This past summer, I came across Gianna Jessen’s YouTube videos. I also read her biography, Gianna by Jessica Shaver. The pro-life message seemed to constantly be all around me from all kinds of different directions.
June 17, 2009
“Last night, I got really sad thinking about my first baby and how there is nothing I can do to change what I did. I can’t bring my baby back—my baby’s life back. Oh, it really upset me and despaired me for a moment last night. Oh, why did I go through with it?? Why didn’t I change my mind? Why did I let fear rule my behavior and decisions? I kept thinking about where God is leading in all of this. Wondering why all this abortion and pro-life stuff is so strong in my life right now. What it all means, and what is going to happen. I thought and wondered again if I am supposed to be telling my children and my family? If God is waiting to get me to that point? I so want to be a voice of encouragement to others who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. But I really can’t do that very well without being completely forthright with what I’ve gone through myself. That I speak from experience. I want to write about it and the sorrow and regret over it all. Then and now… What is the meaning…?”
June 20, 2009
“My regret about Grace Noel is getting really heavy right now in my life. Oh my God I want to take back that abortion now. I want to give life to the baby whose life I took away. It’s driving me crazy if I let the thoughts hang for more than a couple of minutes in my mind. I can’t change it. I can’t give Grace Noel her life back. It’s too late. I can only hope that one day God will allow me to know my baby and hug her and say how sorry I am that I let fear reign in my own life that drove me to end hers. Oh, if I could only go back in time now and change it all. I would, with trembling courage, face my parents and tell them that I had made a grave mistake having pre-marital sex but that I would not compound that mistake with an abortion. I would give life to the baby. I’m not sure if it would be a choice to put the baby up for adoption or to try to raise her myself. But I would give Grace Noel life, not a sentence of death. Oh Grace Noel, please forgive your mommy. I was so so wrong. God, you put a beautiful life inside of me, and I had it killed. Oh God, my heart breaks now. Here I am 24 years later—oh my, 24 years!!—and I cry for my baby who only had 6 weeks in my womb. Oh that day in that clinic is still so vivid to me. Waiting all day, being practically the last person to go in—God gave me all day to rethink and change my decision, but I didn’t—then laying on that table and feeling the doctor scraping inside my womb, sharp pain, and my moving, the doctor warning me to be still, and hearing the suction machine, and the doctor saying “almost done”…”
A few days after the above journal entry, my husband and I watched the movie Juno with our daughter. Watching that movie bothered me more than I thought it would. I write in my journal the following impressions afterwards:
“…it did bother me a bit that the parent’s reactions were so calm when Juno told them she was pregnant. Why did it bother me? Because I could not imagine whatsoever that our parents would have been as calm if we had told them I was pregnant when I was 16. And it also bothered me because I didn’t even bother to find out what it would have been like. I was too afraid of their reaction to tell them. I wasn’t afraid of having a baby. I was terrified of how they were going to react and speak to me. As I watched Juno sitting there in the abortion clinic and deciding she couldn’t end the life of the baby, how I wished with all my heart that would have happened with me. How I wished I would have changed my mind. But I cannot change things now. God only knows how many things in our lives would be different now if we had told our parents and faced the truth with them. I am really struggling with all of this so much lately. I want to tell the kids about this. But don’t know if it’s right or not. The emotions are so strong. The thoughts so many. I have no idea what God is doing or bringing me to in all of this. But something IS definitely happening. We are headed somewhere in all of this. Why now is this becoming such an issue again after so long?”
July 1, 2009
I am feeling confused and stagnant with my life in general and I say: “I feel there are some things God wants me to deal with before we move any further—but probably part of moving ahead is walking through those things that must be dealt with.”
