Posted on 07/08/2008 3:40:37 AM PDT by johnstown
Her skin was flawless, her manner graceful, her laugh infectious। Further, she came from an upper-middle class Christian home। She had attended a Christian college। Her boyfriend went to her church.
When she sat with my wife and me, however, her glance was anxious। And her hands twisted one another. Her shoulders bent under troubling weight. How else does one look after having had an abortion?
"We sat in the clinic," she said, "and we saw others from my college।" She and her boyfriend had huddled together in the outer room of the abortion trade. There had been none of their usual laughter, only embarrassed eyes touching one another, then glancing off onto beige walls.
"My family must never know," she said। "They'd die. They would. . ." She began to cry. Speaking in half sentences had become common that night. Confusion mixed with hurt overwhelmed language. Grammar was molded to fit the wounds inside.
Reliving the nightmare was not easy, for her or for us। Light from living room lamps glowed too brightly for tired eyes. The usually cozy parsonage turned into an impersonal barracks of the soul. We yearned for escape.
But escape would not come। What had been done was stamped upon the minds of those involved. When going to sleep, It all came back, rushing against the nerves to yank and pull. On awakening, it was the same. As long as the body housed the spirit, there would be cries against the injustice done.
These were not my conclusions, nor the political statements of one running for office, nor pronouncements from some aloof pulpit। They were anguished cries. They were pieces of a broken heart that kept pumping out its fear and guilt.
She went on and on। At times we tried to say something helpful; at times we let silence soothe. Then, she would start all over--mumbled sentences, the awful stare at the ceiling, more tears, pressing her hands against her face, then dropping them into her lap.
I had preached sermons on abortion। I had Bible passages I could pull out handily, and I had written articles dissecting the theological fine points. But confronting it in the raw was another matter. What to do with a soul set on fire with its own burning coals was a complicated assignment.
Once, at the invitation of the teacher, I had spoken against abortion to a public high school class, along with a representative from Planned Parenthood। The latter told how youth could get an abortion without having to tell their parents. Now, in my living room, I wondered how that rep would have dealt with this torn woman.
At public functions where "choice" advocates appeared in their expensive outfits, speaking with poise and confidence, I'd heard them refute prolifers in the audience, speaking about freedoms--this right and that right। That night, I wondered what they would say now. It is one thing to speak academically on the subject. It is quite another to attempt to bring sanity to one crushed by the act.
I recalled the first time this girl and her boyfriend had come to our church। They had appeared so handsome, sparkling, happy. They had opened the hymnal together. They had sat close during the sermon. They had smiled politely while shaking my hand after the services. When they entered a room, people had taken note. Without trying, they had easily modeled the ideal couple.
However, people are complicated। They reflect the complexities of life itself. It should not have come as a surprise when we received a call asking if we could chat--only to have this young woman spill out the substance of the appointment: abortion.
I doubt if anyone in ministry is ever fully equipped for human sufferings। Certainly walking through the dark halls of abortion's aftermath is one duty that goes beyond our resources. There have been other times when we have listened to these cries. The faces were different, but the cries strikingly similar. Each time, it gets harder.
Instead of finding more precise tools for counseling, we confront our frailty as helpers with ever deeper ache। We try to be more refined and professional but when it comes to abortion--the killing of the innocent--we discover more inadequacies within our sincere attempts at healing.
What did we do right? Perhaps our reminders of the grace of God--regardless of what we have done--brought some solace। Perhaps the message of the divine search to continue to forgive, to glue pieces back together again, brought hope. I pray so. I also think the silence was worth something.
Our being there, our gentle graces--would to God that they were more। Perhaps these young women have sensed our willingness to keep listening and crying with them and groping for God's kind face again. I believe it all adds up to some eternal balm.
Nevertheless, I dread these situations। Each time, a part of me dies, because I hear not only the crying of the one sitting on the sofa. I also hear the cry of one who was small and unprotected, that tiny one who--by one means or another--was scraped out of life on earth.
Read Abortion: Christ Weeps at http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=60519
Read Obama like Hitler Killer at http://www.magic-city-news.com/J_Grant_Swank_61/Obama_like_Hitler_Killer10167.shtml
LLS
I hate reading stories like this one because I know they are happening everyday, everywhere. I’ve been around long enough to learn a few things, usually the hard way unfortunately, but there you go. One is that life has a way of slamming up hard against our most deeply held beliefs. Another is that good Christian people, especially young ones, can make terrible, sinful mistakes, sometimes because the rest of us are far too ready to judge and condemn. How many young couples have ended up in an abortion mill because while they heard the sexual morality sermons growing up, they somehow or other missed the repent and receive forgiveness, go forth and sin no more ones. For whatever reason, in many parishes in the West, the love of Christ and of our Father in heaven is lost in the furor of a “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” mindset.
Abortion is a great and deadly sin. Maybe there would be a little less of it if we remembered one of the names with which we in the East address God, “Philanthrope”, Lover of Mankind.
Yeah.......but at least she wasn’t “punished” with a baby!!
I believe God creates people even though He knows they will have an abortion.
bttt
Never a hint that when God’s Word says we must “flee from fornication” there’s a reason.
And just what sort of message was this girl receiving from her “Christian home, family, college, church” about sexual relations outside of marriage?
I would assume they were receiving the correct message, but maybe it wasn’t delivered the right way. The article mentions that they were terrified that their parents would find out (that she was pregnant). So maybe their church has to look at expressing the more forgiving face of God with respect to a pregnancy such as this. These things happen and in the past it was often just a message to the couple to get married!
They obviously thought it would be easier and better to have the abortion than to face their church community with evidence that they had had sex outside of marriage.
But maybe by confessing our sins --- we older ones --- we could help these young couples: help them avoid the sin in the first place, and/or help their acknowledge their fall, repent it, and receive the strengthening and challenging grace of God.
“They obviously thought it would be easier and better to have the abortion than to face their church community with evidence that they had had sex outside of marriage.”
Every time, EVERY TIME, we are confronted with pregnancy in the life of an unmarried couple, we need to make them know how very, very much they are loved by God and by their community and we need to remember that abortion is available just around every corner. Then we need to get them to the priest for confession and a discussion about marriage. And when that little baby comes, we need to make a big celebration of his/her birth. There’s too damn much death around for our own churches to have any part in terrorizing kids into adding to it. The Church is a hospital for sick souls, not an instrument of God’s implacable wrath. All Christians should understand this.
Amen, my friend.
That’s certainly the truth.
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