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It was during a summer youth camp out; my husband and I were chaperone/cooks for the event held for the youth group of the church we were attending. We were all sitting around the campfire, under the safety of darkness and the evening has taken a serious mood, members of the group were asking questions, sharing stories, questioning life itself. The kids had reached that point were they were willing to ask the questions they couldn’t ask their parents.

There was something about that night; something that seemed to push me to tell these kids about the consequences that come from sex outside of marriage, to confess to them that I had had an abortion and the pain that came with it. I was over taken with emotions of the group, the trust they had, and the willingness to be venerable.

Before I thought it through, the words were coming out of my mouth, not realizing the consequences of me letting out the secret I had been holding on to.  There was several other couple attending the event helping with the chaperoning, as well as around 20 kids including my two sons that were all gathered around that fire that night. As it turned out, it wasn’t any of the adults in the group that I had to worry about, as all of this information poured out of me I didn’t click to me that my boys were in  that group, they had no knowledge of the abortion and that they would have had an older sibling.

It only took seeing the tears streaming down their faces in the dim light of the fire to shock me back to the reality that I had just exposed them to a great deal of pain. Amazingly to me, everyone in the group seemed to come around us, seemed to want to support us. As we sat there, they faced emotions of grief and loss for this sibling they would never know. At that point I couldn't focus on what the others would think of me, but on my sons and the difficult news that they had just heard.

It had never occurred to me that telling my sons would affect them as strongly as it did. I’m very sorry that I never sat down with them privately to tell them, but in some ways I’m thankful we had to strength of the group to affirm that we would be okay and that the child was with God. From that point forward, they thought differently about abortion, they understood what that kind of loss could be like. Everyone in the group left the comfort of that camp fire affected.