Crowning The Princess

If there's one thing I've realized about myself through working in anti-human trafficking, it's how blessed I am. As I look back at my life, I can see so many ways God has intervened to put me on the path He has for me. One of those ways is through my parents. I am very fortunate to have parents that love me and have done their very best to care for me.

The other weekend, my dad and I got to have some daddy daughter time in Disney World. It was such a gift to have the time together before I head back to Germany. As he spent two days treating me like an absolute princess, I realized something... this is something the women I work with will never experience. They come from broken and abusive families where they don't know what it's like to be loved and cared for by parents. Unconditional love is a concept as foreign to them as rocket science is to me.

It breaks my heart knowing they have a hard time comprehending a loving Heavenly Father because they didn't have earthly fathers that were loving. So it's my desire to help them understand how loved and worthy they are and for them to know that they are daughters to the King of heaven and earth, and that makes each one of them a princess.

I want them to be crowned with a tiara, the way my father crowned me. The moment my dad put the tiara on my head was a moment of pure joy! I felt loved, known, and special... even thinking of it now brings a smile to my face and a happy tear to my eye. The feeling of being unique, set apart, and special, is something that victimized women only experience in false fleeting moments, only to immediately afterwards be filled with the deepest loneliness despair. They don't deserve to be treated like objects and used; to be looked at, not as a unique individual with special giftings, but as a means to an end for another individual. I don't know about you, but that brings outrage to my gut, because these women deserve and are worthy of so much more.

Helping them realize their worth and truly believe it, is a long process. It's time spent building relationship and trust, getting to a point where the lies they believe about themselves can start to be challenged and truth can be spoken. It's hours of modeling confidence in myself and who I am in Christ, while still being vulnerable and able to share the mistakes and heartbreaks I've had in my life. It's messy, and there's no formula, and it's hard, but it's worth it, because each of these precious women deserves to meet their Creator face to face one day and have Him crown them, letting them know just how worthy and loved they are.