Each week I leave a short story or video blog here about where I saw love in action during the previous week.  Looking for love in the world around us inspires us to look for love everywhere - especially in our marriages.  Leave your story in the comments section about how you saw love in action last week!  Or write about it on your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments section (and be sure to link your readers over here so they can see more stories about love in action!).

There is something about women in our culture who are selling their bodies for the sexual fulfillment of men that is confusing to me.  My experience says that as a women in the United States, I have so many other choices about how to use my body and how to earn money.  I did not grow up as a young girl in the Red Light District of India.  I do not have a heritage of sex trade.  And as a result, I have trouble conceptualizing how and why these choices are being made in a country that seems to provide so many other options for women.  Maybe cycles of poverty, abuse, and lack of options have not lent the same experience to some women in my country; in my city.   Maybe the idea of having a $100 bill tucked into your G-string does not feel like a problem when your alternative is standing on your feet at McDonald’s all day, for minimum wage.  I rarely feel judgement towards women who are strippers, escorts, or prostitutes; but I do feel sadness and regret.  I feel anger towards a culture that has come so far and yet has left these women in a position where dancing in front of a bunch of abusive men strung out on coke is even an option; let alone a good one.

Some feminists would say it is their choice and their right give lap dances and have sex for money.  And that when done willingly, it is even liberating and fulfilling.  To me, that just sounds like a modern day middle finger to all of the men who have scared them and abused them; now THEY get to be in charge.  Either scenario sounds, to me, filled with painful stories.  Well, I am not here to figure that out, but what I do know is that every time I drive by a small, windowless cinder block building that touts any variation of “LIVE*NUDE*GIRLS”, I become a very dangerous combination of sad and angry.  I want very badly to see those women released from what looks to me like a modern day, acceptable form of sexual slavery - women whose circumstances sort of pin them into a corner and leave them without a lot of other options.  I am sad for all of the girlhood dreams of becoming doctors, artists, and airplane pilots that were either never born or used as someone elses’ plaything, until they ceased to exist.

When my friend Kevin sent me  this link and video, I found myself, through tears, relieved to know that someone, somewhere has figured out how to take light and love into what seems to be a very dark place.  They set aside their judgements and agendas and desire to figure out this cultural catastrophe.   They decided to take only one personal value in with them - the value to love other women in ways that are tangible.  They are called Jesus Said Love, and they are doing just that.