God’s message to me the night before the 100-Man Stand, midpoint vigil with Syracuse 40-Days For Life. This came after praying to God, asking Him what He wanted to say. I closed my eyes, and placed my fingers on the keyboard and typed what I heard Him say to me. Below is the message
I reach out to you and I call your name
Here I am child – I am freedom from the pain
I am love and I want to heal you, but you must seek the truth
Listen to my voice, I want to heal you.
I am the light in the darkness
I am healing from the pain
Let go of unforgiveness, darkness and shame
Feel my hand, it reaches out for you child
You are precious to me
I’ve been waiting for quite a long while
Let me love you
Let me heal you
Let me show you the truth
You are broken and I wish to make you whole again.
Take my hand and let me in
Let me walk you through this journey
Lay your head near my heart and feel it beat for you
It beats for you
It beats for love of you.
This is the message that was spoken to my heart the night before the 100-man stand. This is the message that God was trying to tell me for so many years. And I believe from the depths of my heart that this is the message that God wants to share with every man, woman and child, especially those wounded by abortion.
Far too many of us are walking around wounded by scars from our past. I am one of those people. You see, my brokenness started when I was very young; when I was too young to know and too young to understand. For most of my life, this brokenness has reached out its ugly tentacles and affected most, if not all of my decisions in life. As a result of my brokenness, I had low self-esteem, if that’s what you want to call it. I didn’t know my value. I didn’t see myself as beautiful and I was constantly seeing my flaws. I wanted to be loved, but I never looked in the right place. You see, I believed the devil’s lies; that I would never amount to anything and that I was unattractive. I was in all of the wrong relationships; I even married an abuser and had 3 children with him. Each relationship that I had after my marriage ended just continued the cycle of abuse in one way or another. I wanted to be loved. Men saw me as vulnerable and a target, and even though I didn’t consider myself promiscuous, I found out the hard way, that was the only thing that they wanted from me, and the cycle of pain continued.
This led to one unplanned pregnancy where I felt completely alone and lost as to what to do. My divorce just happened and I had my children with me. How was I going to face my family, my children, and my friends? I prayed and prayed, but I didn’t trust in God’s plan and mercy for me. So I continued the path of self-abuse and I had an abortion. I’ll never forget that day. The doctor and the nurses performed the murder of my child or children with such ease. You see, I might have been pregnant with twins, but the doctor never uttered a word. Please pray for Dr. Yaffa.
One of the nurses told me that it was nothing to worry about. I went home and my father came up later that day, or the next. I was in so much pain, emotionally and physically. I couldn’t even tell my father. To this day, my family does not know.
I have believed in God all of my life, but because of my brokenness, I didn’t have the strong faith in God necessary to carry me through. I didn’t have deep roots in my faith as of yet and I didn’t trust in God’s plan for me. My marriage was one of verbal, emotional and spiritual abuse. I included spiritual because of the battles that took place in our home. He used my weaknesses and vulnerabilities to manipulate and control me; so when the marriage ended, I was far better off, but the abuse continued, because we had 3 children together, and I was only too eager to continue on a course of self-abuse.
After my abortion, I cried and cried and longed to take it back, but it was too late. I begged God’s mercy, but I didn’t think he could ever forgive me. I knew it was wrong and never wanted to believe that I could do such a thing, but here I was, after the fact, surrounded by loneliness and pain.
It didn’t end there. Maybe a year later, I found myself pregnant again. I just could not bring myself to choose abortion. This time reality hit me and made a difference in my decision. This time, I could not hurt the baby, or my God, by choosing to destroy his creation. There was no way that I could do that to an innocent child. I thought that I had better face the music this time around and being that I was single, I chose to give up my child for adoption. I chose New Life Adoption Agency and went through the process of picking out what I believed would be the right mom and dad for my child. After 2 couples fell through and many tears were shed, I ended up choosing Donna and James; a strong Catholic family from New Jersey whom were unable to have children of their own.
It was an amazing blessing to be able to be a gift to another family and to give a gift to a couple who longed for children.
Choosing to carry the baby full term brought its own set of concerns. Some of the difficulty lied in getting over my own insecurities, doubts and ego. Would I be able to carry this child for 9 months, being aware of my neighbor’s capacity to judge? Would I be able to tell my family? This was the hardest, most difficult time of my life and I was an emotional wreck. I even thought that it would be best to relinquish custody of my own children and allow my ex to raise them, with his new wife, because I was a wreck and I didn’t want to subject my kids to my pain and my mistakes.
Well guess what people? I stand here in front of you today and give witness to the fact that I have survived that traumatic, yet wonderful and most amazing time of my life.
I wanted to share with you that I wrote to my little boy when I was in the hospital and a few years later, I finally sent the letter to his family. I wrote of the joys I experienced when I had him in the hospital. I wrote of the sadness I experienced at having to say goodbye to him and watch his new family drive away with him, taking him from my arms. I shared with him the experiences of my pregnancy and how I felt from my heart that giving him to his family was the right and best thing to do for him. In short, I wanted him to know how much he was loved. This was so much more rewarding than the other choice!!!
From time to time, I get to see pictures and the mother writes of his accomplishments in gymnastic and in school. Today, he is a bright young boy, going on 15 years of age, tomorrow and he lives in Georgia with a beautiful Catholic family. In fact they were able to adopt a young girl not too long after he went home with them.
So now, Alexander Joseph has a sister, Lily. Alexander Joseph has been a blessing to me, because God granted me the strength and wisdom to choose life for him and allowed him to be a blessing to a childless couple.
I have to tell you that this choice was not easy by any means, but it was extremely rewarding and God has blessed me with such wonderful friends like Shannon and Jeanie and their families. He has blessed me with a strong desire to help other women choose life for their children.
There are so many avenues available to those who feel they have no choice. There are so many ministries waiting to help those in need at their time of desperation. I, myself went to Rachel’s Vineyard. God forgave me right away, but I still had to forgive myself and it took many years.
In closing, I would like to ask you to seriously consider supporting the ministries that work with young mothers, and the ministries that assist people wounded by abortion. I also want to leave you with these thoughts; God is amazing. God is forgiving. He wants to have an intimate relationship with each and every one of you. When we let God, the lover of our souls, BE THE LOVE OF OUR LIVES, He will carry us through every joy and pain. He WILL NEVER DISAPPOINT YOU and will GIVE YOU THE DESIRES OF YOUR HEART. Trust in Him. Give yourselves to Him. His love is far greater and more intimate than any love you could ever experience on earth! Why would you not want that for yourselves?
God bless you. God bless Jeanie and Shannon and their families and for all of you here who work tirelessly to bring awareness to the people and shed God’s mercy and light in these times of darkness.