The next chapters I worked in the post abortive study book were on “anger” and on God’s ability to hear and see all things. I am certain that anger is a big thing with many post abortive women. There could be anger directed at the people who may have forced or pushed her to have the abortion, anger with God, anger with themselves, or anger with those who performed the abortion.
I find it strange, but anger regarding the abortion is not something that has been a problem for me. I don’t know why, but it just has not been much of an issue. The anger I have experienced recently has more to do with the stigma in our society of being a post-abortive woman—the scarlet letter “A” we silently wear and hide and the silence about our loss. I’ll share more about that later.
September 7, 2009
I don’t think I have anger really at anything with the abortion. I am filled with a desperation now. I am filled with a despair of my inability to change what happened, to take it back and do it differently. I ask God in anguish, “Why did you let me do it?” or I ask myself in anguish, “How could you do it?” But it is not an accusatory, blaming question. They are more questions of despair and being overwhelmed by not understanding how it all went the way that it did. Asking myself, “How did it all go so wrong like that?” It’s incomprehensible to me today. It’s not anger I deal with. It’s such, such deep sorrow and regret and despair that I can’t make it different.
There may be little moments of a hint of anger at myself in asking, “How could I do it?” But, the answer to my question always comes quickly about being completely overcome with fear. And when I ask God, “How could you let me do it? Why didn’t you stop me?” It is as if He assures me He is now doing something greater with all of it. He doesn’t really seem to answer me as to why He didn’t stop me then, but more assuring me that He is doing a work with it now.
I don’t believe I can understand why God let me go through with it and did not overcome my fears any more than I can understand why He allows sin and evil in His creation and why He did it all this way. Currently, it’s incomprehensible to me.
I am very upset with my behaviors back then and having to now face such sorrow and regret about my foolishness and careless selfish living in my youth. How stupidly I behaved!
I know there are women in our current post-abortive group who may certainly be harboring anger/resentment regarding the abortion and who was involved, etc. However, anger is not such an issue with me. The only person I can really get angry at is myself for acting like such a fool in my youth. I was a big fool living for myself and my own pleasures and desires without any regard to the consequences that were sure to follow. I wonder desperately, why God didn’t stop me, but I’m not angry with God about it. I wish so much [my boyfriend] had stood firm against abortion and stopped me, but I’m not angry with him either. I only hold myself responsible! [My boyfriend] didn’t push to have sex, *I* probably did! I pushed and pushed all boundaries that were for my protection, and so I was unprotected from the harm that I brought upon myself and my baby. Am I angry with myself now? Not really. I’m angry with who I was back then and how I behaved back then. I realize my foolishness. I’m not angry or bitter—not at all. I lived for myself and God has shown me the depths from which He has brought me up and rescued me. He has shown me how lost I was, and how lost any of us are if He is not our Guidance, our Wisdom, our Leader and Teacher. We are utterly lost to our own selves and our depravity. It is only by His power and hand that we are able to be or do anything that is truly good or right. He is our righteousness. He is our wisdom and true understanding.
In summary, the thing I discovered I was most angry about regarding my abortion experience was the fear that ruled me and my foolish behavior.
Regarding the section in the study about God being all-seeing, El Roi (Genesis 16:1-16), I express the following:
September 9, 2009
“The LORD searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts.” (1 Chronicles 28:9)
I’m so glad that God sees and hears everything in our lives. I’m relieved He saw and heard the whole event of my abortion. I sure wouldn’t want to be coming before God now, for the first time, to tell Him what I did. It’s hard enough dealing with it all now and deciding who to share it with and who doesn’t need to know. I’m glad that all my mistakes and failures are seen by God. It makes me appreciate His unconditional love even more! It helps me to understand His great, boundless love. Not sure if there is anything I wouldn’t have wanted Him to see. I want Him to see all. Although, it is awful to imagine His eyes upon me as I willingly laid myself down on that table and allowed the doctor to kill my baby—God’s child. How did God feel when the life He had put in my womb was killed so I didn’t have to face the consequences? That is hard to think about.
So how do I feel about God’s presence in my life during that time? He is distant, but not far. He is distant from me, observing me as I went about my own way, doing my own will. He is not ever far, but He sees and hears every aspect of my life. I see Him letting me go on and experience my lostness. He is showing/revealing to me how without an intimate relationship with Him we can be so confused, so overwhelmed by fear, so many mistakes made…I see Him observing me and what I’m going through and doing and not being surprised at all. He knows exactly what is going to happen then and what would happen now because of all this.
Did I cry out to Him then? I don’t recall that I did. Maybe I didn’t believe He would help me with my problem? I’m not sure I did. Maybe because I kept telling myself it was my own fault. I know that I didn’t really have a relationship with Him. Now, I know He is always there for me. I don’t think I really believed it then or thought much about it.
