Welcome to my journey, an exploration of sorts.
Before I take you any further on this blog I would like to first explain how I arrived to where I’m at. One day, while doing my typical blog surfing, I came upon a link that read 61 Christian Women forced to have abortions. Being avidly pro-life, I clicked it curious what I would find. I ended up on the China View Blog. What I read left me completely shocked.
While I had known for quite awhile that China practices population control through their one-child policy, and has always hated it, this time it penetrated much deeper. Reading the stories of my Christian brothers and sisters on the other side of the world having their almost to term, and sometimes at term babies, ripped out of their bodies tore a hole in my heart beat. Having a 2 children under the age of 4 it has not been long since I have felt my babies growing inside. The idea of doing your best to keep those babies alive and protect them from a government that wants them dead struck a new chord for me. The government deciding to suck life out of you and killing it with their bare hands if the baby somehow survived the process.
Not much later, I found an article on live human organ harvesting. Having been in a bubble and never having heard of this before, this atrocity seemed too impossible, too inhumane to be true. It seemed like something I would find in a science fiction novel that portrayed the decline of human-kind to the point of zero conscience and empathy. The sad part, it wasn’t a piece of fiction.
Curious about this topic, I dug deeper. I read the human organ harvesting report. Despite the length, I trekked through it over several sittings. At times I had to put it down because I had to do something for my children. Other times the information saddened me so much, I had to put it down. It left me with absolute assurance this practice was both continuing and strengthening in China, despite the government’s complete denial. Of course, the deny Tienanmen Square happened and we have video footage of that event.
I spent a month trying to figure out how to articulate what I was learning. The enormity of what my head and heart were trying to grasp caused words to completely fail me. After that month, I did my best. With so much information, the difficulty of choosing which to share with my readers overwhelmed. I knew most would not have the time or desire to read the lengthy report themselves, but somehow more people needed to find out about what was happening a half-world away.
I kept my eye on the China View Blog and kept praying about what God wanted me to do with this gigantic burden I felt. At times I felt crazy. I felt insignificant. I felt far too insignificant to make any sort of difference in this matter. I questioned over and over the ideas I started coming up with. I kept asking God to take the burden from me. After all, I had learned of many atrocious things over my life-time that broke my heart. But none of them stuck with me like this.
I could not stop thinking about the Chinese people. Those who live in religious oppression and are forced to do that which was against every fiber of what they believe. I kept thinking of the manufacturing industry and the vast amount of workers living and breathing horrible conditions for the sake of saving money. I thought of the vast amount of money China makes on the United States alone, when just about everything about their world-view goes against what we value as a country. What do China and the US have in common, our love of money. And that love of money, that the Bible calls, “the root of all evil”, gives the US and China a sick sort of intimacy. An intimacy that could at some point bring us down.
I know that no matter how insignificant and powerless I prove to be, I have to try something. I have to TRY to make a difference. I have to try to continue learning more and more about China and educate others in the process. I hold no claim of being a China expert. I have so very much to learn in every aspect of the matter, but I’m embarking on a journey to learn more. I have to know why this burdens me so much. I have to try….. (to be continued tomorrow)
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I wrote this post as the first of a two part submission to theWriting Thoughts and Grow Your Writing Business Blogs’ Group writing project called Shared Thoughts 07. The project is to post about a challange, and approach; or a problem and solution through 2 posts on your blog. I needed to write my “about” page anyway. After I post both, they will be compacted into one text on my “about” page.
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