Abortion has impacted my life in a very real way. I don’t come at the issue as an outsider. No, I know how evil abortion is in a personal way. It leaves its victims traumatized with PTSD-like symptoms that can remain unexplained and misunderstood for many years, sometimes decades and sometimes forever.

This is not an easy story to share. I didn’t share it for decades. Part of me believed that it was irrelevant to the person I am now. Yet, as I grew older, my sense of shame grew with each year, as my living children matured and some of them left home, and I was left wondering what could have been, what I had squandered and what had been taken from me. My shame kept me silent. My heartbreak spilled out and threatened to capsize me anytime I even thought about sharing this horrific secret. And then I encountered God in a new way.

My journey has brought me to a place of profound healing and redemption in Jesus, my Savior. I have learned things that bring me so much joy I do not have adequate words to describe it. The grace of God for you and me is beyond what we can imagine. It is a subversive grace, so out of the ordinary that it is offensive to some. It is expressed in uncertain whispers – could He really take this sin and make it into something good and beautiful? Would He, with foreknowledge of what I would do, still choose me to be the mother of a child who is now in heaven fulfilling a purpose? I have learned that He can and He would and He did.

And so, my story will be shared. It has to be, because I know now that God wants all women who have suffered abortion to know their freedom. And because I know the beauty of freedom and grace, I also want to see all post-abortive women come to know the truth of God’s love for them. So I will trust you with my pain. I will always have pain because of what I did and what was done to me. But the shame has been taken from me and replaced with peace. Come and listen to my tale and begin to make the great exchange that the Lord wants for you too.

If you could see my Facebook page you would see pictures of five beautiful children, my pride and joy. But the real truth is that I have ten children: five that I can see and touch and five that are in heaven waiting for me. I have had four abortions (supposedly convenient and easy choices that should have left me happy and carefree according to the pro-abortion camp) – and though I have no proof, I believe one of those aborted pregnancies was twins.

My journey with abortion began in 1979 when I was 16. My parents were finally separated after a marriage of less than 20 years that was filled with turmoil and alcoholism. My father had moved across the state of Florida to be with his new family, and my mother couldn’t cope with her new life situation. I was a rebellious and angry teenager who had lost all respect for her parents. I was careening through life with no moral compass, desperately searching for love. I didn’t believe my parents loved me, so I ignored their wishes and became very difficult to live with. My mother made me leave, so at 16 I was homeless.

I had a boyfriend who lived about a mile away and that was where my mother dropped me off when she told me that I was no longer welcome at home. The driveway of Michael’s house became my home base. I even put my clothing, which was all I had, in the trunk of his car. If you were to look inside that trunk, you could guess how I felt about myself. Jeans, dresses, skirts, teeshirts, all just thrown there in the back of that old Plymouth Valiant, dirty and crumpled and unorganized.

My life on the streets of Altamonte Springs was as chaotic and crazy as the jumbled pile of clothing in the trunk of Michael’s car and before long, I was pregnant. I don’t remember how I found out. I doubt I was paying much attention, and I know I didn’t have access to a pregnancy test. Originally, I was to be placed in a home for unwed mothers (that’s what it was called back then), where I would carry the baby and give it up for adoption.

My boyfriend’s parents seemed to be in charge of my fate, but I don’t know if my father or my mother were behind the scenes giving instructions. All I know is that instead of the home for unwed mothers, I ended up at the abortion clinic. I don’t know how far along in the pregnancy I was. I remember being at the clinic, dressed in a hospital gown along with other girls. They gave me a pill in the shape of a triangle. Nothing else is clear.

Within a few weeks after the abortion I was pregnant again. Just as before, I didn’t know how I found out and I didn’t know how far along I was when I was taken to the clinic again. This time afterwards my boyfriend’s father took me to a trashy hotel on Orange Blossom Trail where the hookers stayed, put me in a room along with garbage bags full of my dirty clothes, and told me that was where I deserved to be.

This second abortion is the one I believe was twins. There were some complications associated with it. I was at a keg party in the woods one night, and I was wearing a white jumpsuit. I felt something hot on my legs, looked down, and saw a scarlet stain spreading. I was hemorrhaging and eventually ended up at the hospital where they were able to stop the bleeding. Then, a few weeks later, I was in Georgia with my boyfriend and his parents and on the way back home to Florida, and I began bleeding again in the backseat, creating a huge pool of blood on the leather upholstery. (I don’t remember why I was with them again after having been put up in the hooker hotel. Maybe they felt bad about their choice to do that and decided to invite me on their vacation.)

