The Truth About the Oldest and Deadliest Profession in the World

I think I fell for the common misconceptions about the sex industry, even when I was living in the midst of it. At the age of about fifteen, I made a heart vow that I would never have anything to do with prostitutes. They were dishonest, selfish, untrustworthy, dirty and addicted.When I was eleven, my family and I moved into a red-light district area of Stoke-on-Trent, England. Drugs, gangs and prostitution could all be found in our neighborhood which also housed the heart of the Middle Eastern community in the city. We were the large, white, Christian family living in the midst of it all and trying to make a difference.On several occasions, I watched my parents give the last few pounds in their purse to help those around us, and their generosity never seemed to be repaid in the ways it deserved to be. In fact we were stolen from countless times, called liars, taken advantage of and targeted for our white skin and Christian faith. Rather than feeling boundless compassion for my neighbors, I struggled with feelings of judgement toward them because of their brokenness, and I was angry at their apparent choice to stay that way. Now, almost fifteen years later, all I want to do is love on those men and women and hold out my hand to assist them into freedom.I’m no expert but I have gained a little experience over the past few years and one of the questions I get asked the most is: ‘Well, don’t the women choose to work in the sex industry? Isn’t it empowering for them?’I believe that we have distorted our definitions of empowerment to where it looks a lot like having control over somebody else. When we talk about the sex industry being empowering for women, we are really thinking that they get to have control over their customers and feel powerful so that must therefore be empowering. It is transactional empowerment however, using the currency of manipulation and desire, rather than true freedom. To empower somebody should be from a place of freedom and ultimately for freedom. 

The fact that we even have a sex industry is revealing of what truly rules our hearts and drives our decisions. The act of sex and all of the pleasure that comes along with it has been successfully turned into the biggest-selling product in the world. The problem with that is that intimacy was meant to be developed in relationship, founded in love, that would ultimately empower one another to be the men and women we were created to be. Remove intimacy and connection and all you have is physical function. 

When a product is being sold, the consumer is always preferred over the seller. It is not an equal relationship for ‘the customer is always right’. Put sex, or the thrill of it, into the equation, and the one selling it is always going to be less than the one buying. His or her desires are not the ones being paid to be met. I don’t think anyone truly chooses to work in an industry where that is the detailed job description. “I chose to work in the sex industry”, is often another way of saying, “I didn’t feel like there was another option for me”.

'89% of 854 people in prostitution from nine countries told us that they wanted to escape prostitution, but 75% needed a home or safe place, 76% needed job training, 61% needed health care, 56% needed individual counseling, 51% needed peer support, 51% needed legal assistance, and 47% needed drug/alcohol treatment.'

- Prostitution Research & Education -

People want out of this industry because it is NOT empowering.My dream is to see women free, not just free to wear a pant suit and vote in an election or run a business or lead a nation. I want to see women living free of sexual exploitation and objectification. I want to see them truly empowered and powerful, shattering every glass ceiling that’s ever been held above them and replacing misconceptions with the truth. That dream starts with you and it starts with me. It begins with how we choose to believe in one another and whether or not we hold out a helping hand to those more needy than us. It is seeing the one in front of us for who they really are and silencing anything less than the truth.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c1tGD7f2Hs&feature=youtu.be

