To me, brokenness looks like this: a young girl, tricked into a life of slavery and prostitution, cut off from her family, losing hope each day, with each client she is forced to receive.
And to me, liberation looks like this: the same girl, rescued by an organization dedicated to justice, her captors prosecuted, the girl reunited and reconciled to her family — hope starting to grow again.
It is because of such brokenness and hope for liberation that our community in Bolivia began Suti Sana, an economic and therapeutic option for broken girls. We want to offer them freedom, a chance for healing, and a job that doesn’t break them again and again each time they sacrifice their bodies to strangers.
Suti Sana is all about holistic healing, but it’s also a job. For some of the girls, it’s the first real job they’ve ever had. So this year when we were interviewing the first group of women and girls to enter the program, we stressed the importance of punctuality. Punctuality is, after all, a necessary value in the workplace. We showed grace at first, but gradually our standards became stricter.
And then that girl arrived for an interview — the same girl who was trafficked and then freed. She needed a job, and she was learning to trust in people again, to hope.
The only problem was, she was late to her first interview.
She was almost an hour late to her second interview, at which point I told her firmly that punctuality was very important and asked her when she had left her house.
“Two hours ago,” she answered, nervously.
“That can’t be true,” I answered dubiously. “Buses from your house shouldn’t take more than an hour!” (“LIAR,” screamed my body language. “LIAR!”)
Minutes later she ran out of the Casa de Esperanza, crying. Another staff member ran after her, but the girl told her that she was too ashamed to be interviewed at all.
I was speechless, and after a moment of self-righteous justification, I found myself sobbing in the office. In my rush to push this girl into a positive work ethic, I had shamed her. I had taken her brokenness in my fist and shaken it in front of her as evidence, shattering the dim specter of hope with which she had arrived.
Where did that come from? I had wanted to show compassion, bolster her hope, and love her. Where had the cruelty come from? How had I become the cause of more brokenness in her life?
The next day I nervously climbed up the long, dusty hill to her house. She greeted me shyly and ushered me into a room plastered with movie star posters and smelling of cat. “I’m sorry,” I told her, as I sat on the edge of her bed. “I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly. You deserve more than that.” Before I could say another word, she hurled herself across the bed and hugged me.
“No, I’m sorry,” she sniffed. “Sometimes I give up too easily. I want to try harder. I just need a little support sometimes.”
You know what brokenness looks like to me? A misguided idealist, trying to save the world, and instead being continually fractured and trapped by her own pride and anger.
And liberation? It’s being forgiven by the very girl I thought I was here to heal.
Cara Strauss Contreras’ current joys in Bolivia are the random lovely moments of her first year of marriage, her slow cooker and back-alley bike rides.