Having a calling is hard enough to figure out. 

When I searched my soul for answers to why I am here, I kept hearing quite plainly, 'women'.  I looked at the heavens and said, "No, you don't mean me lord."  I've lived through violence, personally and within my family, and I certainly do not want anything to do with that mess.  I am no stranger to domestic violence and relationship issues. As a child I saw my mother and brothers and sisters beat.  I was molested as a child, raped in my first year of college, and again as an adult.  I have felt intense fear and unsafe in a marriage.  I continued to pray, knowing that I had read the message wrong.  I saw violence all around me, and hid my face.  "God, you can't mean me - it is too painful."   And it kept getting closer, because I did not do anything about it.

It wasn't until my fragile little niece was raped by her estranged step father that I said enough!  The judge had given this man who had hurt her before, visiting rights with her little brother - the stepfather was no relation to her, but the judge said he was the closest thing to a father to the little girl and against her mother's pleading that he had hurt the child before, visiting rights were established.  A broken arm, and the court ignored it.  Situation after situation went before the courts, and the judge sided with the slick-haired mamma's boy...until he finally raped the tiny featured 10 year old girl.

Two years later after his big city lawyers had postponed the proceedings on numerous occasions, he was arrested on multiple counts of rape of his second step daughter who was two years younger than the first.

To make matters worse, this little girl had gone to her mother repeatedly, and her mother ignored it and told her not to make things up...the abuse continued.  This mother was later arrested for not doing anything to help the child, leaving her at the hands of a preditor who raped her at will.

An unexpected turn in the case came when the parents of the man, who had paid the high fees for the out of town legal firm, were both arrested as accessories because they knew what was going on and did not stop it.  They posted bail - he and the mother of the child are still in jail awaiting trial.

As the case developed further toward trial, it came out that an infant daughter of the man and his girlfriend(the same mother that ignored the older daughter).  There were multiple counts against him for this tiny little girl.


That same month my niece was raped, a local man went to the local McDonalds to visit his estranged wife where she worked.  He shot her dead on her break when she went out to talk to him. 


Another missing woman from the area I lived in, turned up years later, decomposed, buried in the sawdust at the sawmill a little over a mile through the woods from my home. 


It seemed that every few days the media blared about another women were being hurt; children were being abducted, raped and killed.  The University that I taught at said there were over 1000 reported rapes a year.  I saw lives being destroyed by what seemed like a deep anger and disregard for women.  I have three little granddaughters - And I said no more!   I do not want another generation to feel the pain and emotional scarring. We have to stand up and turn the tide of anger and violence toward women and children.

It is time.

Aheshe