The Prodigal at an Abortion Center

I often get calls from abortion minded moms as a Cities4Life counselor. Our teams are on the sidewalks of the Charlotte abortion centers every day they are open. Contrary to what many people think, many of those moms are conflicted and even praying God would place someone in their path to stop them!  I put my name and phone number on the literature we hand out. Sometimes, moms call me months later. Yesterday, one such call came through. It was  God-ordained on so many levels.

I had spent the morning watching a YouTube video about rationally presenting the case for protecting the unborn. Much of the material was familiar to me, and I use many of the suggested arguments already in my work as a prolife counselor. Nonetheless, when the video showed aborted fetuses, I crumpled in a mass of ugly tears and gulping sobs, remembering my own abortion forty years ago. I was consumed with sorrow. I had done that to my own child. How could I have been so foolish, so evil?

Shortly after the video ended, I received a text message. It was from a mom I had apparently counseled many months ago. She had stopped communicating to us and we assumed she had aborted. Now, she told me that she had miscarried, and was so distraught and depressed that she stopped texting all of us who were trying to help her. She was pregnant once more, but determined she would never consider abortion again. However, she needed help.

I told her of course we could offer help and asked her if she wanted me to call her. She did. I was in the middle of a boatload of work, but I felt God whisper, “Talk to her. Now.” I called her immediately.

One of the instantly apparent issues was that this poor woman, L, was feeling immense sorrow and guilt over the miscarriage. She wondered if she was being punished for considering abortion. I told her that no matter what, we would connect her with people who could help with her current pregnancy, but would she allow me to talk with her about God? I felt she carried an enormous burden of grief, and I believed I could help her. (Not really I, but God could...)

She agreed. 

I shared my own history of abortion and atheism. Then I told her that very day, I had been crying about what I had done to my child. I said the consequence of abortion may not be removed, but that healing was possible with God. Then I shared my journey of faith, and the Gospel. She interrupted several times with excellent questions.

“How could a merciful God take my child’s life after I decided NOT to abort??”

“Was my sin the cause of my child’s death in miscarriage?”

“Why would God bring so much suffering when I had tried to turn back to Him?”

Over the next two hours, I shared the truth of the Gospel. I talked about Job, and his questions that mirrored her own. I shared the suffering that Jesus endured to pay the penalty that we deserved. I told her about how we all sin, how God is a God of justice and has no choice but to demand a penalty for sin, and how justice kisses mercy at the cross. I explained how we all have a choice to accept or deny God’s incredible merciful offer to pay the penalty for sin we owe.

“But how could God want me back?”she said, crying. I knew how she felt. I had felt it myself.

So then, I shared the story of the prodigal son. I told her how Jesus tells a parable of a father who lets his profligate son leave home with his inheritance. I described the wayward, rebellious boy wasting his father’s money on women, food, and wine. And when the son had nothing left, he realized with abject despair that he had no hope. His only hope at survival was to return to his father. So he headed back home. The father saw him from afar, and ignoring the dignity of his position and the custom of his people, he RAN to greet his son. (By now I was crying, as I pictured the father running to his son...) He called his servants to prepare a feast. His son who was lost now was found. And the father ran as fast as he could to embrace the son who had returned to him.

“That is how God welcomes you back,” I said. 

Both of us were sobbing now. She said she was ready. She wanted to give her life to her Heavenly Father.  As she prayed out loud to receive Jesus as her Lord, I don’t know which of us was more joyful.

“I have wanted to do this for such a long time,” she said, while weeping.

******

Luke 15:32
“But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, 

and was lost and has been found.'"