Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it? . . .
In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions.
We don’t see them, the women, head in hands, often alone in their apartments, suffering.
They suffer through the choice of, the procedure of, and the after-effects of their abortions. We don’t see them for a few days, but that is nothing new. We don’t see many friends or family members for a few days.
We didn’t notice.
We don’t hear them either, crying into their pillows, muffling their grief.
We don’t know their stories because it is not easy for them to speak about. The pain lies hidden deep in their hearts, placated by medication in the terrible times. Who wants to dive into the depths of the human heart and open Pandora’s box of pain that lies within?
We didn’t notice their cries because much pain emerges silently.
What TRULY is best for the woman?
What if we set aside the unwanted child within her womb, the man who is in or out of her life, societal expectations – everything? Let’s set everything aside and focus on the woman.
On her.
On you.
I see you. I feel your pain, though I may not know you. I hear you crying, though I have never met you.
I have an inkling of the pain that you feel because I feel it, too, in a different sort of way.
I am an adoptive parent.
I also, like you, have cried the anguished tears of a woman who is not in control of the timing of when a child enters her life. I too have shed tears for the unfulfilled longings of my heart, though different from yours.
I, too, have suffered grief because of the child.
But this is not about me.
This is about you.
Should you be the one to pay for the abortion procedure, handing over your savings to get it done?
What about the man?
Would a sperm say to a father, ‘Who gave you permission to use me to make a baby?’
He pockets his savings, perhaps buying more beers for his friends. He is still drinking, having fun, eyeing up the next woman at the bar while you are at home, alone, suffering through the painful side effects of aborting his child.
Is this the best we can do for women’s rights?
In ancient Greek culture, women were considered more powerful than men.
Some were worshipped as Greek goddesses. Temple prostitution was an honored position within Greek society, unlike cultural stigmas towards prostitution today. The cultural mindset was that women can control their sex drives more successfully than men.
Women have control over something men desperately want.
When sex is withheld for a season, the power balance shifts to favor women.
What if, and I am only asking the question, withholding sex from a man until he promises to be by her side if a baby comes is the best way to honor women?*
Here’s another thing we know. . . . Sexual activity is not a life-threatening proposition for guys. Neither are the consequences. We won’t die if we get our partner pregnant. We don’t lactate once she gives birth. Males are really off the hook. We engage in the same reproductive activity [as females] but there are great differences in what each has to lose when they engage in it.
Then let’s say “no” except to the honorable man who has already asked us to marry him*.
This is the first step towards truly honoring, valuing, and assuring women’s rights.
Use your superpower! Assert your strength and the dignity, rights, and freedom of women. Don’t hand him your future suffering, both physically and emotionally, for free.
Value the woman.
Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for?
Lord, raise women who are okay with standing alone. Thank You for restoring us to wholeness, no matter where we have travelled, Jesus. After a moment of quiet, consider asking Holy Spirit, “How do you see me?”
Blogpost Footnotes
*And no, I am not referring to the teen boy who buys $20 cubic zirconia “Promise Rings” in bulk from Walmart and hands them out to myriad teen girls, seeking his reward. The promise rests on the character of the promise-er.
This post is part of our Say-It-Again On Friday series.
It was movie and popcorn night. We watched UnPlanned, the astonishing, true story of Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson’s journey across the line from Choice to Life.
We were all undone.
As my tiny and insignificant contribution to this whirlwind topic of our day, like a feather battling a windstorm, I include below a poem I wrote.
May our prayers reach the ear of God, that the prevailing cultural winds would change direction and blow the feather toward God again and again and again . . . we pray.
Lord, have mercy on us, all of us, for we are a sinful people.
And may we pause to considerthe following:
Simon Peter [who] . . . fell to his knees before Jesus. “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.”
If . . . my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health.
Yet I’ve seen her mom, belly swelled in mystical expectation, nervously meeting prospective adoptive parents for the first time. Tears flowed on all sides at the first introduction, bonded somehow at the initial meeting. I’ve chatted with her mom many times while she lay curled up in the womb.
My heart broke for her mom because she could not raise her now.
I met her birth grandma and cried with her over the expectation of the first grandchild in the family.
The fulfillment of a grandmother’s dreams was not that the child would be whisked from her arms before they would know each other well. “You take good care of her,” the grandmother whispered to the adoptive mother through tears.
I’ve met her birth father.
A boy-man, wearing the tough guy mask in front of his friends and family. I sat with him while he, head in hand, sobbed a mountain of anguished tears, knowing that her birth mom could not stay with him forever and be the family unit that he dreamed of.
I’ve cried with him too.
I’ve also met them – the crowds of families, with polished faces and pages full of dreams in shiny dossiers, cartwheeling over each other in efforts to impress. They plead, “Please pick us. We want her.We want to be her family. Oh, won’t you please pick us?”
I know them because I was also a member of one of those families. And our family was chosen. And oh, how the aching in our hearts was finally filled with love and gratitude for this cherished life.
Thank you, birth mothers, birth fathers, and birth grandparents, for standing firm in love and truth, regardless of the shifting sand of popular opinions.
We honor you, and we love you.
Thank you for placing your child in the arms of a family who will love and care for her.
Thank you for allowing this child to thrive in the healing love of all of us in her extended birth families and her extended adoptive family.
And we share a secret, don’t we?
Even if they don’t know it, we know these children are wanted by MORE people than can be counted.
Restoring Life 