The tiny room in the hospital’s emergency department was cold and lonely. I laid there, curled up in cramps, waiting for the doctor to come back with the results from the endoscopic ultrasound that he performed earlier. I've never been one to cramp, not even during my monthly cycle, and I've had labor contractions that were less painful than this. I'm afraid. I'm worried about my children and am hoping that my sister will remember to pick them up on time. My mind is racing with what seems like a million thoughts at once. Thoughts ranged from ‘What am I going to cook for dinner tonight?’ and ‘I'm glad that it's Friday because I don’t know what time I’m going to make it home and I really don’t feel like helping the girls with homework’ to ‘What’s taking the doctor so long to get those test results back?’. A few minutes later, the ER doctor and a nurse come into the room. "Ms. Freeman" he begins, "the ultrasound shows foreign matter in your uterus....and we're going to have to perform what we call a D and C procedure to remove them..." and the rest sounded like the school teacher from a Charlie Brown special. I heard, 'who should we call?' and 'stay for observation'; and before I could process what was happening, I was whisked away to another room where a man was waiting for me with a sleep concoction in a bag.... This may sound like an excerpt from a novel, but it's not; it's a small paragraph from a chapter of my life. Just six days prior, I made what was probably the worst decision of my life: I had an abortion. When I went to that abortion clinic, which was really an old Victorian home transformed, I never imagined that anything could or would possibly go wrong. I was a single mother struggling to raise four children already, so when I became pregnant again I reasoned myself into believing that abortion was my best option. Had I known that I would leave that abortion table and walk around for six days with severed pieces of my baby's body in my womb, I would have never gone through with it. It wasn't until I received the pathologist's report weeks later that the veil was lifted from my eyes and I realized what I had done; I murdered my unborn child...and in the most heinous way possible. Although friends who had gone before me, and the counselor at the clinic told me what to expect from the procedure itself, no one told me that there was a possibility that I'd have a botched abortion and that the suctioning force from the vacuum that was placed inside my womb would literally rip my baby away, piece by piece, from a special place created by God to incubate and protect him. I hated me. Have you done something so bad that you can't seem to forgive yourself? If you can't forgive you, then how can God? That's the lie that satan deceived me with; a whispered lie that I believed for a very long time. It wasn't until I was sitting in church one Sunday morning that the pastor spoke words that I knew were especially for me. He said, "If you will repent, (turn away from) of your sins God will not only forgive but He will remember your sins no more." As I sat in that sanctuary and asked God to forgive me for killing my baby, I immediately felt the burden lift from me. I was free and the devil was a liar. Isaiah 53:4-5 says, "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all". Isn't it so good to know that God loves us so much that He sent Jesus to the cross to shed His blood for the remission of our sins? When we go astray and make mistakes, even as monstrous as murder, God is merciful and forgives so long as we ask. In this lifetime, you will face many temptations and you won't always get it right; however, when you do fall you don't have to stay there because God is a loving Father who has His hand stretched out ready to help His child to stand again. All that you have to do is simply say, 'Father, please forgive me of my sin(s) and God who is faithful to His Word will remove your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west, and will forget them. (Psalms 103:12, Hebrews 8:12, Isaiah 43:25) The same God who has forgiven me will forgive you too because with Him there is no respect of persons; He doesn't make a difference between his children. (Romans 2:11) Now isn't that some good news?
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