Thoughts On Abortion in American: Hope and The Gospel in My Crisis Pregnancy

Tomorrow is the 44th anniversary of the famous Roe vs. Wade decision by the Supreme Court which put into motion the legal killing of unborn babies in the United States.

From that date to today over 59 million babies have been aborted in this country alone. To put that in perspective, about 6 million Jewish people were slaughtered by the Nazi regime during WWII. That means the killing of babies in the United States is 10 times that of the precious lives taken in the holocaust.  I wonder if we'll ever look back on abortion in the United States with the same horror and shock as we do the holocaust.  I wonder if we'll ever think, "How could we have done that!!??"

My Mom's Crisis Pregnancy

I was born the year after Roe vs. Wade was decided. I am my mom's first viable pregnancy. I was thinking about that today. My mom didn't have a crisis pregnancy as a teenager. She wasn't pregnant as the result of incest or rape. But she did have a pregnancy that threatened her life.

My mom's last pregnancy, I guess technically, would be considered an abortion. She had an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy that could have taken her life had the doctor not removed the ovary and fallopian tube where her newly developing baby was growing causing the rupture of her fallopian tube and emergency surgery. I'm sure the folks who defend a woman's right to abortion would site my mom's situation as one of the reasons abortion needs to be a legal, medical procedure in the United States. I guess people will spin things the way that serves them best. The doctor did not perform an abortion to save my mother's life. He saved my mother's life by stoping the hemorrhage from a ruptured fallopian tube. The life that was growing in that dying place died as a result of that place being incompatible with human life. She grieved the loss of that life and three others who died before they could breathe outside her womb.

I've been thinking today about the fact that neither my mom, nor I have any idea what it feels like to be in a crisis pregnancy, but in thinking it through I've decided we both knew crisis in our pregnancies.  My mom was pregnant for the first 7 years of her marriage and married to a mill worker who provided a home, food on the table, and a car to drive, but it wasn't fancy. Someone else in my mom's shoes may have felt she couldn't handle another pregnancy. It would cost too much. It could effect her health. It was emotionally distressing. I'm sure my mom felt overwhelmed. And each pregnancy did damage my mom's body and caused financial strain. She suffers this day from horrible varicose veins that were tremendously worsened by her 3 vaginal births and 7 pregnancies. My mom struggled with hormonal changes, depression and emotional distress due to having babies. And there were times I remember that she came home with a cardboard box of government issued cheese, rice, beans and canned foods because my dad was laid off work and her small hairdressing, babysitting, housecleaning and flower arranging jobs were not enough to feed a family of five.

I'm so thankful for a mom who gave of herself for my sake and the sake of my brother and sister and the 4 in heaven.


My Crisis Pregnancy

I wanted desperately to be pregnant 10 years into my marriage and was told I wouldn't conceive without medical intervention. My strained marriage didn't need a baby to support and so my husband was actually relieved to hear he wouldn't need to worry about that. But God heard my cries at 29 and I conceived Connor. My husband wasn't happy. I felt the weight of burden increase when Connor was born. My broken marriage was barely holding together and now we had a child to raise. My body didn't quite know what to do with itself in the months after Connor was born and at one point I was so sick the doctors thought I had Hodgkins lymphoma. But by the time Connor was a year old my body was starting to recover and I found out I was pregnant again. I'm sure that would be the point at which some might say I was in a crisis pregnancy. Maybe. I'd say it was 6 months later when my husband left me.

I was seven months pregnant. 28 weeks. Barely viable. I'm sure for some that would have been the crisis that led them to a Planned Parenthood where they would have been directed to make an appointment to terminate a 28 week pregnancy. Instead I was in a hospital getting turbutaline shots and Magnesium Sulfate to stop my preterm labor probably caused by the stress of my family falling apart. Ryland was my crisis pregnancy, but the crisis never led me to think I needed to end his life, rather it led me to call on the One who was knitting that life together in my womb.

