I Feel Blessed

     I really do feel blessed!  I am excited to see God working in my life and ministry.  It's still unreal to me that I am doing this, this being sharing my story with the world, when just a few years ago I was still stuck in the place of wanting to keep my abortions a secret, to take it with me to my grave, so to speak; and now, I am choosing to share it to help others.  The expression, "you've come a long way, Baby," seems to be appropriate here.  I can only say that is with no credit of mine, God is good in so many ways!!

    For so long I heard His whispers in my heart, and for so long I felt "stuck between a rock and a hard place."  The rock being, my desire to keep my secrets for fear of rejection and judgement from others, and the hard place being my strong desire to share myself and my experiences in order to minister to others in the painful places that I have been.  And of course, every time I heard the whispers, I knew inside me that I couldn't do both forever.  I knew that one day, I would have to be willing to die to myself in order to fulfill His purpose for my life here on this earth.  Sometimes I look at my life, the way that I love babies, and respect human life, and those things have always been true about me, and I wonder how in the world did I get here to this place?  How did I get to be the woman who has had two abortions?  It wasn't okay with me either time.  Terminating my pregnancies was never what I wanted to do either time.  Neither one of my children were ever "blobs of tissue" in my eyes; sometimes that's what makes me think it took a decade for me to ever heal those wounds and reconcile with myself after I had done this.  I didn't believe in it, I just thought I had no choice and had to do it.  As I said, it wasn't what I wanted to do, and I wonder how many other women feel that way.  I've already met many in my work, and I'll bet I'll meet many, many more in the future.

     I am so thankful that God's forgiveness is real, and for every one, no matter how badly we mess things up.  I don't believe He punishes us for our sins, if we confess them and turn away from them (don't keep doing them over and over with no real intention of stopping).  I believe he forgives us and forgets what we've done.  The Bible says in Jeremiah 31:34, that when God forgives us, He “remembers our sins no more."  He doesn't bring them up, or throw them up in our faces, as we do to each other so much of the time as humans.  He leaves it at the cross where it belongs, and we need to figure out how to follow His example in doing that.  No matter how much it hurts us, what was done was done.  You don't get over the loss of your child through abortion, rather, you work through that loss and come to a place of healing that will allow you to cope with the reality of what has happened and still live your life in a peace that only He can provide or could ever comprehend.  Don't put pressure on yourself to forgive yourself if you can't feel it yet, for me it was the hardest part...I think I'll write about that in the next post.