Why Your Past May Be Holding You Back From Receiving Love

I used to hate men. I remember being in work several years ago and one of my regular customers coming up to the bar and asking me out on a date. Instead of feeling flattered or flutters of attraction being stirred within me, I found myself reacting with outrage. ‘How dare he assume that just because I work behind a bar and am paid to smile and serve that I am therefore available and in need of a man?! I don’t need, and neither do I want, a man!’I think I may have vocalized this annoyance to a colleague, much to their amusement, at the time. It wasn’t a normal reaction to have and it wasn’t a healthy one. Needless to say I refused the offer of a date and maintained my stony distance from the opposite gender.A couple of months prior to this work conversation, my virginity was taken from me when I was raped at the end of a night out. The following week I was sexually assaulted in a club. Within the space of two weeks I went from feeling like I had a life of purpose and beauty to feeling like I was worth  less than the rubbish in my bin. I had nothing left to offer, and in my mind, it was all because of men. So to protect myself I allowed bitterness and hate to foster itself in my heart.Men had proven to me to be untrustworthy, dishonoring and selfish, viewing women as merely objects to meet their needs, and I had resolved to shut my heart to them. I made a conscious decision at that time to blame men for all of my problems and the pain I was experiencing. I wrote off the whole gender because of the actions of a few. Don’t we all too easily do the same thing? An individual hurts us and a multitude of people take the blame - the church, men, women, an ethnic group, the police or government. It’s easier to be angry and defensive than feel the rawness of vulnerability.Seven years on and I definitely don’t hate men any more. I married one. I run a non-profit with men on my team. I co-lead with men in my church and workplace. I love men and I value their role and presence in my life. So what changed? How did I go from refusing the invitation to a date to then agreeing to spend the rest of my life with someone of the opposite gender?I chose to forgive. I had been holding all men accountable to a debt that was owed to me but the power of forgiveness comes when we choose to cancel out that debt. I didn’t suddenly change my story and start saying that what had happened to me was okay and it didn’t matter anymore, but I did stop living forever controlled by those experiences. By choosing to forgive, I was allowing my life to move forward again, I was relinquishing control of my past and reopening my heart to receive.I love this video from Soul Pancake which gives a little insight into the power of forgiveness and how it can take us from bitterness to happiness.Maybe you’ve found yourself in a cycle of friendships or relationships that keep breaking down and you’re not sure why. Maybe you can identify an individual or experience that caused you a lot of deep pain and, as of yet, you haven't been able to fully move forward. Maybe you’ve been harboring anger in your heart and it’s been preventing you from really giving and receiving what your heart was crafted for: love.My heart wants to challenge and encourage yours with the deepest love and sensitivity that now is the time to be brave, confront your past, forgive those who caused you trauma and embrace the fullness of your future.

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."  - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Keys & Tattoos

Black Sheep.Daughter.Rebel.Self-harmer.Girlfriend.Criminal.Sister.Failure.A handful of labels over a handful of decades of life so far, formed and carried following experiences, encounters, words spoken over me and choices I had made. I was convinced for several years that many of these were true, proudly identifying myself as so or shamefully covering the label so as not to be seen.

* * *

I’d pushed my sleeves up without thinking as we rehearsed for our ballet school’s next show and, with the eyes of a hawk, my teacher had spotted the vivid lines on my forearms. “Joy, what is this?! You have to stop this, you hear me? I don’t want to see this again!”This wasn’t an isolated incident, other people had seen my marks of self-destruction and reacted with similar alarm, imploring me to stop and change. But how could I change when this was who I was?Shame. "I am the black sheep."

* * *

“So Joy, do you think you guys are going to get married?!” The carload of women all turned their beaming faces towards me, their hearts alight with excitement and anticipation for me.I smiled back, my best fake-it-till-you-make-it smile, “Yeah, maybe.”They responded with delight for me as the car continued to speed north along the motorway and I turned to gaze out at the passing countryside, eyes hidden behind sunglasses and my heart a cavern of nothingness. The man they were enquiring about had ended our relationship the previous day and I was now traveling to one of our dear friend’s weddings.I wasn’t worth fighting for. I wasn’t worth loving that much. I couldn’t bear to admit that truth.Failure. "I am a lying failure."

* * *

The duvet was creating a fortress for me to hide in; a safe place; a cloak of invisibility. I didn’t ever want to come out. I didn’t want to be seen, looked at, talked to. I just wanted to slip away and disappear.It was the day after the night before. The night where my virginity was taken. When my drunken foolishness had landed me in a place of vulnerability and now that thing that I had been protecting, saving and honoring, had gone; the remnants and evidence littered about my bedroom.Tainted. "I am damaged goods forever."

