Hidden Song

It’s positive.

The words scream loud.

Many voices speak at once.

“I’ll lose my family.”

 ‘I’ll lose my boyfriend.”

“What will people think when they hear what I’ve been doing?”

 “I’m too young for this.”

“I have a choice.”

“I’m going to take that choice.”

Returning from the walk down the hallway of choice, many voices speak at once.  

“What will people think when they hear what I’ve done?”

 “I’ll lose my family.”

 “I’ll lose my boyfriend.”

“I’m too young for this.”

“I have a choice.”

“I’m going to hide my choice.”

Stepping into the closet of shameful secrets, the voices continually speak at once.

“No one can know what I’ve done?”

 “I’ll lose my family.”

 “I’ll lose my boyfriend.”

“I’m too young for this.”

“I had a choice.”

“I can’t let anyone know I made that choice.”

A knock sounds on the closet door of shameful secrets. One voice speaks loud and clear.

“I know.”

“You will not lose me.”

“It doesn’t matter what others think.”

“I too had a choice.”

“I made that choice for you.”

She walks out of the closet of shameful secrets into the hands of forgiveness.

Many women live, in pain, in this closet of shameful secrets.

Why? Besides the pain, risks and physical aftermath abortion brings, a woman suffers emotionally. She participated in taking the life of her own child.

And because a woman participated in taking the life of her own child, she doesn’t get to grieve. After all, why should she mourn? It was her decision.

Writing about “choice” is not easy. It’s a subject that from many perspectives divides our nation. Many years ago I too was an advocate for “choice.” I stepped into a new world when my eyes were open to what that word really meant.

Choice is more than eliminating a problem. It is a painful procedure that ends the life of a child and changes the life of a woman.

In the story Hidden Song, I took Trudy out of the abortion clinic and in one situation after another silenced the voices that made her believe there was only one choice for her. One voice took a while to silence.

One hope is that women of all ages can find comfort or healing in knowing there are other options for you and the child you are carrying. The child isn’t the problem. The problem is learning to live with how this new life affects your own life and the people around you.

The second hope would be that through the lives of the characters, I was able to speak to those who are in some way involved in a decision with a woman considering abortion. Like I said earlier, “choice” is more than eliminating a problem. It is a very painful procedure that ends the life of a child and changes the life of a woman.

The story depicts a sampling of the many voices that scream at a woman in the situation of an unplanned pregnancy. I believe the loudest is fear. The biggest fear is losing the people in her life that she loves. There is also the fear of losing her career, and her friends, her childhood, her new life with her husband now that the kids are grown, energy, time. The list goes on.

After an abortion those fears usually remain the same because all though it’s legal and her right, what would people think of her decision. Would they leave?  Now comes the fear of losing all of the things that led her to her choice.

And she should be okay afterward, but she’s not. Who will understand?

The third hope is to let those of you who made the choice of abortion know you don’t have to live in the closet of shameful secrets. There are many women who suffer in the same way you do.

There is a list a mile long of symptoms that come from abortion. And there is healing.

You don’t have to tell the whole world about it. But, there is someone waiting to talk to you about it. And He loves you. Jesus is reaching His hand out to you and there is healing in Him. You can begin to walk through the process of mourning and into the path of receiving His forgiveness and your own.

In this world we have the freedom to make choices. I would never want to be responsible for taking away a person’s right to make the right decision. But my hope and prayer for every woman is that her choice is life.

Choice doesn’t have to mean the end of two lives. Abortion has many painful ramifications and unless you’ve walked down that hallway, it isn’t easy to understand.

It is easy to hear about a young girl, or an older woman, becoming pregnant and for whatever reason, it is clear the pregnancy is an inconvenience and be happy she has the option to take care of the matter and go on with her life.

It is hard for a young girl or an older woman to go on after making that choice to live her life as she once did before. The experience, if she didn’t block it out, stays in the back of her mind. It’s something that is not talked about among friends and family.

Unless, you’ve walked down the path of abortion in one way or another, and suffered the ramifications that come from abortion, it is easy to push choosing to end the life of the child a woman is carrying.

If you are in a place where you are considering abortion or you are pushing someone to have an abortion, take time to see what abortion really is and what happens to you during the abortion procedure. There are videos and books and lots of testimonies available.

What people consider a solution to a problem becomes the door to a larger problem.

I hope Hidden Song brings you the comfort, understanding or the courage you may be in need of right now. And a hug and a glimpse at how much God loves you. 