My boyfriend’s parents rushed me to a hospital somewhere, wherever we were in Georgia, and there I received a blood transfusion. I had lost so much blood. When I think about it, 1979 was a dangerous year to have a blood transfusion. While I was there at the hospital I remember that the doctor asked me what had happened to me. I told him that I had recently had an abortion and this was my second time of blood loss. It was clear that the abortion had been done improperly, and I had now twice almost bled to death because of it. I don’t know it for sure, but I now believe that I had been pregnant with twins (they run in my family) and the “doctor” who performed the procedure carelessly didn’t remove all the tissue.

Someone had decided for me that I would have these abortions. It was a collaboration between my boyfriend’s parents, Bev and Joe, and perhaps my mother and father. Someone had to give permission at the clinic. Did they forge a signature? How far along was I? Why were the original plans changed? I was going to carry the baby at first but someone decided differently. What would my life be like if I had given birth?

Fast forward eleven years. Such a short period of time but so eventful. I was 27, and I had left my husband of eight years, bringing with me once again just my clothing. But, this time, I had two beautiful little girls with me. My daughters were 6 and 8, and I was fiercely protective of them. I’d left the marriage because of abuse. I was ready to change my life. I didn’t know then that soon I would be repeating very regretful circumstances and this time it would be my decision.

I had survived my chaotic teen years and an eight year long abusive marriage that blessed me with two beautiful little girls. I didn’t want them to continue to be exposed to the trauma of violence in the home and I wanted more for myself.

In 1990 I left and shortly after that, met the man who would become my earthly savior and the love of my life, Darin. I became pregnant while we were dating. As soon as I figured it out (this time with the help of early pregnancy home tests), it was like something coldly mechanical took over, like someone else was doing my thinking for me – but it was my own depraved mind.  My only mission was to end the pregnancy as quickly as possible, and I knew exactly how to do it. I could not, I rationalized, risk jeopardizing my budding relationship with Darin, who was obviously the most kind and generous and thoughtful man I had ever met. I didn’t want to lose him, and I thought that an unwanted pregnancy might push him away.

I couldn’t get to the abortion clinic fast enough. I tried to make an appointment as soon as I saw the results of the home pregnancy test, but the clinic told me I was not far enough along yet. Just typing those words and processing the fact that the clinic needed the baby to be larger in order to more successfully kill it makes me feel ill.

The abortion clinic is usually located in the most economically impoverished area of town and this one was no different – strategically set up to cater to young college women. The day of my abortion, the lobby of the clinic was full of potential mothers in their late teens and early twenties. What secrets did they carry? What were they running from? But, here I was, a mother of two in my late twenties. I felt a cold and hard resolve to get my problem taken care of.

Unlike my first abortions, which are black holes in my past, this time I remembered the way it felt. I remember the vacuum cleaner like noise. I remember the bright lights. I remember the pain and yes, I remember the relief. Relief is the one positive emotion researchers have noted that occurs shortly after abortion. But that relief is only temporary.

I lay in the recovery room with no conscious regrets, no feelings, only a cool resolve to carry on with my “normal” life.

Sadly, the pain and emotion injury I had inflicted on myself and the death I had wrought for my precious child through that third abortion was not enough. In a few months, perhaps because it mimicked what had happened to me when I was just a child of 16, once again I found myself at the abortion clinic ending yet another tiny life and etching my despair even deeper into my soul.

If you had asked me how I felt about those abortions, I would have told you that I was glad to have been able to take care of my situation. I felt it solved a problem and, in my intellect, I believed it wasn’t such a big deal. Unfortunately, the act only fortified the rocky walls around the mother’s heart beating in my chest; the walls were silent and invisible and impervious to everyone, even the love of my life, Darin.

One cannot witness violent death without it marring the psyche. How much worse is it when the mother kills her own child? And the abortion doctor is happy to help.

