Matthew 9:20-22

20. Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. 21. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”
22. Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart,daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.”And the woman was healed at that moment.

Jesus,

I come to You weary, not wandering, but running.

Not strolling behind You in quiet devotion,
but pressing through the weight of sorrow,
through fear that grips my chest,
through the whispers of defeat that try to convince me that this battle is bigger than Your power.

I am not passive in this season.
I am contending.

Like the woman who fought her way through the crowd,
I am fighting through grief, uncertainty, and exhaustion…
not with fists or weapons,
but with knees bruised by prayer
and hands lifted in thanksgiving before the miracle arrives.

I confess, Lord,
this has felt like war.

Hopelessness has tried to cut me down.
Fear has lunged like a sword.
Sorrow has stalked me in the quiet moments,
telling me to sit, to accept, to brace for disappointment.

But instead…I fall to my knees.
And there, I meet You.

I thank You in advance.
Not because I see the outcome yet,
but because I know Who You are and what You can do.

I am not simply walking after God.
I am chasing freedom for my daughter.
I am running after You in the Spirit,
stretching out every ounce of faith I have left,
believing that if I can just reach You…
if I can just touch the hem of Your garment on her behalf…healing and deliverance will flow.

Jesus, I throw myself at Your throne.
Not because You are distant,
but because my heart is desperate and anchored all at once.

You called the woman in the passage “daughter”.
You spoke tenderness into her suffering.
You honored her faith.
You made her whole.

So I come to You now as a mother,
standing in the gap,
believing that Your same power, same compassion, and same authority lives on today.

I choose faith over fear.
I choose gratitude over despair.
I choose to believe that You are still turning toward those who reach for You with trembling hands and steadfast hearts.

Now I fall on my face at your feet, and take authority over my daughter’s prayers…the little prayers she prayed to you asking to be delivered…and I pray now with her in agreement and ask for her to receive what she prayed believing in Your power…and as she doubts now…I pray on for her…I carry them on her behalf… lifting her up to You…standing in the gap…using my faith where hers is lost…I take charge over her in the Spirit and grab the hem of Your garment for her now…and as I have prayed once before, “I believe, but help me with my unbelief”, so I pray that for her too…thank You for being with her…still…even as she can not see You right now…

Father…I quiet my heart Lord to hear you…

“Take heart”, You said to the woman you healed.
So I do.

I cling to You, Jesus…
not in weakness alone,
but in fierce, surrendered trust, for You are my shepherd…guide my will and my prayers…

I believe you will:

Heal.
Deliver.
Restore.

I believe.

Help me hold fast.

Amen.

“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” Psalm 34:1

This is not a declaration I make because everything is easy.
It is a declaration I make because I know Who God is…regardless of the season I am in.

If you have heard my story, you’ll know why I have so much to be grateful for. As time passes for me though, sometimes gratitude is not always born from abundance, but from remembrance.

Like Job, I have learned that faith is not proven in comfort, but revealed in loss. In the stripping away. In the unanswered questions. In the seasons where obedience feels costly and surrender feels daily…sometimes moment by moment. Yet even there, God remains sovereign. Even there, He is present. Even there, He is so so good.

This season carries ambiguous loss and grief; grief without clean edges, and without a single event to point to. It carries sorrow in parenting, the ache of loving a child so deeply while standing in uncertainty about her future. It carries the quiet fear that creeps in when outcomes are unclear and the weight of responsibility feels heavy.

And still…I bless the Lord.

Because I refuse to forget what He has already brought me through. I can not forget.

I remember who I was before He found me.
I remember the darkness He delivered me from.
I remember the chains He broke, the doors He opened, the life He restored, the child He gave me.

I remember that He called me by name.
That He set me apart with intention.
That He did not rescue me from purpose…but for it.

I remember that Jesus still intercedes for my life before the Father.                                                   That He has conversations over my life.
That His Spirit lives within me: active, alive, guiding, strengthening.
That I have authority over darkness not because of who I am, but because of who He is.

I remember that He equips those He calls.
Even when the calling feels overwhelming.
Even when parenting stretches me beyond what I think I can give.
Even when I am learning…again and again…to release my child back into His hands. To continue to make good on my promise…to give her back to Him.

