Latest / The Rachelle Starr Podcast / The Night She Was Gone | The Rachelle Starr Podcast Episode 13
Transcript
- PodcastE13 1920x1080 R1: Hi, I'm Rochelle, the host of the Rochelle Star Podcast, where we equip the church to bring the hope and love of Jesus to women in the adult entertainment industry. We're going to be having honest conversations about what that really looks like. So if you've ever wondered how to engage in this space or how to do it well, you're in the right place. Welcome back to the Rochelle Starr Podcast. I'm Rochelle Starr and I'm excited to talk about our subject today, which is when women walk away. Or more pointedly, when anyone walks away that you've invested time, energy, and love and care in. What does that look like? And you know, after 20 years, I've had quite a bit of experience with this, and I would love to just kind of open up what that looks like. How do I grieve through those processes? How do I let go and not get burned out? How do I allow those situations to be what they were created to be for that season and and then allow God to work in my life, in their life, and trust that God will still be with them as they go? I want to start by telling you the first time that this happened, that I remember this happening in my life. I had invested quite a bit of my own. personal life into this woman that I had met in the club. The story goes like this. I was in another club. We were we had teams in about ten clubs and I was in one across town and I got a call from our te an another teammate, another church lady, and she said there's a woman that is living in her car of the strip club and she has two children with her and she needs help. Well, it was about midnight, so we had nowhere for this mom to go, so this mom and her two kids came back to my house. And I began walking alongside her and my husband began walking alongside her and her whole family very closely. She ended up living with me for nine months, and through those nine months I learned a lot. Number one, I learned that once again I am not in charge of her life, that I'm not the expert on her life that she is. And I didn't quite learn this the right way then, but and it would be through many, many more experiences later that I would come to understand that that the women that we're going to serve, the women that we love and care for aren't always going to do what you want them to do. Does that sound familiar? I have many people in my own life, in my own personal world outside of Scarlet Hope, that this applies to as well. And that's How life is. I can only be responsible for myself. She can only be responsible for herself, but sometimes God intersects our paths for a season. So this particular woman lived with my husband and I for about nine months, and her kids lived there too, and we got them into school and into daycare for her youngest one. We helped her get a job and I would drive her to her job. There and back. It was about a twenty-five minute drive each day. And I came to learn that she was actually, as soon as I was dropping her off at her job, she was taking a taxi back to the club. And this would go on for many, many months before I realized it. And once I s we realized it and I sat her down and I started talking with her, I started realizing that the survival skills that she had learned and the need that she had had was far more than we could ever provide. And so mu a couple months would go by and she would eventually one night in the middle of the night leave and never come back. And to this day, that that story happened in 20 eleven or so, to this day I've I've never heard from this woman again. That moment in time when I woke up and they weren't there began to form in shape. something that I would later learn as a trauma response to getting too close to yes, some of you might say to to not wanting take to take accountability for her own life for her actions. But ultimately I I have reconciled with that that that story, I was in her life for a season. And years would go by where I would wonder where she was at, or you know, if she would pop up on Facebook again and where the kids were at. And and it was grievous. It was something that was really difficult to walk through. I cared for her and her kids. I cared for her family. I wanted the very best for her. And I ultimately wanted more for her than she wanted for herself. And those moments in time I had to I have to learn to lay at the Lord's feet. And trust that God who created this woman and her children in his image was in control. That he knew her story from beginning to end. And that for the moments, the months that she was in my home and in our ministry, that that they were for a reason. That she got to experience grace, that she got to experience love and safety, and that she got to experience friendship that would hopefully And I pray someday, wherever she's at, that have formed the rest of her life. What happens when women walk away? One of the things that we've seen in our ministry is that when women begin to experience that closeness where they get close to a community or they get close to a ministry or they get close to an individual, that can be very scary. Because they haven't experienced that safety before. They haven't experienced that love before. And all of a sudden, as the I believe as the enemy would have it, he begins to speak lies to them, that it's not safe to be known, that it's not safe to be with other people, and and to have that human connection. It's very foreign to most of the women that we serve. And so when we when we now look at this, we set up the relationships typically from the beginning and we teach and we train people that our response and our care and our love to the women are not dependent upon their response back to us. That we hold those things very loosely and carefully and with the Lord and with the Holy Spirit. That way when they return to the industry or when they walk away from us completely, whether They're angry or whether they think we didn't give them something that they wanted, or whether they're just simply it's too close for comfort. We know where we stand with the Lord, with them, and with others. I recently attended a training where we were learning about codependency, and it was the the definition is essentially when we lose ourself in someone else. And All throughout this ministry, I have come into contact with a lot of volunteers and a lot of people that struggle in this area. I think honestly, we probably all struggle with this. But codependency is when we need someone else to fulfill something within us. And so sometimes when women walk away from our ministry or women walk away from a relationship within our ministry, it can be devastating to the volunteers. It can be devastating to us. And I would just want to stop and ask, where is that devastation coming from? Is it coming from the need to be fulfilled by that person responding or succeeding or coming to know the Lord? Is it is it coming from a place of our own woundedness where we haven't maybe let the Lord and the Holy Spirit heal within us? Where is that codependency coming from? And how can we w work with in partnership with the Holy Spirit and in partnership with the Lord? To make sure that we are not needing their response to fulfill something within us or to complete something with within us. I really have many stories of women that have come and gone in this ministry. And some of them have come and gone and and actually some of them have gone away and many, many years later they've come back. This actually just happened to me this very week. I was checking my Facebook messenger account and women often message me through there and keep me updated on their lives. But I had not talked to this particular woman since 2014. And she messaged me this week and she said, Rochelle, I miss you. I would love to catch up and tell you where I'm at. And I said, I'd love to hear where you've been, what you've been doing. And she said, let me just tell you this. I'm walking with the Lord And I'm in a much better place than where you found me. This is an incredible truth about how human connection works, about what, about really trusting and resting in the Lord that He is always working. He's always working even when we're not. It can really help me as a leader and as somebody who walks along in this ministry for decade after decade and hopefully after more decades, trust and rest in the work. of the Lord. That this woman who I thought left and I would never see again. And at that time when she left, it was was hurtful. I I missed her. I was in relationship with her for a really long time and in friendship with her. But now to have her come back around, it brings joy to my heart that God has been with her this entire time. So when women walk away from our ministry, I think there are two things that I want to end with. Number one I think sometimes God uses that in their life. And He absolutely, number two, uses it in our life to make sure that we know who is in control. He is. Thank you for listening to the Rochelle Star podcast. If this conversation encouraged you or challenged you, I'd invite you to take the next step. Whether that's learning more, getting involved, or sharing this episode with someone else. At Scarlet Hope, we believe consistent presence changes lives, and there's a place for you in this work. You can learn more at ScarletHope.org.