Rysmom - time to open up your mind and heart to the world girlfriend.
I listen to that sort of music sometimes. I also enjoy great, hot, intimate and sometimes kinky sex. I occasionally watch porn with my lover and sometimes I even ride motorcycles wearing leather. I’ve also been known to drink too much wine and stay out too late!!! I’ve got 3 tattoos and one of them is visable!! 
But I'm not evil or at odds with God. God blesses me everyday with abundance, hope and happiness.
I'm a very healthy, very happy 40 year old woman, who has fun, loves life and engages with the world every opportunity I get. I go to church. I work for more than half of each month in developing countries engaging women and other marginal groups to build their social and economic capacity. I work with priests, pastors, nuns, sex workers, community leaders, politicians, mothers, men who are violent to their wives, tribal chiefs who make war on their neighbours, women who neglect their children ….
The thing I’ve learned, is that every single person in this world is a child of God and it doesn’t matter if you are an African woman selling herself to pay for food and education for her children, or an Engan warlord determined to kill as many people as he has to to secure land for his tribe … every single one of us is just doing the best we can under the circumstances.
It’s not our place to judge how men live. That’s up to God. What I know is that I come across people every day who behave in ways that a middle-class, anglo-Christian culture might define as “wrong” – but they are doing what they have to do to fulfil what they think is their role here on earth.
I met a sex-worker last week at a Human Rights awareness seminar. We talked for about an hour. She is about 10 years younger than me and she’s got 8 children. She’s from a remote rural village that has no roads, no water or santiation and no access to the cash economy. Her promised husband abandoned her, and she was so ashamed to be left that she left her village and went to the city to get work. The subsequent children she bore were conceived by clients. She has no access to medical treatment and when she asks a man to wear a condom, she’s often assaulted – and then made to have unprotected sex. She is HIV+. She is illiterate, she takes drugs to numb herself while she’s working and there is some evidence that she may be involved in the organized crime cartel in the place she lives. So on the face of it – a “bad” person yes? The reality is, she’s a woman who has 5 children to support with no skills or attributes to contribute to the mainstream economy. She does what she has to do. After we’d spoken and I was leaving, she said to me, in her language, which is much more colourful than this rough translation … “I am ashamed of my life, but I am proud that God has given me a heart to love with and hands to cook with … maybe that’s all any person deserves.” Then she asked me to pray with her.
Ironically, its often the priests, pastors and politicians, who on the face of it appear to be living “upright and godly lives” who are those carrying hate and prejudice in their hearts. I think that’s what God despises.
We are sent on this life journey to learn how to Love. Love means acceptance and it means tolerance. It means loving and giving in spite of all the other stuff.
It’s time for you to learn how to Love, Rysmom. Love yourself (I know it’s easier said than done – but you can do it) and the rest will fall into place.
(((hugs))) V
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