This child was never mine to possess…only to steward.
And if God used her to bring me back to Him, then I trust He will continue to use her life for His glory, and has already worked out how He will draw her to Him as well. So, I surrender her will, her future, her becoming, and her protection to the One who loves her more than I ever possibly could.

And today, I thank Him in advance…in full faith and belief of a victory already won…

I praise Him in the in-between.
I praise Him in the hard places.
I praise Him in the waiting.
I praise Him not because I understand, but because I trust.

For all things are for His glory.

And my posture must remain one of praise and surrender…heart open, spirit attentive, ready to move when the way becomes clear. Ready to follow as He guides. Ready to trust when He is silent. Ready to surrender when He says to let go…

I will bless the Lord at all times.
Not just when the outcome is good.
Not just when prayers are answered quickly.
But here.
Now.
Even in this season…and beyond.

Because He is faithful.
Because He is present.
Because He is God.

I will bless the Lord at ALL times.

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” Ferdinand Foch

When I think about survivors shaping the world through advocacy, this quote feels less like poetry and more like truth lived out in real time.

A survivor’s soul on fire is not fueled by anger alone…though anger has its place. It is fueled by truth. By clarity. By a refusal to let what tried to silence us have the final word. Survivors know what systems overlook, what policies ignore, and what harm looks like when it hides behind legality, normalization, or convenience. When survivors step into advocacy, they don’t speak in theory. They speak from the scars that healed into wisdom.

That is power.

Survivors don’t just demand change…we shape it. We bring lived experience into rooms where decisions are made without us. We reframe narratives that once blamed us. We expose injustice not because we studied it, but because we survived it. And when one survivor stands up, it ignites courage in others. Fire spreads that way.
What the world often misunderstands is this: survivor advocacy is not about being stuck in the past. It is about redeeming it. It is about refusing to let pain be wasted. It is about transforming suffering into something that protects, educates, and liberates others.

And here is the teaching I carry in my heart:
Pain will either imprison you or propel you, but purpose is what determines the direction.
Turning pain into purpose does not mean rushing healing or pretending wounds didn’t hurt. It means listening for what your story is trying to teach you. It means asking, “How can this serve someone else?” It means allowing God to take what was meant to destroy you and repurpose it for good…just as Scripture promises.

We are told that what the enemy meant for harm, God will use for our good. Not just despite it, but through it.

And joy? Joy is not denial. Joy is defiance. Joy is choosing to live fully, love deeply, and advocate boldly without bitterness chaining your future to your past. Joy is the evidence that healing has taken root.

When survivors lead with truth, with purpose, and with joy, the fire becomes unstoppable.
Nothing is wasted. Not the pain. Not the tears. Not the long nights. Not the survival.
A human soul on fire: refined, redeemed, and rooted in purpose…can change the world.

There is a quiet grief that lives in me right now now, not loud, not dramatic, but steady. It’s the kind of grief that doesn’t come from losing something I once had, but from never quite receiving the thing I’ve longed for in the first place. Ambiguous loss has a way of doing that. It leaves no funeral, no closure, no clear moment where you can say this is where it ended. It just lingers.

When I hear Jordan Davis’s “Next Thing You Know,” I feel the ache of a life that was supposed to unfold in soft milestones…love that grows roots, shared laughter, ordinary days that quietly turn into forever. That song carries the dream of being chosen, of being partnered, of being witnessed as life moves forward. And yet, what echoes louder in my lived experience is the chorus of Ella Langley’s “Choosing Texas”…the leaving, the independence, the self-reliance, the strength forged not by being held, but by having to hold myself.

That contrast has shaped my experience of dating and love. I have loved deeply. I have hoped earnestly. And still, I have not been met in the way my heart has quietly waited for…the way that says, I see you, I choose you, let me care for you the way you care for everyone else. Carrying the weight of the world, of advocacy, of survival, of motherhood, while not having a safe place to rest emotionally… that kind of loneliness settles into the bones.

There are moments when the absence feels louder than anything else. The absence of someone asking how I am and meaning it. The absence of being softened by love rather than sharpened by responsibility. The absence of being held…not because I am strong, but because I am human.

And still… I remain.

I live in acceptance of what is without surrendering the hope of what could be. My mission matters. Raising my daughter matters. The work I do, the lives I touch, the healing I help create – it all matters. I stay spiritually fit because I know joy doesn’t only come wrapped in romance. It comes in purpose. In faith. In moments of peace that arrive quietly and unexpectedly. In laughter with my child. In knowing that my life has meaning even in the waiting.