I started wondering about my aches and pains and their relationship to trauma in my life. I have a friend who has Fibromyalgia and she has explained to me that there seems to be a connection with the physical pain that goes with Fibromyalgia being triggered due to particular instances of traumatic thing(s) that have occurred in our lives. There is a further scientific explanation going along with all that which I won’t go into right now. But, I have had terrible, doctor-unexplained back pains, tendonitis, and such things for quite a few years. This past summer it seemed my whole body was hurting me, and it is frustrating to feel like my body is falling apart when I’m still so relatively young. The continued pains caused me to wonder if trauma and pain were related in my life, and I still ponder the thoughts occasionally.
I continue to write in my journals about the intense regret over taking Grace Noel’s life and how I can’t change what I did 24 years ago. Months had passed since the meeting with one of the directors from the pro-life organization. I grew uncertain and impatient and practically gave up the whole idea that I was supposed to volunteer. I just about convinced myself I would never be called back again. I wanted to help others but started to doubt that my help was needed or wanted. At the same time, I knew the real truth that God had ordained every step I had taken in that direction and that it was best to wait on Him and His timing. I started to toy with the idea of beginning this blog about the abortion experience.
August 13, 2009
The previous night “I kept dreaming that I was having another baby. The whole family was there and I gave birth to a baby girl. I was so happy and I felt like finally I’d had my 4th child that I felt missing and my 2nd daughter whom I longed for so much…”
In August, I finally got the phone call I had been waiting for. The coordinator had been able to put together the post-abortive Bible study group with set time and dates. By the time I received this call, I had come to the realization that I did need the post-abortive study. During this entire year, I had become so emotional about the abortion and was thinking about it more than ever before since it first happened. Two days before the first study group meeting, I write in my journal that I’m very curious where this will all take me and that I know it is time to have a long talk with my husband about the past and what is about to take place through this study. I know it will be hard to have such a talk after 24 long years of not saying anything about it.
“We’ve tucked it away in our hearts and away from our lives. Like it wasn’t even us who went through that. In a sense, it wasn’t “us”. It wasn’t the “us” who we are today. It was the us we were back then. I was such an immature child…It’s hard to re-face my abortion head on. It’s one of those things in my life that I desperately wish I could go back and change. And I mean desperately. But I do not know and cannot ever know or understand what that would have done. How that would have changed my life or my relationship with” my husband. “I must accept that is just how much life had to be then. God wasn’t surprised. Not at all. And what does He lead me to do now with that part of my life?...with that part of my past? That part that has been buried deep down inside…? We have been silent for 24 years about our little baby. What are we being called to do now?”
My writings reveal how I go back and forth with telling our kids, continuing to hide this or not, and with starting this blog or not. I remind myself to take it one day at a time. I am also aware that the very next step is to have a long talk with my husband about everything. There are questions in my mind needing confirmation about some the facts and how I remember them to be back then. I want to be sure I remember correctly. I also keep telling myself there has to be a greater purpose in all of this: in the past and in the present of facing the past. I desperately want the brief earthly life of my child to count for something, to matter and make a difference in some way. With each passing day, I am getting more and more emotional with regards to the past and to facing the past here in the present.
The morning of the first post-abortive study group meeting I was greatly looking forward to whatever I was about to be a part of.
“So here has come this day where this morning I’ll have an opportunity to meet with other women and openly know that we have been through the same pain of abortion. To be free to speak openly and share!
It’s hard to let this all come to the surface. This year has been a lot of this issue strong before me and on my heart.”
“I keep thinking about the blog for Grace Noel…keep thinking about writing of my experience. A blog to encourage women to give their babies life and offer comfort and camaraderie to women who have experienced an abortion.”
“God did not stop me from having that abortion…I cannot believe that my experience was supposed to be a meaningless mistake! It’s been 24 years but He is certainly showing me this year that it will count for something good and helpful in the future that is near at hand now.”
Next post: My Story - The Post Abortive Study, Part 1
[Would you like to share your story with others? You are invited to email me with your story, and I will anonymously share it on this blog.]
[Would you like to share your story with others? You are invited to email me with your story, and I will anonymously share it on this blog.]
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