"I do have a story about this place..."

This week was probably one of the best weeks ever!  We spent the entire week in Ohio, which is now one of my favorite places of all time, and we are stayed with Bryan Kemper of Stand True Ministries.  During our stay, we went to an abortuary to sidewalk counsel, and my team held signs of fetal development and graphic images of abortions, while I chalked and Kristina counseled.  I chalked things like “For REAL help, call 1-800-712-HELP” and “Pretend I’m a tree: save me”.  After chalking pretty much the entire sidewalk, I stopped because I was skinning my fingers as the chalk wore to a nub. I had started walking back when a car stopped next to me.

“What’s all this about?” A woman asked me from her car.  I bent over and explained to her that this was an abortion clinic and that we were sidewalk counseling.  I also told her that we were there to show women the truth about abortion and to show them there are a lot better decisions than abortion, and a dead baby.

 “Oh that’s awesome!” she said, surprising me. “I have a daughter that wants to come out here sometime and do this sort of thing, but she is a little young.  When she is sixteen or seventeen, then I’ll come with her.”

I was so excited that this mom was going to take her kids out to sidewalk counsel, I wanted to hug her. But she kept going, and her face changed.

“I do have a story about this place, and MY experience.”  I realized that this conversation might go on for a while, so I knelt on the grass to listen. She told me she had come to that same clinic in 2006 -- to have an abortion. And it was horrible.

“They didn’t care about anything,” said said, lip trembling, “After the abortion, I started hemorrhaging, and they waited forever to even bring the machine back upstairs to do another you know...whatever it’s called that they do.  And a nurse...I was so scared, and a nurse was like, ‘Don’t you have other children?”and she laughed, and told me, ‘You’re going to make your kids’ lives a living hell.’ Can you believe? And then I had to go to the hospital immediately afterwards and spend a day there.”  

I told her that I was so sorry about what happened to her and her baby and she nodded, “They were awful.  When the abortion was done, they showed me my baby. They showed me the jars with him in them --  MY baby!  I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”  

We were silent together. I realized in a different way how serious an evil abortion is -- how nothing turns back that choice, how death can’t be undone.

Then she took a deep breath, and the moment passed. She told me she had just come from the Crisis Pregnancy center across the street -- she had had an ultrasound, and was 7 weeks pregnant! She beamed a huge smile, glowing with excitement.

When she finally shook my hand to go, and introduced herself, she dropped in passing that she had never had a chance to talk to anyone about her abortion before -- and was grateful she could tell me. I even got the chance to tell her the dangers of artificial contraception, and how IUD’s, and other chemical birth control actually CAUSE abortions by thinning the lining of the uterus and preventing the baby from implanting. But with an IUD, a baby can even live for a few months, and be killed by it then.  

Before she left, she thanked me again. She had come willing to heal, and God put me there with the info she needed! That’s why the Campus Life Tour is so important, and it’s why I’m out here still, almost every day.

Please pray for her, her family, and her preborn child!