It's His Story

  Alicia
Michigan,  United States
 
  The Lord has guided me so tenderly through healing over what has happened to me, allowing me to see that I AM forgiven and loved. Living so many years in denial, and then, once I became saved, remaining distant still from my Savior because I felt utterly unforgivable.

The Spirit has led me through deep waters and has shown me that I now must speak out. In a time where abortion is glorified I must share my story. He has brought to me Proverbs 31:8 which says: “Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of those appointed to die.”

I plan to do that, in every way I can. To share the healing balm of Jesus Christ with women who are drowning in guilt and to give a voice to those who feel they have no other option.

I was 21, and I was single for the first time. I had met and entered into a relationship with a 20 year old man when I was almost 16. At 16 1/2, my parents pawned me off on him, and I became pregnant by the time I was 17. I delivered a healthy, beautiful son and soon after became pregnant again. The father asked if I would abort. It was too soon, and he wasn't ready. I said no. Soon after our relationship became increasingly violent, and by the time I was 20, I had gathered the courage to end it.

Single, as an adult, with a very rocky life...I took to drinking and drugs, engaging in random casual sex, living in a way that tipped its hat to my family’s deep roots of generational sin. I was selfish and addicted, and I couldn't care for my boys. I asked their dad to take them, and he did. Now, child free, I perused a relationship with a person my ex knew, part revenge, part safety. I became pregnant and, at first, it was a whirlwind of excitement, planning, and happiness. I knew it was going to be a girl, and I had names picked out and everything. My boyfriend at the time seemed happy, and we were planning our future out…but then as time went on it became clear my sons weren't fitting into this story, and I became nervous. When he changed his mind and asked me to get an abortion, I was shocked, hurt, devastated, and rejected. But I relented because I reasoned that this was the only way my already born children would be in my life. It was her or them, and I chose them, at all costs. I thought if I had the abortion I would save my boys and myself. I thought if I did what the father of the child asked he would love me, that it was my only way, that he would be with me, and that we would grow through it. But that did not happen. We broke up a while after that, and I moved away.

I am happy to say now my two sons are 15 and 14. I am married to an amazing man of God, who has loved me with the love of Christ through all of the tumultuous things I have gone through in the last 11 years with him. My husband and I now also have 4 other children. Beautiful, wonderful, amazing blessings I am ever so grateful for. But, with each passing pregnancy, I have always felt empty. Like a piece is missing from my family unit. When I had 2 children, I would find myself saying 3, or when I had 5 I would say I had 6. Everyone laughed it off with me, this scatter brained mom when I would reply, "I don't even know how many children I have."   But the truth was that I didn’t. I didn't know how or where to place this part of my life I so badly wanted to pretend didn't exist.

I had no counseling before, no video, no ultrasound. And all “education” was vague and scientific, presenting the baby as a non-living thing, not even qualified for life. It was just a cold room with a desk and some paper work. In a daze I signed and returned the next day, again no video, ultrasound or anything. They just a pill to 'relax me,’ and I sat on a medical exam table. I was so out of it from the medicine I couldn’t even speak before I started to tell them to stop, that I had changed my mind, but it was too late. I spent a good few weeks hoping by some miracle I would still be pregnant. And when it was obvious I was not, I tucked it away in the file of things that "do not affect me" and I moved on.

Only, God had other plans.

I would hear condemning commentary on abortion and be left feeling even more ashamed and deeper in the lies of unforgiveness. Well-meaning friends sharing testimony of the pain of miscarriage, not even knowing the pain I was in. At least they didn't choose death. I feel deeper into satan’s lies, even after I became a believer.  I was teaching Jesus to others, all the while exempting myself from most of His grace, living in chains, fully believing that I did not deserve to have them broken. But God is so good. That through reliance on Him, learning to put on the full armor of God, and following His voice, I have found healing. Oh, to tell of all He has delivered me from would take days.

If I deserve it, then dear sister, so do you. He is waiting and ready to restore. He is faithful when we are faithless, and He cannot deny Himself.

The saving grace of Jesus, it's His story, really.
   
   
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