* * *

Lies, that sounded like truth, had become my identity.I would still be believing that I was a failure, unloveable and unworthy of love, a rebel who always messed up and disappointed people around me, if I had not had an encounter with truth; if love had not found me.We assume roles or take on identities like we get dressed in the morning, an outfit of clothing that informs the world about who we are, or at least who we want them to believe that we are. We polish and shine our labels, like trophies on a mantelpiece, even if we abhor the event that it came from. It’s better than not winning anything, right…? We walk away with ugly imitations of truth, settling for a lifetime of shame.But for the grace of God.Like a rainbow of promise stretched across my life, grace, love and truth had found me and given me hope, welcoming me to receive from their heavenly treasure. In my scar-riddled body with my broken heart and lie-entangled mind, I accepted the invitation, surrendering all that I had believed to be true and in exchange receiving a new identity; my true identity.Grace isn't just a nice quality or merely the elegance of our stance, it is God’s love in action towards humanity who merited the opposite of love. We don’t always get it right and sometimes we do fail but God’s currency is grace, not rejection.When I was in the midst of one of my hardest seasons, and regularly self-harming to try and cope with the pain I was feeling in my heart, a friend of my family encouraged me by sharing with me the image of a key. He said, “Joy, I feel like you are a beautiful skeleton key that is hidden in mud but you’re going to be pulled out, washed off and used to unlock restoration and reconciliation in the lives of your friends and family.”It was an image and a word of hope.Ten years later I walked into a tattoo parlor in LA with a key design tucked into my bag. Three hours after entering, I walked home with a new image on my left forearm. Instead of the white lines of my past unhappiness being the prominent feature on my arm, I now carried a beautiful key of restoration. Every shape and intricate line of the drawing speaks of value and worth, the beautiful exchange of beauty for ashes.Recently I read a verse from the book of Romans in the Bible and it has stuck with me all week. It sums up exactly how I feel every time I look at my tattoo.

‘Could it be any clearer that our former identity is now and forever deprived of its power?’

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Unwelcome Touch

there-is-light-despite-all-of-the-darkness

Over the past few weeks, several members of my family have been out to NYC to visit us, filling our home with laughter-filled happy reunions. Phillip and I took on the roles of hosts and tourist guides, taking them to some of our favorite parts of Manhattan. In one of our hangout sessions, we headed into Chelsea Market, perusing the various shops, stalls and restaurants, delighting in each other’s company and the plethora of options available to us.I came across a jewelry stand that caught my attention and so paused to take a better look at the large stone rings displayed across the counter. My family members had all dispersed about the market and I soaked in the moment of delighting in something beautiful, appreciating the craft behind the objects before me.I love jewelry. I think I’ve always been a bit of a magpie, attracted to pretty things that sparkle and shine. Walking into a flea market or passing through an outdoor fair is like stepping into Aladdin’s cave; an inordinate amount of treasure just waiting to be discovered.All of a sudden I felt a hand grasp my bottom as somebody walked behind me. For a split second I thought it might be my husband, so turned around with a smile on my face, but it was swiftly wiped away as I watched a stranger walk past me. The young man continued down the aisle of stalls, his features hidden behind dark sunglasses and a large pair of headphones. As I watched, he did an about-turn and came back towards me. I looked away as I began to question my own understanding of what had just happened. Did he really just grab me like that? Maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was all in my head, I mean, there are plenty of people about. Maybe it was an accident.Then it happened again. A hand on my bum. An unmistakable grope as someone passed by me. Shocked, I looked around to see the man in headphones walking by again and disappearing into the crowd. In disbelief and anger, my fumbled thoughts landed on, “where is Phillip? Find Phillip!” I frantically began searching the market area for a glimpse of my husband. Catching sight of him across the room, I darted in his direction.My hands were shaking now and I felt a sudden desire to cry. At the same time I wanted to hide. The last place I wanted to be now was right where I was, surrounded by people and noise and eyes; eyes looking at me, watching me, groping me.“Some guy just felt me up; twice!” I blurted out to Phillip as I finally reached him.“What?! Where is he?!” My husband was suddenly awake and coming to my defense.Pointing the man out of the crowd, I watched Phillip quickly pursue him as my own sense of dignity struggled to maintain its hold.A few minutes later, as I stood in the comforting presence of my sister, I spotted my assailant coming quickly towards me again with my husband and another guy in quick pursuit. It turned out that as Phillip had approached him to confront him, he had done it again to another unsuspecting woman. I watched them all getting closer to me, the suspect clearly trying to make his exit as swiftly as possible. I was frozen. If I just took one step to the side I could stop him; I could confront him. I was scared. I felt vulnerable. I felt ashamed. I didn’t want to make a scene, create a fuss, be the centre of any public drama. So I stood there. I watched him approach me, felt him brush past me, heard him asking people to get out of his way and saw him exit the market and disappear down the street.Seconds later and Phillip was running outside after him, trying to track him down. But he was gone and I had no desire to shop anymore.That evening I sat in the quiet of our apartment, the comfort of our sofa enveloping me like a warm hug, as I tried to let my thoughts and emotions unravel themselves with a cup of tea in hand and an episode of Blue Bloods playing on my laptop. We had informed a security guard of what had occurred and he had quickly jumped to my defense, putting out a warning to the rest of the building’s security team. My sisters and brother-in-law had poured love over me, been outraged on my behalf and given me the space I needed to process and recover. I had been defended, cared for, affirmed.Sexual assault immediately leaves you feeling ‘less-than’.It’s not the first time I’ve experienced this kind of abuse but I think in previous moments I didn’t always process it as wrong. I felt that I deserved it somehow. I believed the lie that ‘it’s just what happens so don’t make a big deal of it’. I’ve been groped in my work place, felt up in a bar, touched inappropriately on the street. But no big deal right? I mean, most of my friends have been through the same thing. It comes with the territory. It’s part of the package of being a woman.But I felt violated, cheapened, taken advantage of and outraged that someone other than my husband had touched me. I’d been robbed; we both had. Someone had had the audacity to overstep the boundary of honour, respect and care for another human being in order to satisfy a private urge; a lustful desire.This was the first time though that I had felt protected in the aftermath, encouraged to speak out and people had outrightly agreed that it was not okay; it was an injustice. Phillip’s love, care and fierce pursuit of justice for me had gone a long way to restore my heart and help me move beyond the sense of trauma and into healing.Out of the 3.5 billion women that are in the world today, I am just one. I could choose to believe that my voice isn’t important, that it doesn’t make much of a difference what I do or say, or I could choose to speak out regardless and believe that the vibrations of my words will have a ripple affect far beyond my physical reach.Every two minutes someone in America is sexually assaulted.That statistic is horrendous and it isn’t going to go anywhere if we stay silent; if women lose their power to speak and men lose their ability to love and defend them.So this is me speaking out. This is me asking you to help put an end to an epidemic that goes far beyond American shores. To see true value restored to both genders. I believe we can do it. I believe it’s possible if we walk in love, if we see a stranger as a brother or sister rather than an object or target of desire; if we can see each other as equal. Sex was never meant to be our god but it seems to have become one and I think it’s about time we saw our universe realigned with truth.I guess today’s blog comes with a bit of a challenge and a request from one friend to another. Would you join me in doing something to turn the tide? Maybe that’s speaking out in your own community, donating to a local non-profit, contacting your government to find out what they are doing, learning more about sexual exploitation and its effects, joining the Beauty for Ashes Movement or working through whatever that ‘thing’ is that is currently preventing you from loving the opposite gender as you love yourself.Maybe my experience will begin to become an abnormality rather than a commonality.

