Escape, a guest post by Author April McGowan

Escape

by April McGowan

When you’re young, everything emotional feels overwhelming. What to wear, who to hang out with, homework, parental pressure, peer pressure. It’s big. For some young people, though, they also have to wade through neglect, and sexual and physical abuse. And for some of those, the allure of living on their own, getting away from it all, is too high and they run away. They escape—but where they end up is even more a prison than they’ve ever experienced before.

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Every day, approximately 1.3 million runaway, thrown away, and homeless youth live on the streets of America. Children, both boys and girls, are solicited for sex, on average, within seventy-two hours of being on the street. Some of those are drawn into formal prostitution—from which escape means beatings and sometimes death. There’s a lot of money in sex trafficking—and pimps don’t want to lose their investment.

When I wrote my novel, Jasmine, I was trying to imagine what life for a young woman who’d survived that life might be like—the things she’d have to overcome, and what she might be doing if she’d escaped. In my novel, Jasmine takes up the plight of the runaway, the homeless young women, and tries to save them from their situations—from themselves. She yearns to give them a hope for the future.

My novel is a work of fiction. But if you’ve never thought about the statistics and lifestyle of those kids on the street, you’ve probably hoped for someone like Jasmine. The good news is, those people DO exist. And they can help. They are the hands and feet of Christ, reaching out to the broken, giving them a safe place to live and setting their feet on the path of complete restoration.

Please donate to the Portland Rescue Mission’s Shepherd’s Door at http://www.portlandrescuemission.org/lp/2013lp/jasmine/   (designate women and children’s recovery) and at Door To Grace http://www.doortograce.org/. Both of these incredible ministries aid in rescuing, healing and restoring.

Author April McGowen

April McGowan loves to read and write inspirational fiction. Her novel, Jasmine, releases digitally in June and to paperback in September. She and her husband, two children, and her ‘mews’, Spookers, live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. April is a member of Oregon Christian Writers and American Christian Fiction Writers. When she’s not writing, homeschooling her two children, or playing board games, you might find her at her drum kit, imagining she’s on a world tour. Hey, it could happen. Follow her blog at http://aprilmcgowan.com