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.