Crafted for Connection

I love connection. It makes me feel alive and it reminds me yet again that the world is so much bigger than whatever problem my head was focusing on prior to connecting.I had coffee the other day with a beautiful woman and friend to Phillip and myself. We sat in an urban coffee shop on one of the quaint side streets of the West Village and talked about matters of the heart, from passionate dreams to vulnerable seasons of life. I came away feeling alive and inspired, full of hope for the change I want to see in the world.Relating to another human, feeling heard and seen, understood by them, does something for our hearts and minds that no caffeine fix, night on the town or drug high can even slightly measure up to. The topic of conversation veered onto that of addiction as we sipped on steaming cups of tea and coffee, finding similarities in aspects of our past. We had both encountered, and been affected by, people close to us that had struggled with addiction. It seems to be becoming more and more common for someone we know, if not ourselves, to have a hook of dependance on something, whether it be a drug, pattern of behavior or area of control. My friend shared her experience and I nodded with understanding. Her world had been shaken by someone wrestling with sexual addiction and she had been navigating through healing since then.Later that evening I sat reading an article about the probable cause of addiction following one man’s dedicated research around the world to try and answer the question, “why?” The author, Johann Hari, has also written a book about the whole topic but the article is a fascinating first glimpse into the idea that

‘the opposite of addiction is not sobriety; it is human connection’.