“Now to Him Who is able to do superexccessively above all that we are requesting or apprehending, according to the power that is operating in us, to Him be glory…” (Ephesians 3:20)
I began to ask some really hard questions of God and of why He would let me go through with the abortion. I pressed so hard and asked such raw questions, that it all actually made me feel quite physically ill. I was pressing Him hard for answers, and it made me feel dizzy and faint. I struggle even now to look at my questions written in my spiral because I start to feel ill again. There is a part of me that wants to share them here, but there is another part of me that feels they are too raw—too intimate between God and me—to share with the whole world.
I will share this part I wrote after I had asked the questions:
I’ve been asking some hard questions of God in my post-abortive study spiral. And I’m physically feeling terrible—ill. My head feels so heavy, my body all feels heavy and weighted down. My eyes want to close. The weight of the world feels like it’s on top of me and crushing me. Is it God saying to me, “Who are you to question me and what I’ve done or am doing or will do?” Have I crossed a line and been too bold to question God as I have?
I feel faint! And I long to crawl back in bed and close my eyes.
Romans 9:19-24: You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.
Job 38: Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? "Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? "On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? "Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors, and I said, 'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; and here shall your proud waves stop'? "Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, and caused the dawn to know its place…
There were some hard thoughts about God that were going through my mind when I was asking those hard questions. Thoughts that questioned God’s character and motives. I did not like those at all. And I’m puzzled and surprised by how terrible I feel physically right now. And what does it mean? Something seriously deep is taking place as I face God regarding the abortion and Grace Noel…
Job 40: 1-8: Then the LORD said to Job, "Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it." Then Job answered the LORD and said, "Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth. "Once I have spoken, and I will not answer; Even twice, and I will add nothing more." Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said, "Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me.
Am I finding fault with God? Am I daring to condemn God that I may be justified?? Let it not be so!
September 10, 2009
Yesterday I was exploring and pressing the question of “Why did God not choose to intervene in my life with regards to Grace Noel?” Especially when I have seen Him intervening and orchestrating so many other events in my life. And He was in my life and intervening whether I was in intimate relationship with Him or not. How does that work?
Immediately after asking God “Why did you let me go through with that abortion?” I wrote, “Psalm 139 holds true even for Grace Noel. When God placed that child in my womb in March of 1985, He knew exactly what would happen to Grace Noel.” Does that make my abortion a good thing? I don’t think so. There’s something more…something further to understand.
Psalm 139:1-4: O YHWH, You have investigated me and are knowing me; You yourself know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thoughts from afar; My path and my pallet You have measured off, and for all my ways You have made provision. For though there be no declaration on my tongue, Behold, O YHWH, You know it all.
God knew my every thought and action back then 24 years ago. Just as He knows me now. I did not know Him as I do now. I did not know then that He could give me the strength to face my parents with the truth. That He could give me the strength to carry my baby to term. I relied on myself, not on Him.
For all my ways He has made a provision…He knew then and knows now everything about me, inside and out…
Psalm 139:13-14: For You yourself achieved the making of Grace Noel’s innermost being; You overshadowed her in my womb…marvelous is Your work…
God, You made Grace Noel that second weekend of March 1985. You placed her in my womb even though you knew that I would have her life taken away just six weeks later. What does that mean?
Grace Noel’s short life had a great purpose. And I’m only now beginning to discover that. But this still raises so many questions. Oh God, there is so much I don’t understand about You and Your ways. So, so much!!
As you knew me, You also knew Grace Noel’s soul very thoroughly and her little shape and skeleton was not hidden from You when she was made in concealment. She was woven together as in the nether parts of the earth. Your eyes saw her embryo, and her days, all of them were written on Your scroll. The days, they were formed when there was not one of them…Psalm 13:14-16
Grace Noel’s days were written on Your scroll—formed before there were days…What does this mean?
God, I think yesterday I was a bit overcome with fear about Your intentions, motives, and character with regards to letting the world be as it is. Even saying that now, again brings that heavy, heavy feeling back again over me. Is this not just how the Adversary tempted Eve? By having her question Your character and Your instructions to her? Making her doubt Your goodness and that You had her best interest at heart? But even that has such implications and questions tied in to it! But You, YHWH Elohim created the Adversary. And You knew exactly what the Adversary would do. And You knew what Eve would do…and what all of that would do for all Your creation and for thousands of years upon Your creation.
I mean no disrespect, but why did You do it? Why was it to be this way? Is it as I’ve seen it before, to reveal Your greatness and show us how we cannot know Your goodness without the evil alongside it? Can it be simply that? Like my children don’t appreciate what they have in parents or in life in general because they haven’t had to do without it. They can’t appreciate the good parents they have because they haven’t experienced evil parents.
Every event in our lives has so many implications for the future. The tapestry of God has so many tiny and large threads woven all together—intertwined all together. And they all have their place. It is so very complicated for us, but so in order for Him. All the little pieces that come together to make the whole.Next Post: My Story - The Post Abortive Study, Part V
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