Three years after I met Darin, I encountered the love of Jesus in a way that changed me forever. I had felt drawn to Him my whole life and He was courting me all along. When I was finally willing to lay it all down one night at home in the dark, before bed, when I violently prayed for Him to be my wisdom, He finally saw fit to invade and conquer my heart, waking me up the following morning as a completely new creature. It wasn’t long after that Darin and I were married.

Jesus’ love forced me to recognize the extent of the wrong I had done by participating in abortion. I was able to see, for the first time, the utter value of a human life, based on the magnitude of the sacrifice that Jesus made for that life, and the intricate care with which God created it.

Unfortunately, I responded to this greater knowledge by burying the secret of my sins even deeper.

At least I knew that I would never have another abortion again. In 1993 I was married to a loving, strong Christian man, and I was growing in my faith. I never needed to speak again of the horrible things I had done in my past. I knew that God had forgiven me.

It’s hard to put into words what it is like to become a Christian at 30 and become part of a world that I never had experienced before. I don’t say it to be hyper-critical but just honest: I felt I had to hide my true nature even more as a Christian than I had to before.  I don’t know how I came to that understanding. I think we all do it. When we come together as believers, we have a tendency to put on our Jesus masks and our smiles and pretend everything is OK.

When I became a believer, I was in awe of church and church people. I thought they were perfect. It wasn’t very long before I figured out that wasn’t true. But of all the things church people did, to themselves, to each other and even to me, no one had done what I had done. None of these people, I was sure, had ever had even one abortion, let alone four. Over the years I kept pushing that secret deeper inside of me until I almost forgot it was there.

The tentacles of shame were still there, though, wrapping themselves tightly around my heart.

Have you ever discussed with someone the concept of knowing something in your head versus knowing it in your heart? It is something that I have thought about thousands of times in my journey as a follower of Jesus over the past 23 years. I have always desired to know the grace of God in my heart, in a life-transforming way.

Many times over the years, after an encounter with God’s spirit I would feel refreshed and uplifted, and I would believe that this time, I had an understanding of his love for me that went beyond my intellectual assent. I finally “got it”.

What I didn’t know was that my heart was locked deep inside a fortress of hard stone, layer upon layer, lock upon lock. I had begun building it many years ago to protect myself from the raw pain of abandonment. This stony heart kept me from experiencing lasting transformation. I could not see myself the way God sees me because my heart was not open. I thought I knew what it was like to be loved by God, but I was deceived.

What is it that keeps us locked in our patterns of behavior? Why, knowing what we know about how we are loved, do we still engage in self-destructive habits? Why do we say we live in love but act as though we live in fear? I believe it is because we only know God’s love intellectually. Our hearts are guarded.

How many people you know are walking around in a state of unrealized grace? Are you one of those people? You may be and because of your past trauma, like abortion, abuse, or abandonment, you may not even realize it.

The first time I realized how guarded my heart had been was only after that rocky fortress was finally dismantled by God’s loving hand. I felt like Dorothy must have felt when she saw the shining Emerald City. Everything I could see, everything I knew, was rich and colorful and deeply dimensional, where before it had been only grey, but I didn’t know it was only grey and I didn’t know what I had been missing.

But this time of radical healing wasn’t to come for years. Instead, I walked my Christian journey still feeling inadequate and not knowing why; still suffering over and over again with the same unhealthy patterns; still feeling rejected by others and worse, by myself. And as I would later find out, my suffering had been largely a consequence of the trauma of abortion.

My healing from abortion was a five year long process that began when I first walked into a counselor’s office in 2011. Something was wrong with me, and I couldn’t live with myself any longer. Instead of becoming a better person, I was retreating more and more into an angry, isolated existence.

Sure, I had grown and matured since becoming a believer in 1993. I was a changed person. God, through my Christian community, was molding me into a better wife, mother, friend, and leader. After my oldest daughter moved out in 2008, I was devastated. I shouldn’t have been. She was an adult and ready to move into her own life. But it came so suddenly, without warning, unexpected. It caught me off guard.

I felt crushing sorrow and defeat and most of all, shame. Somehow my daughter’s leaving had triggered a shame explosion in me that I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t have even told you that was the emotion I was feeling. And then, as a result of the toxic shame, anger began boiling over in me. I had no patience or compassion for people in my life outside my immediate family.

Instead of being an example of Jesus to the world, I screamed at my neighbor when her dog came into my yard. Instead of showing hospitality when unexpected guests arrived, I ran into the house and hid until they left.