Professor Peter Cohen, who is quoted in these findings, argues that, ‘If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find — the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe…A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn’t bond as fully with anything else.’This idea that we could see an end to the torturing cycle of addiction simply by connecting people together, building community, is so beautiful and revolutionary to me. Rather than focusing on trying to constantly disconnect people from their unhealthy crutches, maybe we should be purely trying to reconnect them with themselves and into relationships. If I even go half a day without some meaningful human connection, my world starts to feel a little grey and I’ll want to binge watch Netflix and drink copious amounts of tea to make up for it. Imagine living like that for years or even a whole lifetime!Phillip and I are passionate about building community. Even before we were dating, one of our earliest conversations as friends involved talking about our heart for building family around us and always having a home that is open to anyone. Now married, it’s something that we still talk a lot about and have been dreaming for the past year as to how we can make that happen.Last Sunday that dream began to come true. We had invited a few friends over for lunch to help welcome a couple of new people to the city. It hadn’t felt like anything unusual or different before hand but as the day went on and people were still contentedly enjoying each other’s company, sat around our large wooden table, we realised how significant this was. Community was happening. Connection was taking place. Family was being created. For nine hours straight, people from four different nations had sat together talking, laughing, dreaming, eating and drinking and it felt like no time at all. By the end of the night we had decided to make it official and begin hosting weekly Sunday potlucks for our NYC family.I wonder, how connected do you feel today? Are you in need of some quality community time too? Or maybe you're actually the key to creating that environment around you and all you need to do is say, 'welcome'.You are not crazy for wanting to be with people and there is nothing wrong with you for feeling alone. We were made for connection. We were crafted for intimacy. We were born this way.  [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y51YETlzgU[/embed]

A Thread of Value

I recently had a ‘getting-to-know-you’ lunch date with Danielle, one of the amazing pastors of our lively and loving church community in NYC. We sat on high stools in an open dining area near the banks of the Hudson River, taking bites of our ‘home-made’ meals in-between telling stories of our life journeys so far. At the end of my rambling introduction into the history of Joy Attmore, Danielle made a very interesting and real observation.“It seems to me that there’s been a thread of value running through your life. I think that those seasons that were challenging for you were being used by God to solidify the truth of your value and identity in Him. When it feels like that ‘same issue’ is rearing its head again, it does not mean that you didn’t have victory over it in the past, you’re just dealing with a new layer of it.”#boom.Have you ever had one of those moments when somebody has summed up the convoluted seasons of your life in one paragraph? It made a lot of sense.The thing that stood out most to me in Danielle’s response to my potted life history was the use of the word value. Four days prior I had stood in the living room of our apartment and crumpled into tears as my husband put his arms around me to embrace me.The sobs came involuntarily and unannounced; the culmination of several triggers compounding together. In the hour running up to this breakdown, I had been trying to connect a call to my parents over Skype but a wifi disconnection on their end was proving it to be impossible. I hadn’t spoken to them properly in a little while and had been looking forward to our Saturday morning catch-up more that I had realised. This failure to connect landed heavily on my heart, which had already been triggered by small promises that had been made to me that week but had gone unfulfilled. My heart was tender and the sudden absence of parental presence caused it to crumble momentarily.I am someone whose emotions often surface before my mind has had time to understand fully what is going on. This was one of those moments.As the tears dried up and my breathing returned to a normal, peaceful cadence, I tried to gauge the reason for my outburst. Value. It all came back to this one root desire, to feel valued, to know that I am valued. I had been interpreting each of these disappointments as meaning that I was less than, not important enough, easily skipped over and forgotten. I had begun believing those old lies and it was hurting my heart.But of course I was hurting because I was never meant to believe those things! No one was  ever meant to believe that they are lacking in value or that they are not important because it simply is not true. And yet we do. Every. Single. Day.Unless the truth about your worth is embedded in your heart and mind and cared for like the rarest of treasures, it can become an item slowly cheapened and worn out over time until one day you forget why you ever thought it was important.“So may we never be found dishonoring one another, or comparing ourselves to each other, for each of us is an original. We have forsaken all jealousy that diminishes the value of others.”Galations 5:26 ( The Passion Translation )“So may we…” it’s like the beginnings of a softly spoken prayer that illuminates our very beings with the light of truth as we slowly take in the power of those words, letting them ruminate over time until they are an unshakable part of ourselves.I find myself once again being challenged, on nearly a daily basis, to further cement the truth about who I am within my heart, regardless of the scenarios that might trigger me in the opposite direction. We are each an original. There are no carbon copies within humanity which means if something happens to you, or to me, we are not replaceable and the world loses a priceless part of creation.When I value myself and don’t diminish who I am through a sense of unworthiness, I am empowered to pour that same value into others. I am no longer in competition with the world but I am in love with it. I am in love with you. So may you know how valuable you are as you read these words and may they drip truth into your soul that can never be stolen from you.