My crisis pregnancy was where I walked with God like I never had before.


Hope and The Gospel of Christ

As I've been thinking about abortion in the United States today I've thought about how I can't identify with the women who are choosing this. But I want to.

I think my lack of feeling a connection with women who choose abortion comes down to hope. I have hope. I had hope. I knew who I was and Whose I was and so when crisis came when I was pregnant, and when crisis came when my mom was pregnant, we depended on the promise of God- that we are his children, that he would never leave us or forsake us and that he would work all things for our good. 

And it's not just hope that is different in my case, it's the gospel.  I knew the gospel of Christ when my crisis pregnancy came and I clung to it!  Christ died to give us life. I believe that. And I believe that is the life we are made to live- a dying-to-self life.  A mom's life is a bearing of stretch marks, weight gain, postpartum depression, grief and pain from babies who've died in our wombs and wombs that have died too.  It's a bearing of varicose veins, hormonally induced hair loss, emotional instability, painful periods, financial strain, relational strife and a thousand other ways moms die daily to take up our cross and follow Jesus as we love our children more than ourselves.

The women who choose abortion have no hope outside what they can do for themselves and they don't see their life in Christ so that they know if they cling to their life (even at the expense of the life growing inside them) they'll loose it, but if they loose their life in a thousand ways everyday for Christ's sake for the baby that is being knit together in their wombs, they'll live!


Abortion is a Symptom

The thousands of abortions performed in the United States today weren't medically necessary abortions because a woman is hemorrhaging and a ruptured fallopian tube needed to be removed to save her life.  The blood of our babies cries out because of our self-centered darkness.  We kill our babies when we were made to die and suffer for them.  Every life that ever lived was born by a woman.  We were made to give birth to life though it rips us apart.  We were made to be fed off of and give and give and give of ourselves that another might live and live and live.  We were made this way because we were made in the image of God.  Abortion is a symptom of the denial of that purpose.  Without the conviction that were are image of God bearers we can create any sort of reality that suits us.  But the truth is the truth.  If we cling to our lives we'll loose it.  If we keep killing our babies to save our lives it will destroy us.  But if we loose our lives in the image of the One who made us, we will live.  Even though we die daily.

Moms are The Giving Tree

Have you read the book The Giving Tree?  You probably have.  It's iconic.  But if you haven't you should.  The Giving Tree testifies to the fact that we know it noble and right to give of yourself even if it costs you your life.  We know this enough to write a timeless children's book about it.  Moms are the Giving Tree in the flesh!  We are made to give life not take it.  Even it when it takes life from us.  Its beautiful.  Its Christ-like.  It honors the One who died on a tree to give us life!

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do now.  But after thinking about this all day I know I want to be more conscious of the high calling I have as a mom to the 13 and 12 year old sons I'm still bearing.  And I want to be part of stopping the women who are stumbling to the slaughter, blindly going against the Christ-like nature they were created to display.

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. -Genesis 3:13 

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  -1 Peter 2:21-24

Real Women

I've had something on my mind: Real Women.

Look around you sometime at the grocery store, or gas station, at work or at the gym.  Look at the real women around you.  How many of them look like the women on cover of magazines, in commercials or at elite fitness competitions?  I propose almost none.  There was one woman today who I saw at the gym who legitimately looked like a elite fitness/pin-up model.  Maybe she was one.

