[Ed. note: This is Part Two of a continuing series. If
you are seeking help for your own post-abortion situation, you
will receive most benefit if you start at the beginning of the
series. Look for Kristin England’s article under the archives
for Streams of Life in December, 1999.]
I thought everything would be okay. My worries of an
unwanted pregnancy were over. But wait…something wasn’t right.
I had this feeling of great loss, absolute emptiness. As women,
when we aborted our child we went against our God given instinct
to nurture and protect our babies.
Perhaps you can’t face the fact that you have aborted
your child. You may have stuffed the memories in the darkest
corner of your subconscious hoping they will never recur. This is
denial. It’s our way of trying to protect ourselves from the
emotional pain we don’t know how to deal with.
It could be you are telling yourself that this wasn’t
a baby. It was just a blob of tissue. I wanted to say this too,
but I knew better because I had seen my baby with my own eyes.
Again and again I saw the image of my baby before my eyes. This
memory was very painful for me.
I saw a pamphlet that showed the stages of pregnancy and
told how a baby grows. My baby had brain waves, his own blood
type, fingerprints, sucked his thumb, felt pain, had all his
bodily systems present and functioning and most likely could hear
my voice. Oh, this was heavy on my heart. What had my baby felt,
thought, suffered? And it was my fault….
Before you can begin the road to healing you must
realize "this was a life". So when does a baby’s life
really began? Does this one little child matter to God? "The
word of the LORD came to me saying; Before I formed you in the
womb I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:4-5)
God cares about each and every one of us…we are
important to Him: "For you created my inmost being; you knit
me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am
fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know
that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made
in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of
the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained
for me were written in your book before one of them came to
be." (Psalm 139:13-16) To me, this is so incredible that God
had each day of my life and my baby’s life written in His book
BEFORE he formed us.
Reality hit me like a ton of bricks when I told my
five-year-old little niece Kelly about my abortion. Let me tell
you how this happened: Kelly comes to visit me almost every
weekend. She looks to me as a mother in her life and we are very
close. I treasure the love we have for each other so I was afraid
to tell her I had aborted my son. I was afraid she was not old
enough to understand. As a curious child she kept asking me
questions about post abortion literature I had until I finally
told her what I had done. Her response was, "You killed your
baby! I can’t believe you did that! We have to pray right now
and ask God to forgive you. Right now…we must pray!" I
explained to her that I had already prayed and asked God to
forgive me and He had. Then she said. "When I get married and
have a baby, I will give my first child to you since you don’t
have any children. But, you have to promise me that you won’t
kill that baby. It is wrong to kill your baby." Such wisdom
from one so young! As you can probably imagine…this brought
tears. We cried together for what I had done. Kelly had forgiven
me too. Because Kelly knows Jesus as her Lord and Savior, she
showed me the love of Jesus in person. I’ll never forget this
time in our relationship. It was truly beautiful.
This was the first time I had said the words
"killed my baby". They stabbed like a knife. The word
killed was much stronger than the word aborted. This was murder!
"You shall not murder." (Exodus 20:13)
So why am I asking you to relive your abortion? It’s
over and nobody has to know. But remember dear friend that you
know and God knows. "You know my folly, O God; my guilt is
not hidden from you." (Psalm 69:5). It’s nearly impossible
to live with this guilt, "the way of transgressors is
hard." (Proverbs 13:15)
Sin wounds! Because of my sin: "My guilt has
overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester
and are loathsome because of my sinful folly." (Psalm 38:4-5)
Hidden sin is rather like a deep wound. If the sore heals over on
the outside, it will later abscess. The infection will spread
through the bloodstream to all parts of your body and if left
untreated can destroy you. Our healing process must start from the
inside.
Sin separates us from God. Do you realize that we have
sinned against God? We have taken a life. We need God to forgive
us. We need a Savior.
Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
Romans 5:8: "But God commendeth his love toward us in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