TANGLES IN MY HEART

Here is a testimony of someone’s abortion experience…

An interesting principle came to me one day when I was combing my hair. I found that how I deal with snarls in my hair was how I dealt with snarls in my life.

I have long hair and it is very fine, causing it to be very sensitive and tangles easily. I have found, from time to time, that I will get a snarl in my hair and I would comb over it instead of dealing with it.

When I did that it would give me the illusion of covering it up and hiding it from others, but it never helped, it just made the problem worse.

The longer I avoided the snarl, the bigger it got. One day I had a particularly nasty snarl in my hair that I had avoided for quite some time. I was reflecting on it, trying to decide if I shouldn’t just cut my hair when the Lord showed me that I needed to work through difficult situations instead of avoiding them. He showed me through that snarl in my hair that once I decided to begin working on combing it out, no matter how much it hurt and I cried the snarl could be combed out.

This was a picture the Lord gave me to begin the process of healing a very painful part of my past. I had not been dealing with the problem, thus allowing it to get bigger, more painful and gave Satan a place to work havoc in my life.

When I was 9, I was raped by a classmate’s brother, who had been molesting her along with her other two brothers. Although it was told to my parents and they made me confess it to the Catholic priest, nothing was ever done to help me heal from the shame I felt.

This began a snarl in my life that would be combed over and hidden from the world for many years. I would spend the better part of my childhood and adult life trying desperately to hide my painful secret.

I found that I believed that I was a sinner, for the priest told me so. I had to say so many of the prescribed prayers they give you that I walked away believing that I was too bad for God to love and there wasn’t any forgiveness for someone as dirty as I was.

 I also believed that there wasn’t anyone that would ever be there for me so I had to take care of it myself. My life would be a constant tangle of shame, guilt and horror that anyone would ever know this about me. I lived desperately trying to hide, but it always seemed everyone knew.

When I was 20 my life had come to a place where I believed that I would never be loved when I started to date a guy I met during summer break from college. I never knew that I didn’t have to sleep with a guy in order to get him to love me, so I got pregnant.

He immediately dumped me and I was faced with sharing it with my parents who were unable to deal with my earlier crisis and had left me believing it was all my fault I had been raped.

I had nowhere to turn, so I chose abortion. This turned the snarl of my life to a horrible tangle and pushed my life into a mess where I used alcohol and drugs to try and forget. The pain built and my life spiraled out of control so that 5 years later I found myself in the same situation, pregnant, dumped and nowhere to turn.

I chose the easy way out again and found myself at the abortion clinic.

The mess in my life was getting bigger and harder to hide. It took so much energy to pretend to have it all under control.

When I met Jesus Christ, it was the most amazing thing that He would pursue me, sent others alongside me and offered love and forgiveness that I had never known. I heard a song that offered me freedom and I knew that Jesus wanted me to surrender all of my life to Him, because He wanted me and I accepted.

So I began to walk in His ways and in His truth, but I had not yet begun to unravel the snarl that was still causing me to hide my “real” self from others.

Then one day the Lord reminded me that I had accepted Him into my heart when I had heard the song by Clay Crosse I Surrender All. He showed me that when I said I would surrender all, He meant the pain as well and He wanted to heal the wounded places of my heart.

I felt backed into a corner, I had nowhere to run, so I gave in and asked Him to help me deal with the abortions and He led me HEART. A group that is for helping woman deal with the pain of abortion related trauma that women experience as a result of making the choice to abort their child or children.

The 12-week bible study was the most amazing process of untangling the snarl of the years of shame and pain I had built up. I was able to finally come boldly to the throne of grace and ask forgiveness for what I had done. I was able to work through anger at those who had hurt me and let me down and then reach a place of forgiveness. The day that I accepted God’s forgiveness was the most incredible day of my life and the most freeing experience.

I was no longer in bondage to the pain and I fully accepted that He loved me, He had died for my sins, and I just needed to accept His forgiveness to be set free.

To write this is hard for me for it does the one thing that I have been avoiding all my life, exposes me.

I was reflecting on this as I heard a story about a man who is preparing to be set free from a jail where he has served time for selling drugs. He had since come to know Jesus and is afraid to get out and suffer the world that may or may not accept him. He worries about being forever marked and I realized that I could relate to him in my failure to share my story. I was allowing what people thought of me to be more important to me that what God thinks of me.

I know that in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 it says Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

 I knew that I had to be comforted by God in order to offer comfort to others like me who have a horrible tangled life that needs to be set free by God.

I am not proud of my past, but I share it with others so that they will know…when the Son has set you free, you shall be free indeed. John 8:36.