Hope, for me, is no longer naïve…it is resilient. It doesn’t demand immediate fulfillment. It simply whispers, Maybe someday. And until that day, I continue to choose life as it is now: grounded, honest, lonely at times, but still open. Still believing that my childhood dream of love…real love…can arrive later without invalidating the fullness of the life I’ve already built.

This is where I am: holding space for grief and gratitude at the same time. Accepting the quiet ache. Walking forward anyway with a smile. And trusting that joy, in whatever form it comes, is still allowed to find me. Until then…cheers.

Being an advocate is deeply meaningful to me today. The truth is…advocacy often starts in the quiet moments. It starts when someone is finally believed. When a door is opened. When a safe place is offered without judgment….with this environment, hope grows into the belief of possibility while courage moves us into action.

Looking back,…I never imagined that the most painful chapters of my life could someday fuel a mission to protect others. I never saw myself as particularly brave and advocacy wasn’t a role I sought, it was simply something I grew into out of necessity. I spoke up because silence was no longer an option. I kept going because I met others who had endured far worse and deserved far better. It became a solution to consistent barriers that needed breaking down, and an attitude of perseverance and lack of willingness to take no for an answer.

Advocacy, to me, is also about walking alongside others, not in front of them, gently leading and clearing the path just enough so they can move forward with dignity, power, and choice. It’s about changing broken and flawed systems, and rewriting the narratives we’ve been told about who deserves safety and freedom.

There’s still so much work to do, but today, I pause to reflect with gratitude. I am grateful to have had enough resilience left after the pause in my suffering to turn it around into resistance of the acceptance of things as they are, and the belief in a world that can’t be changed. I’m blessed to have gained a community of others like myself where together we fight for a world where the advocacy we do is no longer necessary, and I’m not in this alone. Some days are more tiring than others, but I pray I never lose my fire, nor stop listening to the spirit that guides it all. I pray that I carry the hope forward with purpose, so I may continue to fight until every person has the freedom, the safety, and the dignity they deserve.

Early childhood sexual abuse and then rape by the age of 14 pushed my fragile mind and vulnerable body into the arms of exploitation after running away from home at 15. Over the next 17 years, I experienced both labor and sex  trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, domestic violence, and servitude. I was labor trafficked 3 times before the age of 18, and as an adult, due to my grooming and volnurability to sexual exploitation, by the age of 21 I had fallen deeply into commercial sexual exploitation through legal chanels of prostitution via strip clubs and escort services. I nearly lost my life at the hands of sex buyers on more than one occasion during this period. I was trapped in a system of prostitution that I thought I could control, but in truth, I was nothing more than an object for sale. Nothing more than a body to be used by men as they saw fit…..but I learned very young that that’s what men want.
When money changed hands, I was expected to comply with every whim and desire, and it never truly felt like consent. If I refused to comply, I was beat or strangled, and then finally…at the age of 22… left for dead. As an adult adapted to my life, I had fleeting moments of false empowerment as I could sometimes have the final say in who, what, when, and where….but this wasn’t empowerment,….it was SURVIVAL…and then finally….through legal avenues of sexual exploitation, I was trafficked again…only this time for sex. I escaped after another near death experience at the hands of a buyer and walked away from that industry entirely….only to fall victim to DV and then labor trafficking once more and forced servitude. This time…taken across state lines all over the US. Now 30 years old, stuck in this life I thought I could not escape, pregnant and hopeless, my only way out was to try and take my life.

My whole life until this point, I  felt as if I was screaming inside for something to change, for a real chance at a life of happiness…whatever that was. I did not know..nor could Idare to dream of my life ahead far removed…but I survived…and at last…I made it out…for as a young mother…I had to find a way to keep my baby girl safe…so a month before her first birthday, I found an out after another beating, and I fled and never looked back.

Today I barely recognize the woman and girl I once was, for I found myself with real purpose…that of being a mother, and that purpose grew not only to protect her, but now to safegaurd ever other woman and girl finding themselves abandoned by systems that were meant to keep them safe, and cast aside by those they loved, left to be used for sexual gratification by the rest of the world that feeds off of their loss, volnurability, and pain.
For far too long, we’ve let people view sex trafficking and prostitution as something separate or as a vitimless or non serious crime, but not as a form of gender-based violence. Not as inherently harmful as it is. Making excuses for those who benefit the most when legislation ignores our pleas and looks the other way. In reality it’s, extreme violence against women and girls like me, and until laws like the survival model are passed, we will continue to be abused and lose our lives while society turns a blind eye to its complicity as it allows perpetrators to go unchecked. Too long these systems have revictimised by adding blame on the exploited and enough is enough. We have had enough. We are dying out here.