Our sex-crazed culture is so perverted in it's message about what a woman should look like.  Most of us real women spend way too much time, money, thought and energy into trying to achieve some semblance of that air-brushed, artificially-preserved image.  To clarify, my point here isn't let yourself go, throw healthy diet and exercise out with the dirty bathwater of trying to look like the perky-disproportionately-large busted, thin-waisted, flawless-skinned, whitened teeth, stylish, muscle-up repping, 7% body fat, tanned-skin woman we are being told everywhere is what a beautiful woman should look like.  The thing I want to say here is real women everywhere who care about a healthy diet and who exercise their bodies to keep them healthy are all shapes and sizes and have varicose veins, hemorrhoids, postpartum depression, premenstrual syndrome, endometriosis, migraine headaches, fatigue, acne, heavy periods, irregular periods, infertility, eczema, psoriasis, wrinkles, freckles, moles, birth marks, scars, cow-licks, curly hair, straight hair, thinning hair, no hair, brown eyes, blue eyes, blind eyes, glaucoma damaged eyes, are near-sighted, far-sighted, lactose intolerant, have Crohn's disease, osteoarthritis, cancer, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, auto-immune diseases, amputations, skin-grafts, transplants, hearing loss, joint-damage, injuries... I could go on and on.  My point is, none of those things that real, beautiful women live with every day show up on that cover of Fitness Today, or in the friggin' Carl's Jr. commercial with the seductive woman nearly orgasmic over a hamburger for goodness sake!

I have the privilege of talking to lots of women.  Most of them in the hospital for some malady that has plagued their lives or some injury or trauma that has drastically changed it forever.  Their ages range from teens to 100's.  Some of them are strikingly beautiful-  if you saw them all cleaned up and made up and in their best clothes and their best health in the best light you'd be like, "Whoa!  She's beautiful!"  Most of them though wouldn't probably catch your attention on the physical beauty radar, but that's just the thing.  That's MOST of the women in the world.  There are stunningly beautiful women, no doubt.  But most of us are in the girl-next-door beauty category.  We might have beautiful eyes, but our jaw line is receding, or our nose is crooked, or we have an acne problem or we're pear-shaped... and supposedly those things make us not very beautiful anymore according to the media message we are barraged by.  And I just want to say bologna!!  BOLOGNA!  Real women are really beautiful for many reasons including, but not limited to their bust, waste and hip measurements.

I feel so passionate about this right now, I want to start a hashtag campaign for #RealWomen to take pictures of their real selves and post them on social media.  (I just looked up the hashtag RealWoman... don't do it.  It's already being used and perverted... So much for the hashtag campaign idea.  I guess I'll just post an obscure blog.)  I wish we could flood the media with what real women look like and see how beautiful we are with our various struggles and body types.  This passion rises in me as a 42 year old, six-foot tall, blonde, fair-skinned, fairly thin woman who has been told most of her life by various people, "You should be a model!"  All my life I have really dreaded hearing that from people.  I mean I know they're being nice and all, but being a model isn't the pinnacle of feminine beauty and it's certainly not what I want to do with my life.  Unless, I could be a model and show the extra roll of padding that has formed around my waist-line in the last 10 years, and the varicose veins that have disfigured my legs, and the painful-bloated abdomen that bothers me about 2 weeks out of every month simply because of ovulation and menstruation.  If I could show the world what I really look like no modeling agency would have me, because, well, I'm a real woman.  I have a real body with real fat and muscle and bone that don't conform to the cover of Vogue.

So I'll never be a runway model, and I never want to be, but I do model for my husband and sons and co-workers and nieces and nephews and kids at church and in my neighborhood what a real woman looks like and what makes her beautiful.   So what does make a woman beautiful?

The design of the feminine physique is un-mistakeably a thing of beauty.  No doubt, God made a woman as a display of beauty unchallenged by the rest of his creation.  In fact, the physical beauty of a woman is the reason the perversion, molestation and objectifying de-humanization of it is such a thriving industry both in the sex-selling advertisements used on everything from cars to hamburgers, and in the get yourself air-brushed, lifted, tucked, waxed, tattooed, slimmed, dieted, toned and trimmed messages we hear on advertisements everywhere.  We are being told constantly that the female body is beautiful if it makes a man want to engage in sexual acts with it, and if it is physically fit enough to compete in a modeling or fitness competition.  But the truth is, the female body's beauty isn't just like an exotic flower that's stunning and visually alluring for a time, and then, eventually wilts and fades.  It does wilt and wrinkle, fade and age-spot.  But the physical allure of a woman's body is also like fine wine and a timeless piece of architecture- it's beauty develops depth and variety and character over time and gravity and arthritis.   It really does.  The secret to the beauty of a woman that endures time and brokenness is not found at Ulta or the gym.  It's not confirmed in a man's arousal or an elite-fitness award.  This is where the God part of my soapbox on #RealWomen comes in.

