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We had become involved in a new church in the area that was a different from the churches I had attended during my life. We met in a middle school cafeteria, all of our equipment and supplies arrived in a trailer each week and we would unload, set up, have services, tear it all down, load it all back into the trailer and do it all again the next week. The pastor road a motor cycle and the worship leader had done time in prison. It was not your everyday dress up in your Sunday best, be on our best behavior and go to church kind of place, we came in our jeans and sweatshirts and worked hard to provide a service for others. They preached out of the bible the same way our other churches had, but this church wasn't filled with judgment, it was filled with real people with real lives and struggles.
The event that brought that home to me the most occurred during a regular Sunday service, one of the woman in the church who I knew, but not closely got up to share her story. From the podium she introduced herself and proceeded to tell us that she had had an abortion and that through God's grace she was forgiven. She stood there in a room of a couple hundred people and she openly shared her pain and struggle with what she had done, and how she found healing. After service dozens of people lined up to hug her and thank her for her honesty and strength to share something so private. I too stood in that line, and I was able to say "me too".
For me, that was a tearful, pain surging first step. That was the first time that I was able to feel like I could be forgiven, that there might not always be condemnation and shame. There were others even within the church, that had done what I had done and struggled like I struggle.
It was a couple of years after that day that the church had moved into a permanent facility which allowed for activities beyond the Sunday morning services, which triggered the beginning of an outreach program in the form of recovery programs. As part of their programs they had support for Alcohol and Drug Recovery, Sex Addiction Recovery, Divorce Recovery and yes, Post-Abortion Recovery.
The class was a group of three of us, the gal leading the group, with myself and one other gal who worked through the book provided and began to take steps to find healing for our choices. We had one woman who attended a couple of times but she was not at a point where she was ready to face what she had done. When they announced that there was going to be a class on this topic, I saw gal in her early 20's with tears running down her cheek heading for the lobby. I followed her out of the church to the curb and we talked about her pain and that she was thinking about going to the class but she like the other woman was not ready and she never made it to the class. I could only pray that she did go to one of the other classes that were held later.
It was during that time that my eyes were truly opened to the volume of woman who chose the road of abortion and were faced with guilt and shame just as I was, and didn't know how to face it.
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The public outcry against abortion has quieted in the last decade or so, we've stopped hearing about it in the news, the burning of clinics and loud news worthy protests seemed to have faded into the background. There are people still speaking out against abortion, and you still hear about it in the news from time to time, or it comes to the surface when politicians are willing to venture into the waters of pro choice/life arena, but all in all it has become the norm, an accepted form of birth control. But the poorly informed choices for unwanted pregnancies and the aftermath of suffering woman like myself seems to still go on today. How do reach these woman, how do we help in the healing process, how do we prepare them before they head into those clinics?
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