The Bradford Pear are in bloom. The forsythia are bursting in yellow profusion. The daffodils are tilting their sun-bonnet blossoms to the sky. No one can encounter a Charlotte spring and not feel at least a twinge of hope. There is new life. There is rebirth. There is warmth after the cold, hard winter.
How gracious of God to build His message into the seasons themselves!
After a month of being in the frigid north, caring for my mom, I returned home, and to my regular Monday volunteer work as a sidewalk counselor at the city's busiest abortion mill. The mill was mobbed. At least fifty or sixty babies were dying that one morning. Sometimes the sheer numbers of people each day swarming to kill their own child overwhelms me. Two cars swerved to hit me as I stood on the edge of the street offering literature to them as they drove in. Many people angrily taunted and ridiculed us. We were a small team, three of us regulars, and one newbie. Later, one other showed up and went on the microphone to beg the women to choose life, choose God, and leave this place. A father standing on the sidewalk engaged in a barrage of back and forth angry retorts. He and one other man mocked our pleas with particular vehemence. I spoke with quite a few women, gave them literature, but they all went in the mill anyway. One woman was sobbing. She clearly didn't want an abortion but her boyfriend insisted they could not afford a baby. I looked at the children in the back seat and asked, "How much would you sell one of your other children for? What price would you put on their value?" He of course couldn't answer, except to say he knew it was wrong, but he had to do it. Tears streamed down the silent woman's face.
The hours stretched on, and not one save. The abortionist arrived, and we all continued to pray and speak on the microphone (they can hear us inside). Slowly one by one the other counselors began to leave. We had been there all morning. I saw a car pulling away from the further driveway, and pulled my "grief" literature from my bag. Most cars do not stop on the way out, however we always try to speak to them. We all know the grief of abortion can materialize later if not immediately.
Surprisingly, the car stopped. The woman rolled down her window.
"Did you keep your baby?" I asked. (Sometimes I am more diplomatic, or more gentle...but I was weary and down.)
She nodded. I did not expect that at all. I figured she was lying.
"Really?!" I asked.
She and the boyfriend nodded.
A car stopped on its way in and the driver told me she and her friend were nursing students, there to observe. I gave them our literature and told them about what really happens in an abortion mill. I begged them to never go into any nursing that involved abortion. They took the literature and went in. A few minutes later they came out. They stopped near me and rolled down their window.
"We would NEVER work in a place that does that!" cried one. They asked me many questions. One girl was almost crying.
"There were so many of them," said the other.
"What do they do with the babies afterwards?" one asked.
"First they have to piece together all the severed body parts," I said, "To be sure they got them all out of the mother. Then they throw them away, in the trash, and that is picked up by a truck and taken to be incinerated."
If one is human, one doesn't need to hear much more than that.
One woman who had taken our literature, promised to go have coffee and then return after thinking about it, never returned. That meant two saved babies! The other counselors left, and I promised I would leave soon. I was watching two couples, still in their cars that we had all pleaded extensively with. Who would win the battle? I just had to see. It is never wise to be alone on the sidewalk, but I didn't feel any fear. I really
did feel God wanted me there, and His reasons would be revealed.
The two couples who seemed to be reconsidering in their cars, made their decision and went in the mill. With sorrow, I decided it was time to go. As I was turning, one car pulled out, and the woman rolled down her window.
"I didn't do it," she told me. Then she drove away. Three babies saved! Hallelujah!
I pulled my car key out of my pocket, when I noticed a couple on the front porch of the mill. They hugged each other. The man was the 'mocker' who had chastised us for our hypocrisy "judging others."
They got in their car, and pulled out of the driveway. I waited, with my grief pamphlet in hand. I would try to assuage the sorrow of one more woman before I left. Perhaps that is why God wanted me to stay. The man rolled down the window, "Well, I guess your prayers worked. She didn't do it. Are you happy?" He said it without rancor. He was smiling.
My mouth fell open, and I looked at the woman. She nodded. She told me when she got inside, and saw all those hopeless women, all that despair, all those people willing to kill their own baby, she knew it was wrong.
"How far along are you?" I asked.
"16 Weeks."
(My friend who was such a comfort to me yesterday when I visited her had given me a fetal model. A 16-week fetal model. "Maybe you could find this useful," she told me. I have models I have made myself, but none of a 16-week pre-born baby.)
I pulled it instantly out of my pocket and held the little baby model out to the woman.
"This is what your baby looks like now."
She took the model and suddenly burst into tears and fell against me. She sobbed and sobbed, clutching me so hard I thought my ribs might bruise.
I knew what she was thinking as tears filled my own eyes. There is no doubt that little person is a person. To think of what she had almost done ....
I gave them a gift bag, and then asked the father, the mocker, if he wanted a book about being a father. (My friend who gave me the model also gave me the book.)
"I would like that," he said.
"There's a Bible in the gift bag," I said, "I would urge you to read it."
"It's not that I wanted her to abort," he said, "It's just that she has health problems. Whose life is more precious? Hers or the baby?" The woman looked at the model of the baby in her hand, and then hugged me again.
"All human life is sacred, isn't it?" I said to her and she nodded, still crying.
"All life is precious," I said to the man.
I had just filled my van that morning with maternity clothes, an overflow of donations, wondering how I could store them. I had hoped to find someone else to take them.
"Do you need maternity clothes?" I asked.
"Oh yes!" she said.
So I piled a huge bag of them, her size, into the back of her car.
"I may text you with Bible verses now and then," I said, as she got back in the car, "I can't help myself sometimes."
They both laughed, and promised to stay in touch.
As they pulled away, I saw the man reach back for the gift bag. He pulled out the Bible, lay it on his lap, and opened it.
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For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of
joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the
heart.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek.
And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is
able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those
who are sanctified.
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received
the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the
word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work
in you believers.
Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;
