A Modern Luxury

Virginity is a luxury.  In our world of promiscuity, safe sex, and birth control, we can easily forget that our bodies are something to be protected and consecrated.  We throw away a greater treasure for a one-night stand.  We sub intimacy for immediate gratification.

I was raised with the godly view that I should save my body for marriage.  I was taught that I had value and that I shouldn't go after cheap imitations of love.  I should wait until I've said my vows, and give my husband the greatest gift I could give him on our wedding night - my virginity.  It's a beautiful dream, and one that I was blessed to have come true in my own life.  I traded my purity ring for my wedding ring.

I am blessed.

However, as I look into the plight of the thousands of women in Thailand, I realize that my virginity was a luxury.  I had my choice on how I was going to use my body.  Many women around the world are not given that same choice.  They have to choose instead whether to prostitute their bodies or starve or see their children starve.  They have no skills on which to fall back on, and so they are left desperate.  They have loans that were loaned at 300% interest that they will never be able to repay.  They sell their own underage daughter's virginity to the highest bidder which pays only a pittance of their extortionate loans.  These young girls are not given a choice.

I found this article on the Charis Project's blog.  It talks of women in Cambodia.  Here's an excerpt:

When a poor family in Cambodia fell afoul of loan sharks, the mother asked her youngest daughter to take a job. But not just any job. 

The girl, Kieu, was taken to a hospital and examined by a doctor, who issued her a "certificate of virginity." She was then delivered to a hotel, where a man raped her for two days. 

Kieu was 12 years old. 

"I did not know what the job was," says Kieu, now 14 and living in a safehouse. She says she returned home from the experience "very heartbroken." But her ordeal was not over. 

After the sale of her virginity, her mother had Kieu taken to a brothel where, she says, "they held me like I was in prison." 

She was kept there for three days, raped by three to six men a day. When she returned home, her mother sent her away for stints in two other brothels, including one 400 kilometers away on the Thai border. When she learned her mother was planning to sell her again, this time for a six-month stretch, she realized she needed to flee her home.

My life is so different from that of Kieu's.  She was bought by filthy men who cared nothing for her as a person.  My life is so very different.  This is my story:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.  I Corinthians 6:19-20

Yes, I was bought too.  I was bought by my loving, perfect Savior through His blood on the cross.  He took my guilt away, and asks that I glorify Him in my whole body.  Kieu was bought by a sinful man who took away her innocence and defiled her.  I have value through being the temple of the Holy Spirit of God.  What does Kieu have?

How can I glorify God with my whole body?  Could I use this weak vessel to help girls like Kieu get out of their nightmare? Can more be done to help these girls?  Please pray for these women.  It is happening all over the world.