speechless.

I had half my Quick Takes written this morning (although, incidentally, Conversion Diary is not hosting it this week), but ended up chucking the whole draft after visiting the website of my husband's cousin, Daniel. His latest post is about human trafficking and after watching the 15-minute video he included, I just couldn't publish my shallow drivel about the adventures I had at Sam's Club this week.

I wish I had more to say on it at this point, but I feel empty-handed and horrified. As I was giving Noah a bath this morning, my mind kept leaping from his squirmy, precious self in my immediate vision to the images I'd seen on Daniel's site. It's the classic cataclysmic awareness of the luxury and ignorance many of us Westerners float in while others suffer on the opposite side of the globe. My childrens' eyes still shimmer with innocence: Theirs is a pure, glowing existence that I struggle every day to preserve. They go to bed at night smelling of vanilla oatmeal lotion, tucked beneath cool, clean sheets with the soothing, dulled sound of their parents' voices traveling down the hallway and filling their rooms while they drift to sleep.

But somewhere... Somewhere there are children whose innocence has been ripped from them. I glimpsed their faces in a video montage for just a few seconds, but the difference between them and my own babies makes me purse my lips. (Maybe, if I brace myself physically, I can prevent the emotion from overwhelming me.) This is not what God wants for the little ones.

Surely it's not -on the whole- what He wants for any of His children, no matter what age they are.

And that is where I'm at.

I'll be researching - reading - praying. I hope you'll be too.