I can't avoid it.  This is the thing about thinking through a line of reasoning.  If I leave God out of it, I could say a real woman's beauty comes from good character and trying to stay healthy.  No God needed.  But the motives behind the woman's good character and trying to stay healthy are the real light shining out of the lamp of that woman's life and if the motives are self-actualization and self-fulfillment as defined by other women and men in the world, then the light is a deceptive allure to a dead end.  But if the motives behind the woman's good character and work towards good health is the imaging of God's beauty and worth then she shines a light so bright it breaks through the thickest fog of depression, cancer and loss a real woman lives with, giving her the hope of also becoming a stunningly beautiful woman.  The light that shines from the life of a woman who's hope is in God, not in men or women or society, drives out the darkness that comes with sagging skin and hearing loss and clears the path for women with silhouettes and shapes of all kinds to walk the way of #RealWomen beauty.

God in Christ is the standard of #RealWoman beauty.  He's the creator of it and it's to him I look for what real beauty is, not magazines or what the world around me says.  He says real woman beauty is a gentle and quiet spirit.  He says real woman beauty is fearing no one but God alone.  He says real woman beauty looks fear in the face and laughs, cause nothing can drive out the unapproachable light of God's truth and his good plans.  He says the really beautiful woman knows she's a child of God, and like Christ, lays down her life- submitting to others willingly, and standing firm in the truth unwaveringly.  

I want to look to him for what beauty is and spend my time and energy striving after those things with the strength he supplies.  The physical maintenance of my body and the painting of the house must be done.  But they are not the methods I want to use to achieve beauty.  They are outward, temporary maintenance not inward lasting beauty.

Are you a real woman?  How do you define feminine beauty?

Quieted,

Sheila

Bearing the peculiar mark of majesty

So I'm doing this Bible study with my neighbor. First Peter. We're at that infamous submission part. I've camped out in this book for years. I frequently come back to it because it so directly speaks to me.

It bothers me that I'm bothered by the whole subject of submission because I can clearly see that submission is not a subheading under the subject of being a wife.  It is, as I've heard John Piper put it, the peculiar mark of majesty on all within the kingdom of God.  But it's just my fallen human nature to be bothered by the idea of submission.  No one. No. One. Likes someone else to be in authority over them  No one likes being the one who defers to the authority of another.  We all want to do life our way without anyone telling us otherwise.  That's just our messed-up nature.

Submissiveness is godly.  God-like.  It's not natural or human-like.  Submissiveness is to be the character of all Christians, not just women or wives.  Godly submissiveness is willing, not forced.  The godly submissive person knows where they come from.  They know who they are.  And Whose they are.  They know where they're going.  They know what their inheritance is.  They know all things are theirs in Christ.  And they willingly honor and defer to the authority of those in authority and they willingly humble themselves to lift up others.

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him...  "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." - John 13:3-5, 14-17

Because all Christians are called to a Christ-like submissiveness in the way they relate to authority and to each other there is manifestly different kinds of submission.  Those who submit to persons in authority have one kind.  Those (even in positions of authority) who submit themselves to others in various situations have another kind.  But all kinds are willing, coming from a person who knows they are a child of the Living God.  They are not weak, doormats with no will or choice.  They are the wealthiest, most powerful of all because their Father is the Creator of the universe and works ALL things for their good and His glory.  No person in a position of authority over them has any power other than what their Father has ok'd.

The person who bears the God-like, peculiar mark of majesty can look the most powerful and the most harsh and the most wealthy person in the face and face any response or consequence they may impose on their life without any fear.

Quieted,

Sheila