Everyday Purpose

If you’ve never experienced the delights of New York City in the height of summer, I would argue that you don’t really know what it means to be hot, sweaty and still smiling. Stickiness just becomes the normal state of being and ‘the humidity’ becomes the most talked about subject until fall begins to ease itself in towards the end of September. Subways turn into cavernous ovens where the general public all spend far longer than their liking waiting for the next train to arrive, each gust of wind or breath of air feeling like a hair dryer is being blasted in your face. When the carriage doors open, there is a rush of pedestrians to escape into the air conditioned car, collectively breathing a sign of relief.There are times, however, when the air conditioning breaks or the cars are so full of bodies that the cold air trying its best to circulate doesn’t stand a chance against the combined body heat. Those are the occasions when I have to take plenty of deep breaths and intercede for the miracle of a quicker arrival at my destination!

* * *

After waiting for twenty minutes in the furnace of 14th St station, my train finally crept in to a halt, the doors opening to a warm and empty carriage. I gratefully secured a seat near one of the doors and resigned myself to further waiting as the train got momentarily held in the station, all the while hot air packing itself into the space around me.Some fifteen minutes later and the train was rolling into 42nd St, soon every remaining seat and inch of standing space quickly taken. A transgender woman came and took the vacant seat to my right, giving me a warm, if not a very heavily intoxicated smile, as she did so. I smiled in return, temporarily distracted by texting my husband whilst I had signal.“Mucho caliente!” My new neighbour began fanning herself with her hands, smiling as she did so, droplets of sweat beginning to form around the outskirts of her face.“Si!” I affirmed her declaration and pressed send on my message.“You are Russian?”I gave her my full attention, “No, English”, I said with a smile.As the train carried us on to the next station, I engaged in a rather simple conversation with my new friend about the different languages she spoke which would be regularly interspersed with exclamations of, “Mucho caliente!”Two stops later and a couple jumped into our carriage moments before the doors closed. The lady immediately groaned as she felt the heat encircle her. Within minutes of pushing out of the station, she had crouched onto the floor panting for breath, her boyfriend trying to help her calm down.“Would you like my seat?” I stood up and gestured to the now empty spot as I gathered my belongings together.“Thank you!” The boyfriend accepted my offer gratefully and reached down to help his girlfriend to her feet.“Here, have some water too”, I reached into my bag and pulled out a bottle.As this transaction was talking place to my left, I suddenly saw the now-limp body of my neighbour fall forward and crash to the floor at my feet. Within seconds there were two collapsed bodies at my feet.“Press the emergency button!” Someone shouted from just next to me.We pulled into the next station.“Get her off the train!” Another voice called as the doors slid open.I helped drag the limp body onto the platform, dumping my bags next to her as I began assessing for signs of life and finding ways to cool her down. The couple also escaped from the overheated train at the same time, the boyfriend carrying his love outside to the slightly cooler night air, her arms and legs swinging as he cradled her.Life returned to the lady next to me on the platform as her eyelids fluttered open and she began to writhe on the concrete floor. I took her hand firmly in mine and began stroking her head, pouring water into her hair to help relieve her temperature, whispering peace into her ears as I did so. She stilled again and fell unconscious.Another concerned passenger stood across from us speaking to emergency services on the phone. A crowd gathered at a respectful distance.Soon two cops in blue joined the tableau at the platform edge, their presence bringing an air of safety and authority to the situation. I continued to hold my patient’s hand and fan her face as she slipped in and out of consciousness.It wasn’t long before the scene was flooded with more officers in blue as well as paramedics. I relinquished her hand to that of a medic who quickly took charge of the situation and affixed an oxygen mask to her face. I joined the group stationed at a respectful distance, answering questions when needed but keeping my focus on my subway neighbour.Eventually she regained full consciousness and sat up with the aid of a paramedic, trying to answer his questions whilst hiding her face behind embarrassed hands. It transpired that drugs, which she had taken earlier that evening, combined with an asthma attack, had been the cause of her collapse. After a few minutes of this interaction, she then suddenly looked up at the small crowd observing her and searched the faces briefly before locking eyes with mine. A brilliant smile spread across her face in childlike thankfulness and she raised a hand to form the thumbs up sign, in greeting and acknowledgement of my presence. I gave her a thumbs up in return, my mouth spreading into a wide grin.It was a brief exchange in the middle of a scene of drama, down in a hot and humid subway station on the west side of Manhattan, but it caught the attention of my heart as I recognized the impact that being seen and valued by another human being has on an individual.When we live with an internal standard and value for honour, we are able to encounter each person with love even if they look different, sound different and live differently to us. We are able to be people of peace in the midst of chaos.A verse was recently highlighted to me and I think it sums up simply and perfectly the point of me sharing this story:

“Take full advantage of every day as you spend your life for His purposes.”

Ephesians 5:16 (The Passion Translation)

Let’s not miss a moment, an opportunity, to show people honour, to show them love and bring peace to the atmosphere around us.

A Mother's Face

Ahead of me, an older Korean lady stood at the base of the stairs in the subway juggling her cane, handbag and wheeled shopping cart between her two hands as she contemplated the ascent in front of her. I approached her with a smile, shifting my own shopping bag to my other hand as I offered to assist her up the steps.“Oh thank you so much! Please, yes, thank you!” Her head bobbed with gratitude and her face lit up with wrinkled thanks.“No problem,” I smiled again as I transported her cart to the top of the staircase. “Would you like help to the street?” I addressed her again as she joined me by the exiting turnstiles.“Oh yes please! Thank you so much! Thank you, thank you!” Her head carried on bopping, her face never once retreating from constant smiles.We walked together towards the exiting flight of stairs, her white linen outfit wafting softly around her short frame, creating an air of peace as she moved. “You are a teacher?”I shook my head, “No”, then tried to think of a simple way to explain my occupation.She beat me to it with another enquiry, “You are a mother?”I smiled and shook my head again, “No, not yet.”“Ohhh, you have the face of a mother!” Her tone was that of an all-knowing seer, allowing no room for disagreement.“Thank you!” I responded with more smiles.Soon we were parting ways, as no more flights of stairs stood in between her and her home, and my long-legged strides quickly created half a block of distance.Her parting words stayed with me as I went about the rest of my day - answering emails, making my lunch, writing a blog entry and readying myself for an evening shift at work. She called me a mother. I have not yet experienced the delight and honour of carrying a baby in my womb but it is something I definitely have a desire to see happen in the not-too-distant future. So I do not yet  know what it really means to be a mother. I have experienced having the heart of a mother but never before have I been told that I have the face of one. It felt profound to me, like there was some deeper, hidden meaning to her comment.At first I felt excited. Maybe she was someone who had a prophetic gift and could see me with children soon - little Joys and Phillips running around with big eyes and wide smiles! Then I pondered a little longer and was struck my another, more existential thought: what do our faces say about each of us? Do I really carry the look of a mother or was that merely a fleeting moment of warmth that I shared with a stranger? Shouldn’t we always carry the face of a mother or father to those around us, friend or foreigner?My husband has voiced similar thoughts to this over the past couple of years in response to the racial violence that has been unearthed afresh in America. Innocent black men and women have been subject to wrongful arrests, shootings and discrimination by both figures in authority as well as members of their local community. Would those stories still exist if those involved had treated each other like an extension of their family? Would those deaths have occurred if the one holding the gun had walked as a mother or father instead of a stranger with a subconscious fear of others? Do we walk around as mothers and fathers or as orphans just trying to protect our self?I hope I always wear the face of a mother and I hope that face is also connected to the heart of one.That dear Korean lady’s words have made an imprint on my heart and mind ever since our brief encounter. I have called myself into check several times when I’ve realised that I’ve drifted into murky territory in my attitude towards others, and let me tell you, it can be easily done living in NYC! But just because something is easy does not justify the action.Both my mum and mother-in-law are stella examples of women who embody the heart of family. I watch them both open their arms wide to people on a regular basis, that many of us would hope to be able to ignore, and they treat them as if they are their own. To me, this is what the face of a mother really looks like. 