I quit everything I had been involved in. I sold my guitars and all my musical equipment. I stayed at home and made jewelry. For three years I lived with this soul-stealing grief, anger, and shame that I couldn’t explain. I was becoming someone that I did not want to be. I felt like I was being dragged backward into a pit.

Instead of becoming a better wife, mother, and friend, something I wanted so much, I was regressing.

My counselor, Lea Ann, led me on a path of discovering the difference between the lies I had believed about myself all my life, and the truth of what God says about me. From 2011 to 2014, I regained all that I had lost. But during these three years of weekly, intense therapy, I only mentioned my experience with abortion in passing.

I still wasn’t talking about abortion.

I still thought abortion was simply a shameful footnote in my history.

When Lea Ann and I decided I was ready to “graduate” from counseling, I felt like a new person. I was lighter, more radiant, more confident in God’s love for me.  I was believing the truth instead of lies. I was fully reunited with my oldest daughter, and we were building our relationship from a new perspective.

But there was something else going on.

As the rest of my children moved into their teenage years and started making preparations to grow up and leave, my thoughts began to turn to the abortions. This was not something I had ever dwelt on, but now, with my time as mommy to children coming to an end, I was feeling regret over those abortions in a new way.

Something was rising up that threatened to shatter me. I tried to speak of the abortions to my friends, but when I tried, whatever was inside me frightened me and tears streamed down my face, and I could not speak. I didn’t know then that it was the unresolved, unexpressed grief over the loss of my children that felt so powerful and dangerous to me.

I needed desperately to somehow express my regret for the abortions I’d had, and I wanted to fight against the injustice of women and girls being lured into what was being sold to them as an easy solution to their problem. But protesting in front of a abortion clinic wasn’t right for me. I decided to volunteer at a Christian pregnancy resource center.

There, I could speak with women who were considering an abortion, and I could tell them that abortion is killing a child – something I knew they would not be told at an abortion clinic. I just wanted to help in some way, I didn’t really know how.

As part of the training I would be required to go through a Bible study for post-abortion healing, since I had experienced abortion. I couldn’t effectively speak with women who were considering abortion without healing from my own trauma.

I was eager to take the eight-week study, called Surrendering the Secret. I knew that at the end of the study there would be a memorial service, and I longed to be able to grieve my children and make an expression of that loss.

What I didn’t realize was how powerfully God was about to put some flourishes on the healing that had begun in 2011.

Through this study, I was able to fully share my story – all the details – in a safe group of women who had all experienced abortion. We learned the horrible truth, once and for all, about what abortion is and what it does to women.

A woman who has had an abortion is likely to have trouble being a well-adjusted parent to her other children. She may have a compulsion to get pregnant again and “replace” her aborted child. Or she may have repeat abortions out of her trauma and belief that she is unworthy to be a mother.

When my oldest daughter left, it cracked open some very old emotions that had been trapped inside me for decades. I didn’t understand what was happening to me then, but as I progressed through the Surrendering the Secret study I began to see it.

All these years later I had still been suffering the after effects of abortion.

In the study, I was encouraged to express my anger at all those who had directly or indirectly been part of my abortions. I wrote letters to express my rage, then tore up the letters and let God’s peace settle in.

I took responsibility for my part.

I looked at God’s forgiveness.

I wrote letters to my unborn children and let out all my grief.

And, perhaps most powerfully, I heard from God that after all, he just wants me to let go of it. The burdens that crush me are nothing to Jesus. He just wants me to be free and to run with him. He said that during this study. In my foolishness I had thought that I could give everything to Jesus except the abortions. I couldn’t place that guilt and shame on him. That just wasn’t fair.

But He said it’s nothing to me. And it is killing you. And I want you to run with Me.

And during this study, the great exchange finally happened.

I agreed to the deal.

I swapped my soul-crushing burden of shame for the lightness of His joy.

All the layers of locks, the brick walls, the ancient stony crust in which my heart was trapped for so long, all of it came crumbling down by the hand of God.

And that wasn’t enough for God. In His unfathomable goodness, He assured me that my children are not in vain. They, and countless millions like them, are part of a vast army of warriors in heaven, warriors for life, working for God to accomplish His purposes.

God doesn’t just forgive, He REDEEMS. And that's why I am silent no more.