This post is deeply personal and emotionally charged. And probably the first time I've ever written an entry and posted it all in the same go. Enough caveats.
Abortion was never my issue.
It wasn't at the top of the my list in things I considered pivotal in my voting decisions. I spent awhile mulling over a woman's right to privacy, a "zone of privacy" in the constitution, and whether it should be a federal, state or local issue. I could debate you easily on my position about being "whole life" rather than just "pro life" and caring for the unborn better once outside the womb, how it's rubbed me the wrong way that conservatives defund sex education and anything that resembles welfare but may result in fewer unwanted pregnancies. Still true, and good things.
In my mind I knew I classified abortion itself as wrong. But the way I treated it was as if it was either a non issue, or lamentable.
For my entire life I've kept this issue at arm's length because it never affected me or anyone I knew personally.
Until tonight...
When it hit me like a punch in the stomach while I was falling asleep...the crushing weight and despair of finally, FINALLY realizing that this most certainly affects someone I know personally. My Best Friend, my Father, my Savior, my Redeemer, the One who called me out of death into life...His heart breaks for the murder of the unborn.
I normally hesitate to make statements like the one I'm about to make. Experience is really subjective and easily tainted by emotion. You all can't feel what I felt, so there's no way to verify it, and you may not give a damn. Fine.
But God lets us emote for a reason, and I think something I just experienced is evidence, or at least a manifestation, of how He can use our emotions in a Godly way--to connect us with His heart:
I honestly feel like God allowed me to participate in His sorrow for a moment. And it broke. my. heart.
I wept, y'all. I don't just randomly start crying over stuff I don't care much about. There was absolutely no reason for it to come when and how it did.
I was struck with images in my mind of babies being mostly delivered and having their skulls stabbed and brains sucked out. Even just typing that sentence fills my eyes with tears and makes me want to scream.
Just so....angry. Deep in my bones. At humanity. At sin. At my ugliness and pretension that previously boiled this down to a matter of personal politics rather than ethics. I can't believe how stupid I've been. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I'm wrong a lot.
What a tremendous, despicable game the enemy is playing. What deep, dark sludge we wade in...that we live in the height of civilized society, equipped with every resource imaginable to be educating people about abstinence and safe(r) sex, have families with the means to be able to financially support and care for moms with unwanted pregnancies and take in their unwanted babies and children, have excellent medical care, have flexible education systems so that moms don't have to be doomed to welfare and a lifelong struggle to find vocational success because they're single moms...
and we've built such a monument to human selfishness at its pinnacle that we allow citizens to participate in something so barbaric and inhumane.
I didn't get it. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.
How in the WORLD have we allowed this to be legal???
Thank you for being so transparent on this "issue." I hate that in politics genocide of our nation's children is on the same list of "issues" as education and foreign policy. What God has shown you has just made this a bit more real for me. We as a nation (and I loathe to say, much of the church) are like the watchmen in Isaiah 56-57.
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Are you not children of transgression,the offspring of deceit, you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks? Isaiah 57:4-5
Just following, Israel was taken into exile. The pattern set in the Old Testament is that we can either change our ways and obey, or be punished. Praying for eyes to see His Truth, and submit to God's ways!
Stephanie, the way you are seeking, submitting, and God is changing you is exciting and encouraging to me! Looking forward to seeing what God will do with you!
The way you put that was spot on. I had totally put this issue on the same level as foreign policy, education, health care, immigration, and every other "issue." I think I'd allowed myself to be desensitized by the overuse of the phrase "right to life"..and didn't really think of it as an issue of a systematic murder of citizens of a nation in a civil society.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm trying to figure out is what a loving, gracious, but courageous response to this is.
Thanks for your encouragement, Courtney. I'm so grateful the Lord pursues us in our pride and doesn't give up on us. Painful (but beautiful!) change comes when we really lean into Him. I'm slowly learning how little I really know. I appreciate you!
Steph,
ReplyDeleteWOW! I am so glad to see this. I feel like I have such a hard time with debating politics with Christians who vote differently than me for this very reason! I just feel like this is a HUGE scary awful thing, and it (for me) is the central issue in politics. I can't get past it to even think about foreign policy and economics. However, I also so agree with what you say about needing help for mom's who do choose to have their babies. As someone who falls under the rainbow of conservative, I feel like so often we (conservatives) come across cold and uncaring because we don't seem to care about what happens AFTER the baby is born. But so many of us do! Just the debate that ensues is always over the actual act of abortion, not the child's life. I so wish we as the church (not the government) could step up and love and help these mamas and babies get their feet under them. Thank you for being so passionate about this. I love and miss you.