Thank you for your courage, and willingness to shed light on seemingly blind eyes. What you do does not go unnoticed! But I know you don’t care to be noticed; you just care about saving that little life—preserving an authentic design made by the best Artist ever. Preserving a destiny. Preserving a mind—a gift to society.
Thank you for showing up—for showing up to turn on the lights, and clean the bathrooms. Thank you for placing chairs carefully in your offices to show her your intentional love, thank you for showing her baby with the sonogram machine, for staying late to keep the door unlocked for just one more, for decorating and making your place cozy and inviting, for unfolding and refolding and sorting tiny clothes so they can wait to cover an even tinier body. Thank you for sitting there and crying with her. Thank you for sitting and actually listening. Thank you for offering a sonogram. Thank you for helping her open her eyes to a solution. Thank you for your confidence—for your strength. Thank you for sharing your own story. Thank you for loving life so much, that you give up a little of yours to help save another. Thank you for leading the way when it comes to serving a greater purpose for even me to follow.
I know how hard it must be to try and lovingly persuade a woman no matter her age and watch her walk out the door and pray that she makes a decision to keep her little one. It must break your heart to run into her somewhere else nearby months later with no baby carrier, but instead, carries an extra weight of shame and pain. She rolls it off nervously when she see’s you saying she’s much better this way and so is the baby, and that she’s relieved and happy now. But you and I both know it’s a cover for her deep pain. I can’t believe she lays in bed night after night going straight to sleep thinking about the next day. We know month after month she’s dreaming about how big her little one would be right now and what they might look like.
When I went to cosmetology school several years ago I had a friend in my class named—well, let’s call her Meegan. Who one day whispered to me she found out she was pregnant. And in the next breath told me she had to take care of it. Not the baby but the “situation”. She labored over telling her parents. She didn’t have the money for an abortion and felt like she couldn’t tell them she wanted an abortion because they were catholic! I came up with 20 different ways that day to persuade her not to do this. I told her there is always help available, that there are couples that would die to be in her position, and there are no mistake babies, all created by God. I remember telling her my mom was given the option to have an abortion when pregnant with me because it would cost her something—her eyesight! I don’t know fully but I can witness that it is hard to give up something to save a life. And that it’s not our little fun idea to choose life, but the Creator’s himself! The living God. I pled with her that day not to do it, please don’t do it. The weekend came and we didn’t have school but I lost sleep and prayed for her all weekend. On Monday I looked for her she didn’t come. On Tuesday I looked for her but she still didn’t come. On Wednesday she showed up and reported that she had been sick. I asked her what happened last weekend and she told me she went through with the abortion. Her boyfriend and his mom paid for it. My heart broke. My stomach hurt. Now that’s four people I’m counting (Meegan, her boyfriend, and his mom) laying in their beds at night wondering what he or she looked like and how big they’d be right about now. That fourth one is me.
I think about Meegan all the time. I think about her little one too because, you see, I was pregnant with my first at that same time and he’s 5 now. He’s putting letters into words, learning how to tell jokes, loving card and number games, riding his bike without his training wheels as of last week, telling me 15 times a day that he loves me. Yeah—I think of them.
I’m sure sacrificing a life on the altar of convenience might sound very appealing for an 18 year old at that moment…. But SO much was cut short! So much.
For those we’ve pled with and for those you’ve done a sonogram with, yet still choose for whatever reason to abort their pregnancy—we hurt. We pray for her. We long for her to run, run, run into the biggest loving and forgiving arms. We catch ourselves smiling through our tears at what could have been. The discovery of little souls blossoming, little minds developing, little hearts beating, little fingers creating, little feet discovering, little voices laughing, little noses snoring….
Thank you hope-holder. Don’t stop. May we tell our children that lives were saved in the days we were given.
Blessings, Strength and Grace to you!
Lindey