From Faithful Devotion to Unexpected Choices: My Journey of Redemption – Part 2

Welcome back,

At the ended Part 1 I told you how I took an at home pregnancy test in my off-campus apartment before I left for Spring break. I couldn’t imagine being home for a week and not knowing. The pregnancy test instructions said that if the vile showed any hint of purple, that was positive test. The only thing I thought was, “Don’t be purple. Please don’t be purple . . . don’t be purple.”

It was indeed the deepest shade of purple I had ever seen in my life! Shock set in and the only thought I had was, “We have to fix this problem”.

Dave was also shocked. He couldn’t even speak as we ate lunch together. I decided I had to do what I said I would never do. I had to cover up our ‘problem’ especially before anyone found out. Like our families. 

Unexpected Decision

A week at home for Spring never swayed my decision. No one else knew so no one tried to convince me otherwise. On Monday, I thumbed through the Yellow pages (there was no Google Search back then) to find an abortion clinic we could go to in the city. I set the appointment for that Friday. All I had to do was make it through the week without anyone noticing the changes that were already happening to my body.

The day remains vivid in my memory. I kept telling myself, “Soon, it will be over, and I can move on.” I felt like I was in a daze … like what I was going through was just a bad dream. But, it was not. One minute I felt relief. Problem solved!

The minute baby was severed from me, I was hit with, “Oh dear God! What have I just done?!” The feeling of loss came quickly and was intense. I immediately wanted to reverse time. I was filled with regret for what I had just done.

We kept it to ourselves, and I returned to classes after a weekend filled with tears and remorse. The shame and regret lingered for over a decade.

Half-Hearted Devotion

Nine months after aborting our first child, Dave and I were married. Oh, there was an undercurrent of regret but life went on. Nine months after we were married, I was pregnant again and hubby’s job was transferring us from Minnesota to North Carolina. Our family was excited for a grandchild yet not so excited about us living far away. Just after Thanksgiving, I miscarried.

Since no one knew of the lingering guilt, regret and shame I was still carrying from the abortion, they had no idea why I wasn’t devastated over the miscarriage. Besides, I was a good Christian girl who grew up in a Christian home, went and worked at a Christian camp, went to a Christian college, and married a Christian man. I was the good Christian girl who committed to dating only Christian guys and who knew it wasn’t right to have sex outside of marriage.

Because of all of this, I struggled to believe that God could ever forgive me for breaking my promises. In my head, my miscarriage was a way of God evening things out between us, so to speak. These mental games went on for years. In a sense, it was a way to make sense of what I did and how God was responding to me.

It went like this in my thoughts: I took one, God took one … so now we’re even. God gave me one (a son) so He must have forgiven me. I wanted another baby, and for over a year we tried for another baby but with each month that I was not pregnant, I figured that God’s grace and forgiveness to me was limited. Just before our son turned 4yrs old, we had a daughter. I really thought then that God and I were good. But the guilt, regret and shame persisted even with one more gift of another little girl.

An Unexpected Question

While all these battles were going on in my heart, we were settling in to a new/old home, country living, a new church, new friends, and an unexpected new direction that God had in store for me. A new friendship was beginning for me with the wife of our church’s new Pastor. I knew that she saw, from the outside, a solid Christian woman married to a good Christian man, raising 3 kids to know Jesus and committed to helping out in our little church (and I do mean little … I think the children out-numbered the adults!).

As our friendship grew, she began to challenge me to lead a women’s Bible study. When asked to, I tried to avoided that question because I was convinced that no Pastor’s wife would want me to lead women or even be around her if she knew the truth.

However, one simple question from my dear friend changed everything.

At a women’s retreat, I decided to confront her persistent inquiries. I expected shock and disgust when I confessed my past, but her response stunned me. She asked, “Don’t you think God still wants to use you?” My first thought was, ‘of course He doesn’t!’ Then I felt like I got a hard smack of a reality check. Maybe He did. It was like God was whispering, “Yes, I still want to use you.” Those words altered my trajectory, leading me to embrace God’s forgiveness and purpose for my life.

Today, one of the ways I serve is as a Biblical Counselor. I offer Biblical guidance to women with various hurts, not just those stemming from abortion. My aim is to speak life into broken hearts and witness their renewal for God’s glory.

Brokenness, whether self-inflicted or from external sources, offers two paths: to remain wounded or pursue holiness. I believe in the transformative power of healed brokenness, shaping us into reflections of Christ and revealing God’s glory to the world. I love helping women emulate Jesus and magnify God’s name, inspired by the grace shown to me by others.

My passion is to help silently suffering Christian women overcome shame from their secret abortion so they can walk in the newness of life that is only found in Jesus Christ.