There's No Striving In Love

I stood towards the back of the room, my eyes closed, the atmosphere filled with the sound of several hundred voices all joined in song, the well-rehearsed band creating a backdrop of music for their lyrics. I'm fairly sure that by all outward appearances I looked the picture of serenity, however inside, my stomach kept twisting with anxiety. Suddenly a refrain that I had heard sung before began to play in my mind, ordering my thoughts into alignment with peace.

"There's no striving in Your love. "

In a few minutes my husband and I would be walking to the front of the room to share words of encouragement that we felt God had given us for our community. I was battling with a feeling of having to perform when all I wanted to do was what came most naturally to me: love people.

Sometimes, in wanting to be good people and desiring to do the right thing and not fall flat on our faces in the process, we can find ourselves striving for perfection and in doing so fall out of love.Staying in love means we are still able to see one another; we are still able to connect as one human to another.

I began repeating the refrain over and over in my mind, "there's no striving in your love..." We made our way to the front and as soon I stood, with mic in hand, looking out over the sea of faces, I felt at home, the anxiety melted away and I knew I had stepped out of a fear of man and into a heart of love.

You see prior to looking into those beautiful faces, all I had was my imagination of what could happen next...I would stumble over my words, say the wrong thing, offend somebody...That's what fear does. It presents a list of possibilities to us that are founded in deception with the sole purpose of tripping us up, holding us back from really shining in our full potential.

Think about it in relation to someone you are close to: a family member, spouse or best friend. When you are with them you don't have to try to be somebody or something, you simply get to be. When we are in love we no longer have to strive because everything that comes out of us is in the overflow.

Back in the room with my church community, we left the platform and began interacting with people whose hearts and journeys had connected with the few words of encouragement we had brought with us. The rest of the evening began to unfold, like the opening of a flower's petals to the morning light, with such beauty and vulnerability. I watched hope return to people's hearts and witnessed bodies that had been riddled with pain receive healing.

I was in awe and fear was absolutely nowhere to be found.

Caught in the Waiting Room

  Having a dream is like holding a key which has the potential to unlock our future and fill our life with beauty, adventure, love and excitement. There's risk involved though in dreaming, in knowing when the right time is to use it that key and activate the vision. The last decade has taught me the importance of knowing how to wait for my dreams to come through to completion. The Beauty for Ashes Movement took 8 years of patiently waiting until I began to see the first shoots of life begin to spring forth. When you’re in the waiting room for something it can be hard not to go a little bit stir crazy or become overwhelmed with disappointment; you have to maintain hope and a vision of the promise.There’s a passage from the Bible that is at the heart and foundation of the BFAM and our mission to love women into wholeness, it can be found in Isaiah 61:3 where it reads:

‘…bestow on them a crown of beauty

    instead of ashes…’

I love the whole of this chapter which is alive with God’s promises and vision for justice and restoration as it has caused me to come alive with those same things. Right before Isaiah 61, however, there is Isaiah 60 and the last verse reads:

‘…I am God.

    At the right time I’ll make it happen.’

Essentially, one of the best-known Scriptures, that has helped start numerous movements around the world, is preceded with a reminder that God makes all things come together in their right time and right season. I say this after having walked through my own long season of waiting for my dreams to be fulfilled when many times it felt like I was just being given delay after delay. I definitely shed my fair share of tears, questioned every truth and promise and felt disappointment pierce my heart on several occasions but then things changed and suddenly, with great ease, the dreams of my heart started to become a reality.I’ve learnt that the time I spent waiting was actually a time that God was continuing to build the vision within me and mature my heart to be able to contain it. It wasn’t years wasted but rather years invested.We all have visions, dreams, passions that stir our hearts and cause us to come alive. They are promise seeds to be planted in good soil and benefited with the time and care which will allow them to grow and burst forth. Your dreams will come to pass even if your current circumstances deem them impossible right now. The intricacies of your life journey do not spell out ‘mistake’ or ‘failure’ they display beauty, strength and someone who is wholeheartedly going after their individual purpose and destiny no matter the obstacles they may face.Some dreams occur overnight and others marinate for years before you even see a hint of their existence but, either way, there is always a ‘suddenly’! So I dare you to keep dreaming, purposing, hoping and believing because it will come to pass in its perfect time.