanging truly change you?)
I'm not saying you shouldn't eat your dinner. And I'm not saying you need to open your wallet or take off to another country. Being moved by these realities could be something as simple, yet also as powerful, as being moved to prayer. That's all I'm saying.
(By the way, we're now sponsoring a little girl from Guatemala through Compassion. I had recognized atrocities and then gone back to my dinner too many times, and I couldn't do that again as I considered the needs. A seven-year-old girl bearing the same name as our daughter - albeit spelled Joselin - is benefiting from our $38 per month for her basic needs, like education, health care, and opportunities to know Christ and grow in faith. While there are a variety of child sponsorship organizations, we chose Compassion because they don't ignore the needs created by poverty, like hunger and illiteracy and violence, but they also don't ignore the need for the Gospel as they work to meet those other needs.)
Many thanks to InterVarsity Press for providing this book for my review. They didn't ask for a positive review, just an honest one.
is worth reading and remembering, but this post is more than just a book review.In other words, if you're one of my friends who skips my reviews (I know some of you do. and I'm okay with that and love you all whether you love book or not), this one is only review-ish. There's much more to be had, including random Shannon-esque musings, a semi-related movie clip, and talk of a sweet Guatemalan girl named Joselin.
So read on, book lovers and others! Moving on...
As I think about this book right now, I also think about the blog posts by my friends Lindsey and Ann and Amanda and Shaun on their recent Compassion trip to Guatemala. (Okay, okay, it may be a stretch to call them friends. I have exchanged a few emails with Lindsey, and we're Facebook buds, but I just like to read Ann's and Amanda's and Shaun's blogs and pretend we're friends. Don't shatter my illusion by pointing out that they don't know who I am. Thanks.) The pictures and stories were hard to consider. I wanted to close the Firefox window and move on to lighter fare from the interwebz. I wanted to walk away from their blog until the Compassion stuff was over and I could get back to their typical posts, ones that do challenge me but that don't regularly make me consider harsh realities. (Well, except for Shaun, because it's his job to post Compassion stuff regularly.)
I loved the stories in this book. And hated the realities that they showed me. I know women around the world face the harshness of starvation, displacement, illiteracy, sexual exploitation, and abuse to a greater degree than men do. Knowing that and reading stories of it are two different things. Knowledge doesn't always move me much; that knowledge with skin on in a story does.
At the end of each section, authors Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett include a list of action steps that could make a difference. Some are simple, including specific prayer needs and ideas for blog posts. Some are more elaborate. It's nice to have difference-making ideas after reading about awful circumstances.
One moving passage:
"Do our brothers and sister in the West know what's happening to us? Do they know we are being forced from our villages? That we are being raped and killed?"
Yes, we say, they know. The plight of the Sudanese is reported in newspapers and shown on television, and it saddens and horrifies us.
"If everyone knows," they say, "where are God's people who have freedom? Why don't they help us?"
That's why Sudan is the hardest place. Yet we go anyway, because the more God's people know, the more they care.That made me think of a line from one of my favorite movies, Hotel Rwanda, about what the reaction will be of Westerners to footage of African genocide:
I didn't mean for this to be such a heavy post, but I'm not apologizing for it. This is reality. This is humanity, women and children created lovingly in God's image just as you and me and our children were. These are the least of these, who Christ compares to Himself in Matthew 25.
When you're faced with these realities, does it change you? Or do you, in the words of Joaquin Phoenix in the clip above, "say, 'Oh, my God, that's horrible.' And then they'll go on eating their dinners" or go on doing whatever it is you do? (As Lindsey wrote on her blog following the Compassion trip to Guatemala, do you let experiences that should be lifechanging truly change you?)
I'm not saying you shouldn't eat your dinner. And I'm not saying you need to open your wallet or take off to another country. Being moved by these realities could be something as simple, yet also as powerful, as being moved to prayer. That's all I'm saying.
(By the way, we're now sponsoring a little girl from Guatemala through Compassion. I had recognized atrocities and then gone back to my dinner too many times, and I couldn't do that again as I considered the needs. A seven-year-old girl bearing the same name as our daughter - albeit spelled Joselin - is benefiting from our $38 per month for her basic needs, like education, health care, and opportunities to know Christ and grow in faith. While there are a variety of child sponsorship organizations, we chose Compassion because they don't ignore the needs created by poverty, like hunger and illiteracy and violence, but they also don't ignore the need for the Gospel as they work to meet those other needs.)
Many thanks to InterVarsity Press for providing this book for my review. They didn't ask for a positive review, just an honest one.