Windows of Hope by Jacqueline Hooks

Jacqueline Hooks is our guest blogger today. This is what she says about herself and her ministry:  “I am an everyday ordinary gal who started following Jesus less than a decade ago, and has fallen madly in love with the Carpenter King who saved my life and my marriage.  My husband and I are raising “four holy moly messes” (Jake 10, Jude 9, Grace 7 and Joshua 1).  I am technically a stay at home mom, but I rarely find myself at home, and the soap opera and bon bon life hasn’t found its way into my living room just yet.  I do occasionally allow for a small celebration when all the laundry is clean AND folded at the SAME TIME on the SAME  DAY…and that is typically twice a decade.

In 2012, God called me to begin Pruning Hooks Ministry.  Pruning Hooks is a grass roots group of “Everyday ordinary women serving Jesus allowing their everyday ordinary lives to become extraordinary”. It is a ministry founded on the principal that Jesus wants your daily life, and following Him is a lifestyle of loving and serving and walking with Jesus…no event needed…just a Savior and our hands and feet.   Jesus has called us to serve lunch and breakfast five days a week to Generation One Academy, provide monthly meals to residents of medical housing, love on teen moms in our area, help and encourage single moms and meet the needs of anyone God places in our path. Pruning Hooks gathers each month to listen to an ordinary woman share her Jesus Story which always encourages and reminds us how our amazing God works inside the every day. Because He wants our everyday …plain and simple.

And I write.  Writing has been the tool Jesus gave me from the very beginning of my life to navigate every treacherous road I have walked.  There are boxes of poetry notebooks and short stories stashed somewhere in my mom’s attic to prove it.  My hope is that my words inspire and encourage you to see Jesus in your everyday too.  He is right here waiting for each of us, in the daily mess, hoping we see He wants so much more from us and for us than we could ever imagine.  I pray my writing will lead you to Him.”

Visit Jacqueline’s website at: http://www.pruninghooks.com or like her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pruning-Hooks-Ministries/173578226122133 

 

I Took a Van Tour This Week.

A Group of Us.

From the Suburbs of Katy, TX.

Touring the Sex Trade in a Big White Van.

Hearing Stories of Shattered, Stolen, Tortured Girls.

I Will Never Be the Same.

I live in Katy, TX.  I wake up every morning, and start laundry for my family, brew coffee, make breakfast and sit on my big red chair and write. I pray. I read the Bible. I take out trash. I fill water bottles and pack lunches.  I get backpacks out, ready for the kiddos who use them, and wake up precisely at 6:45. Because I love those kiddos.  I love the living daylights out of their grumpy, groggy faces. I will move a herd of children through clothes, breakfast, teeth being brushed, and out the door. I feel horrible if I argue with them in the morning. I feel like they might live a whole day without knowing how much I love them. It makes me sick to my stomach, and I try to say apologies, and give hugs and kisses before they are out of my sight for eight hours. They are my reward from heaven. And I cannot bear the thought of anything ever making them feel unloved…making them feel unworthy of love…making them feel like love is only for other people…

And I Assume this Is How Most Mommies Feel.

I Assume We All Die Inside When Our Kids Are Hurting.

I Assume that We All Would Run Into the Burning Building,

Weather the Storm,

Climb Any Mountain If That Is What It Took To Save Them…

We heard the story this Wednesday night of a young girl who had been brought to Houston from Thailand. She was handed a plane ticket with the promise of working in a restaurant. And she took the ticket, and the promise and tucked them into her heart, and took a leap of faith hoping for freedom.  She was lied to. She was made a prisoner in a small room in a brothel. She was forced to have sex with 20-40 men a day. She was locked in her room. She was forced to use drugs. She was given no choices, no hope, no job in a restaurant. She was made to feel unloved and unlovable. She was told that no one cared and no one would rescue her. And years passed by. And men came and went. And they knew and saw that she was a prisoner…that she had no hope…and they did not love her…they had sex with her and left her to die another day in her prison. They left her.

I Asked My Children What They Would Do

If They Knew Where Children Were Being Held Prisoner…

If They Knew That Evil People Stole Children and Locked Them Away…

They Said, “Save Them.”

My Children Who are 10, 9, and 7 Would Save Them.

So, the girl lived for years in the tiny room. She lived across from the room where the traffickers “break in” or “season” the new girls. And yes, that is as horrible as it sounds. She lived in the darkness and filth and evil that is the sex trade. And I wonder if she hoped each man would be different, and take her with him when he left. I wonder when she stopped wondering who would lead her to freedom. I wonder when she stopped wishing she had never gotten on that plane. I wonder when she stopped missing the feeling of standing outside in broad daylight with no one watching…to feel the rain or the sun or see the sky.

The brothel where she lived is no longer a brothel. It has since been converted, by people who love Jesus, into the headquarters for Elijah Rising and Rescue Houston, two organizations standing on the battlefield rescuing children. They are remodeling. They are tearing up floors and tearing down walls.  They are painting. They are cleaning the filth away. And every time they redo another room, another hallway, another prison cell they find mementos of lives lost….of childhoods stolen and gone.

A Prayer Written in Thai.

A Pipe for Drugs.

Trinkets.

Tiny Treasures.

A Soul Died Here.

And as they remodeled her room…turned it from her prison into a regular old office…they tore down a paper thin wall. Paper thin. And inside that wall, on the other side, was a window. A single window.  A window that would have meant freedom.  A window that would have meant hope.  A window she never saw.

Tiny Windows of Hope.

They are Hidden Everywhere.

And y’all, here is the deal, here is the call to action…a tiny window, behind a paper thin wall, was not found…was not discovered…was not revealed…until people who love Jesus came and tore the wall to the ground. And there are children all over in search of windows, or who gave up searching for windows long ago, and we have to find them…we have to tear down walls to set them free…because in all of us, whether we are parents or not, is this heart beating for children. There is this heart that beats inside of us and cries and breaks and tries not to know because knowing means we have to do something.  And I don’t care what you do…just do something…because we cannot let another window go unnoticed, unfound, untouched, unseen.  And let another little girl go…into a windowless dark room without hope…without freedom…without love.

We Are the Windows of Hope.

We are the Way to Freedom.

We are Made to Tear Down Paper Thin Walls.

Destroy Prisons.

Save Precious Children…

Who Believed Enough in a Restaurant Dream to Brave a Plane Ride to America.

So, tonight, my four babies are sound asleep…they are tucked into beds with special bears, special blankets, special books and cups of water. They were kissed. They were prayed over. They were told, “I Love You,” again and again and again.  And this love resonates in my soul.  It is the love every child should know.  And if we commit to tear down just one wall…just one…and be a window to one child who is broken by the prison of sex trafficking…just one…it is worth it all…it is worth every minute taken out of our lives to save one…One. Each one is worth a window of hope. Each one.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones.  For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.  What do you think?  If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?  And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.  In the same way you Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” 

(Matthew 18: 10-14)

Jesus is Big Enough to End Sex Trafficking.

Shalom Y’all.