This mother recognized that her daughter was suicidal, would kill herself to kill the baby if necessary. I don’t know what else the mother could have done, aside from a lot of prayer. It does sound as if the daughter was spoiled and wasn’t raised to value human life so those are things that could have been done before the crisis point, but once the mom was in that situation I’m not sure what better options she had.
God does forgive murder. David - a “man after God’s own heart” and the earthly ancestor of Christ - murdered the husband of Bathsheba so he could marry her and cover up that their child was the result of adultery. And Jesus says that hating another person is murder, so if murder can’t be forgiven then we are all eternally condemned.
Abortion is terrible. It IS murder, and it stinks just as bad as lovelessness in any of its various forms. I hope that both mother and daughter realize the web of sin they’ve been caught in, and realize that people who are caught in sin - even the sin of murder - are the very reason that Jesus came and died, and His shed blood is enough to pay the just punishment for their sin. He loves them, He forgives them, and He restores them to a new life of innocence and love.
“Abortion is terrible. It IS murder, and it stinks just as bad as lovelessness in any of its various forms. I hope that both mother and daughter realize the web of sin they’ve been caught in, and realize that people who are caught in sin - even the sin of murder - are the very reason that Jesus came and died, and His shed blood is enough to pay the just punishment for their sin. He loves them, He forgives them, and He restores them to a new life of innocence and love.”
I don’t see how they can forgive themselves after following through on it. It would seem to be an impossible task.
I’m going to say one other thing.
I was suicidal when I was pregnant with our first child. I had been depressed for a while and at a social event had gotten into an argument with some friends of ours, fellow seminarians with my husband. I had said that in addition to what happens in church, it means a lot to me that God is with me in my alone times too. They told me I must be despising the church. (Overzealous and immature theologians ready to argue about anything; I’m sure none of them are still like that now.) My husband was furious with me for embarrassing him in front of his friends.
When I got home I told him, with tears, that if the Jesus I was allowed to have for the rest of my life was just on Sundays it would kill me. The look on his face told me that he thought I was just trying to emotionally manipulate him and that he cared more about saving face with his friends than about me living. If someone says to you “I’m dying” and your response is to coldly say (in effect) “Go ahead. Make my day”, that is murder just as surely as abortion is murder.
A couple days later I had the pills in my hand but I couldn’t do it because I had to let my child live. She saved my life.
And then she died at 42 weeks. Her heart stopped as we were monitoring to see if she could handle the induction of labor.
Two other times I have been suicidal because I let myself believe what my husband’s demons were telling us both. I’m so thankful that the Lord brought us through it, and painstakingly healed us of emotional beliefs that were seared into us in spite of the Christian-sounding words in our families. My family has since been able to name the disease that wounded so many of us: post-traumatic stress from my Dad being in the front lines of Korea. And though they don’t admit it, I think my husband’s family knows that my father-in-law was abused by his dad and spent the rest of his life trying to be big at the expense of his kids. The devil was working through pain to try to destroy us.
It took a long time, but I believe we’ve been healed of those wounds. My husband can love me now, because he’s not clawing for his own dear life any more. We’ve forgiven each other and live by a new understanding: “All sounds from the labor room are OK.” When you’re in awful pain you say whatever it takes to get you through; you don’t even necessarily mean the words, it’s just that you’re in such pain. When people are really, really hurting, you hear their words as a measure of the depth of their pain. You love them through that pain, and you forgive them for whatever pain they passed on to you in the middle of the suffering.
I don’t hate myself any more, like I did. Because of that, I will never be suicidal again. If God wants me to live, I need to live. But it took going through Hell and back to get me to this point.
It seems to me that this mom and her daughter have already been to Hell; it’s time for them to begin the journey back, and find healing for what took them there in the first place. Very often it takes searing pain - and heinous guilt - before we’re ready to start over and come back from the dead. I hope and pray that these 2 women - and any person who’s been through the guilt and shame of abortion - will make that journey back to the forgiving outstretched arms of Jesus.
When I was a case manager, part of my voc rehab strategy was to get a comp insurance voucher to refer a client who obviously had guilt issues for therapy to work through whatever the problem was, because it was affecting everything unrelated.
It appears to me that the author of the article is using her story not only as a cautionary tale for mothers, but as a way to help her work through her own painful situation-and I hope that God will comfort her.
As for her daughter, I really can’t be sympathetic-she is responsible for her mother’s pain, as well as her own, and does not seem inclined to accept responsibility for anything...