The Lesson of the Mama Deer

This mama deer and her two spotted fawns were no more than twenty feet from me. I was on a walk, and they were grazing in the front yard of a neighbor in the middle of the day. I spoke to them, and they twitched their ears but did not run away. The twin fawns watched me, perhaps more warily than the mother. I was astounded that the mother did not run.

Then I noticed her back legs. There were huge swellings on her knees. They looked a lot like the bone cancer joint swelling my old dog Lucky had. In the end, he had to be put down as his suffering was severe. The mama deer didn't run because she couldn't.

Almost all events in my life seem to be a symbol of my work fulfilling what I believe is God's command to me to go to the edge of Hell itself, and try to save the babies doomed by the horror of abortion. When I am not actively on the sidewalk of the abortion center, I am often in prayer about it, or texting moms who stepped back from that gaping precipice. I never quite leave the abortion center. It is always on my mind and in my heart.

So I felt like crying as I watched the mama deer. She was raising her twin fawns as best she could with her disease. I am sure that if she could have run with them from the perceived threat of me, she would have. Knowing she could not, she watched me, and in a sense, trusted that what she could not do, God would.

If only somehow I could convey all that meant to me to the mothers I meet at the abortion center. They are so certain they cannot or even should not bring their baby into an uncertain future. None of us hold the future in our hands. None of us know what the future holds...not even the next moment. Trusting the creator of the universe is a much better plan than trusting our limited selves.

I believe the mama deer knew that.
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James 4:13-15

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”