The survivor model is the way, and it doesn’t just provide exit from exploitation, but assistance  with funding for victim support straight from the pockets that purchased us and relieves financial burden from the state. It ensures that there are stronger legal tools to target the predators who think they can buy and sell human lives. It also educates our communities and breaks down the normalization of one of the oldest forms of oppression of women and girls.

Hear us now. We can not waste any more time debating the difference between sex trafficking and the harms of prostitution or whether or not there is agency in it, because while you do….we keep dying. DO NO HARM. Listen to survivors and send a clear message to victims that they are heard, seen, and valued.

I’m am long past the pain of what I’ve endured but I’m still screaming inside…only now from the frustration I feel at all the ears that refuse to hear the truth about the harms of prostitution and other forms of exploitation. I’m calling out for help from all of you now… all of you in seats that have the power to offer us hope and safety. I’m calling out for all the Me’s out there still fighting to survive. HELP US. SAVE US. RESCUE US. For those still stuck, do not know the way.

If you knew what I’ve been through,
You’d know why I care so deeply.
If you knew what I’d had to do to stay alive,
You’d know why I fight so hard.
If you knew what I’ve faced,
You’d know why I never stop trying.
If you knew what I have lost,
You’d know why I give as I do.
If you knew how I’ve lived,
You’d understand my tired eyes at times.
But If you knew how I survived,
Then you’d know why I love Him so much

…and how now I thrive.

When I start thinking about us, i start thinking in these narrow tunnels…tunnels that block everything out accept you and me and this growing devotion for you that I feel…and none of the day to day problems seem to matter….you see….it’s because of you that I drop fragments of my emotions everywhere I walk with each smile from my thoughts of you…..that everywhere I go and no matter where I am I feel like it will always be a part of us….for loneliness and despair has faded away and turned to Jubel…hope floats freely with every new step forward….and this…this worship i feel trickling through every fiber of my being…warming my viens, flowing all around as I pass by every place I have been with you and hope to be…leaving a mark in this world that’s lost its belief in love….rewiring my memories….reminding me of possibility…as you’ve moved my heart to want to pursue this life with you…to honor you and bring you glory…so here I am waiting…your extravagant gift…egar and hopeful…charged by your care…drawing out my future on your word….and with your breath in my lungs…I’m grateful as far as the east is to the west for you see me…you see me dressed in white…

When your life shatters, it’s like staring back at yourself through a broken mirror, it takes time to pick up the pieces and glue them back together.

In the beginning it’s hard to imagine that you could even do it. The pain cuts so deeply, but you will gather the strength to face the feelings and sift through the brokenness.

You can not however ignore it, for your edges will be left sharp, hurting not only you, but those who come into contact with you. So facing it is your main priority no matter how long it takes.

It’s okay to take your time. Stop and allow the feelings to be and then keep moving. Keep binding. When you feel you can’t go on, the need for survival will push you forward…

This is your time for growth, and there is no time limit. Just start with the first clear piece in front of you.

As you begin to bind the pieces you will see other areas needing improvement, and when it’s finally done, the mirror (your perspective) is not the same. It is now fortified leaving more room to build new life.

You now have multiple lenses to see through, and you can begin to be grateful for the disruption in your life, though painful, that brought you to this new point…the realization of who you really are, and who you can be. A stronger version of you filled with lines of unique character exposing, not weaknes, but courage, wisdom, and beauty. In the end you will see it was necessary.

Marjorie Saylor 5/3/21

When the memories past no longer haunt your every wish , the heart can beat again.
Gentle whispers of laughter tickling your cheek, add a spring to your step.
Hopes snuffed flame burns again, and trust comes knocking once more.
Courage pulls you forward, as confidence embraces anew.
The lungs new life rhythm sets the tone for an imperfect and exciting dance.
It carries on each learning step, growing bold…..into the night…..on into eternity.
Dance……dance……dance…..for you’re walking free.

7/24/19