I would love to be able to tell you during my teenage years, I only listened to Christian music. Not so much!!! I loved classic rock and roll plus I loved the new stuff that was coming out from inspiring artists. One of my favorite artists was Bryan Adams. Do you remember him? One of my favorite songs he wrote was “Cuts like a knife….” Of course it was one of those songs where somebody was betrayed by their significant other and they were crying out in pain from the hurt.

Over the past few months, there has been many times in my life where I felt like I was “cut like a knife” because of the pain and raw emotions that I was feeling. Emotions so raw they brought me to my knees in pain and crying out to God for help. Emotions so deep that at times I held up a white flag and told God “I give up! I’m done! You have the wrong girl working for you!”

This morning, I had one of those “light bulb” moments with God where He spoke so clear that I finally understood what He was showing me. But let me go back a few months.

A few months back, I began to pray and ask God for my heart to weep and to break like His. We were seeing so much heartache at the Truth for Women Center and seeing the devastation in women’s lives that I just didn’t want to become numb to it. I didn’t want my heart to grow numb to what I was seeing. I want to have a heart after God and a heart like His. This was my plea and cry to Him.

Without getting into all the details, one by one, things started to happen. One by one accusation was made against me, against the ministry and against our team. One by one our staff and leaders were getting hit with threats of cancer, lupus, depression, optical migraines and more. One by one the “wounds from a friend…..”began to hit me and the people I love.

I watched my precious staff, leaders and myself take hit after hit after hit. All we could do was cry out to God and ask Him to help us stay the course that He planned for us. Continue to do the work that He called us to do and give women the Word to set them free.

One night, I had a dream. Very rarely do I have dreams that I know that I know they are from God. This dream was so powerful and so real! I dreamed that I was driving in my van and along came this huge tornado that picked up and destroyed everything in its path. I got out of the van and the tornado picked me up into the eye of the storm. I tossed and turned but was never hurt. I watched it pick things up and spit them right out yet I was never touched. I spun around until finally it let me down back on solid ground. People came running over to me and were in amazement that I was not hurt on the outside. But I kept trying to tell them that something was seriously wrong with me. Even though I looked ok on the outside, something was wrong with me on the inside. I was hurt and in pain on the inside but no one understood what I was saying.

I woke up and thought to myself “Oh Lord, what is about to happen!!” I believe it was God warning me to prepare me for what was to come.

The next night I was hit in a way that I was never expecting. It brought me to my knees where all I could do was weep. The pain was deep and so very real. I called a co-ministry leader and couldn’t speak. She spoke truth to me and the Word of God gave me some peace.

A few days later, I went to the book of Nehemiah and asked God to speak loud and clear to my heart. I came to a verse that I had never seen before. I have read the book of Nehemiah many times and I was convinced God just put that verse in for me at that exact moment in time! LOL!!! As soon as I read it, the balm of Gilead, the great physician began to bring healing to my broken heart. He revived me, cleansed me and moved me forward.

Now remember, all this time, I kept praying that God would give me a heart like His!

A few days ago, we met a woman in prison who was arrested recently on a bust by homeland security. She is a woman who was bought and sold for sex. We meet a few times with this precious woman and watched the Word of God bring tears to her eyes. She exposed her heart, her dreams and her desires for healing. We gave her the Word of God and told her how people were praying for her. At the sound of those words, she wept.

Yesterday, she was to be released to us so we could begin to work with her. We had a set time for me to pick her up but unfortunately, she was released 30 mins earlier. When I went there, she was nowhere to be found. The rest of the afternoon was spent in tears and prayers up to God. My heart was breaking and there was nothing I could do about it but PRAY! Our team prayed. Our team cried.

This morning as I was preparing for work, I was talking to God and asking Him Why? How? What happened? And all of a sudden, that soft still voice spoke. He reminded me of my prayer asking Him for a heart like His. My prayer asking Him to help me weep and break like His. The past few months God has been using EVERYTHING to answer my prayers. Was it the way I wanted or expected? No! But God is so good and so amazing that He answers our prayers the right way we need to receive them. When that realization hit me this morning, I began to think of all the emotions I have experienced over the past few months and I began to wonder if I ever caused God to have those same feelings.

Did I ever accuse God of being something He is not? Did I ever betray God? Was I ever disobedient? Did I ever turn from God when He was offering me life changing words? Did I ever walk away from Him when He was holding His arms out to me with love?

Yes, Yes and Yes!!!! I broke His heart and yet His heart is and always will be to love me, adore me, sing over me and pull me closer to Him. Has the past few months “cut like a knife?” Oh yes. Would I take them back? Oh no. Because it has all brought me closer to the heart of God. It has caused my heart to break like His and to weep for His people.

I encourage you to seek the heart of God. I encourage you to allow God to break your heart like His! Why? Because through it all, you will become the servant of God that He needs you to be for the call that He has on your life. He will use it all to mold you and transform you more into His image. In all reality, the heart break actually sets you free!!!

Independence Day by Kim Checkeye

This week we celebrate independence and freedom for our country from the Kingdom of Great Britain. We will celebrate with fireworks, picnics, baseball games and family gatherings but all the while, there are those still being held captive in our country and being forced into another form of slavery called sex trafficking.  On July 4^th, they will not be celebrating freedom for they have not known what that is for years. 

It has been a year since Truth for Women partnered with V.A.S.T. in bringing awareness and education to our community on sex trafficking.  While it has been an amazing year of networking, training service providers and making connections with others who have a heart to stop this injustice, it has also been a year of heart break.  It has been a year of many tears shed and many sleepless nights. 

Why?  Because before you can educate or bring awareness to a community, we must educate ourselves on what we are fighting against.  We must immerse ourselves in studying statistics and facts on sex trafficking.  We must read every book we can get our hands on about the trauma the victims experience and we work one on one with the women who have been wounded by this horror.

All the while we plead with God to break our hearts for this injustice and ask Him to allow us to feel just an inkling of what He must feel when He sees this in the United States of America and internationally.  Little did we understand just how amazing God is at granting the requests that we bring before Him.

But what has broken my heart the most is the harden hearts who choose to ignore this injustice.  Even after receiving the information or hearing the stories of the victims from the Lehigh Valley, they choose to believe it is not happening in our community.  They choose to turn an eye from it and ignore what is right in front of them.  They choose to pretend that it isn’t happening in their backyard because if they did, they would need to rise up and do something about it.

The Word of God speaks time and time again about setting the captives free, releasing the oppressed, breaking the yoke of burden and the rod of their oppressors and binding up the broken hearted. 

Those scriptures mean more to me today, then ever before because I have personally met the captives, the prisoners and the broken hearted who have been held against their will in the commercial sex industry.

I interviewed one counselor who works with women coming out of prison.  She has worked with over 200 women and 85% of them were victims of sex trafficking or sexual exploitation.  All of them right here in the Lehigh Valley.  This was just ONE counselor who was interviewed!

Their stories are heartbreaking and bone chilling at what they have been through.  Being sold at the age of 5 to a pedophile, being sold at the age of 2 to a pimp, being injected with heroine at the age of 12 by their own mother so their bodies would be addicted to the substance so in return, they would sell themselves for money. 

These are woman who are right here who need our help and need our support to get them get out of this evil.  But where can they go?  Where can we send them?  There is no place in the Lehigh Valley equipped to handle this type of trauma and devastation.  NONE. 

That is why the Truth for Women Center is feverously working on raising the funds to open a therapeutic residential home for victims of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation.  We are estimating it will cost $130,000 - $150,000 a year. 

How can you help?  Become a part of the solution and put your hands to helping the victims find freedom.