Category: Uncategorized

Rejection

“I haven’t experienced rejection much” says Stacey.

“I am enough. I’ve proven stubborn and hard-working to see things I want to come to fruition. I have been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years without employees. The only rejection I’ve experienced professionally is when I don’t click with a potential client. That is a rare occurrence, one where the decision is likely mutual. Thus, the sting of rejection is new to me.

Friday morning, I was riding a natural high like no other. It was like NOTHING could stop Team Traffic Stop. Lisa and I had our first television interview with NTV Good Life. If I do say so myself, it went well. We were badasses sharing our cause. We thought, “Let’s get breakfast and strategize our next move.” So, we took our supportive spouses out for brunch.

A Christian bookstore is near to where Team Traffic Stop was sharing a celebratory meal.  

Lisa and I walked into the bookstore with our sales pitch prepared. The owner was excited and purchased five Traffic Stop: Human Division novels on the spot and invited me to join the store next week for a book signing on their anniversary! With our egos a bit more inflated, Lisa and I went into business mode and prepared to get some work done for that event.

Then, I received an email from the owner stating that she should have done more research before her purchase and invitation. She said she would not be supporting the sale of this book or hosting a promotion at her store. She said the novel was not compliant with biblical teachings since I had used words like “chimera” (a scientifically proven human state) and “spiritual guide” (a guardian angel). Additionally, she said from what she read on the back cover, some 5-star reviews, and the few explicit pages in between were too much. She took back her original offer. 

I felt like I was the anti-Christ in her eyes when we went back to pick up the books. I said, “I respect your decision. I just wish you would have read the entire novel before you made that judgment call because I believe all Christians need to be aware that child trafficking happens in our communities. And it is ugly. I wanted the reader to understand the perpetrator’s perspective so they would know the signs of people to keep their children away from. I explicitly shared the feelings of a victim because we need to empathize with their pain. If Christians were aspiring to live as Jesus did, we need to do something as Christians to stop modern-day slavery.”

She was visibly shaking. She wanted to exorcize me from her business and all the manipulation/evil I represented to her.

I walked out with my rejected novel (after returning her check to her), feeling deflated and misunderstood. I felt like a vulnerable, abandoned little kid again who knew (without testing the theory by telling an adult) that if I disclosed childhood sexual abuse, no one would want to listen. I felt like the bad one, exposing this act of violence against children.

Childhood sexual abuse, childhood sexual imaging (aka pornography – which it isn’t because pornography implies consent), and human sex trafficking on vulnerable people

HAPPEN.  EVERYDAY. 

And it breaks our hearts.

It ruins a child’s natural ability to trust another human being and to be in healthy interpersonal relationships. It destroys their sense of safety and whether they want to be in this world where people hurt them. It confuses them sexually. Their greatest gift, the core of who God created them to be, their sexuality, was stolen (manipulated, coerced, or forced).

So, YES…I am passionate about getting this novel out there to be a conversation catalyst about what we are teaching and NOT teaching our children about healthy relationships. Lisa and I are doing our part to protect their innocence in this corrupt world.

The picture I want to set your minds of what we are doing is;

We are securing the sandbags (education/awareness) upstream from Niagra Falls to deter the flow of our children falling over the waterfall’s turbulent precipice. We hope this diverts many innocent lives from falling victim to confusion, shame, and fear. Trying to catch the kids as they fall has proven to be ineffective (therapy after the crime takes years) It’s time to do something different (prevent).

sponsoring us to present free information to communities on how to become more informed about human trafficking, dispel the myths, and become more aware of what to look for so we can prevent another human soul from being engulfed by the pit of the Falls,” Stacey stated.