Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Healing in the Aftermath of Abortion

Her urgent voice traveled over the phone line.
“Where are you, honey?” I sat at my station, scribbling notes on a form provided by the crisis pregnancy center.
“I’m in a phone booth. My mom’s in the grocery store, and she wants me to get an abortion, but I don’t want another one. And if Daddy finds out I’m pregnant, he’ll kick me out of the house.”
I’d received many such intake calls over my two years working at the center. Desperate unwed moms, most of them teenagers, crying out for hope and help. Some of them succumbing to abortions, others, thankfully ending up on our doorstep. My heart hurt for them and also for their unborn babies whose lives hung in the balance. I’d seen the prenatal pictures of a baby’s development, but never did the reality of preborn human life hit me harder than in 1981.
            In November of that year, my husband and I lost our second baby at four months gestation—a perfectly-formed baby boy spanning the length of the obstetrician’s hand. He called it a “spontaneous abortion.” We called him David Nathaniel.
I had no choice in the abortion. My body simply and horribly rejected my child. I not only grieved over my loss, but for all the babies who had been aborted by choice. And for all the mothers who had been duped into thinking that their babies were merely globs of tissue, easily discarded. To my horror, four years later, we lost another baby—Allison Marie.  
Viewing my premature babies, complete with miniature fingernails and tiny toes, gave me a greater appreciation for the sacredness of life at every stage. Sadly, to date, over 50 million babies have died due to abortion on demand. How God’s great heart must grieve over this senseless slaughter of innocent lives. Psalm 139 details how a loving God carefully and meticulously fashions each one of us in the womb, thinks about us day and night, covers us with His hand, and numbers all our days. We are made in His image. So, both preborn babies and their mothers are precious to God. To destroy a life He has created is to tamper with His image. In the case of abortion, a baby’s physical life is destroyed and the mother’s emotional, spiritual, and sometimes even physical well-being is damaged.
Through my latest release, Laughing with Lily, I want women who’ve undergone abortion to know that God loves them, just as deeply and completely as He loves their babies. No matter the guilt or grief they carry, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Wounded Healer, stands ready to cover them with His healing and forgiveness (see Isaiah, chapter 53). And I desire women who haven’t experienced an abortion to understand that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. We all need healing in some form, and when we experience God’s forgiveness through Christ, we can approach others with a balance of truth and grace. 

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