Nobody Said Choosing Life Was Easy

(Note: This article originally appeared here in January 2013. It is a significant part of the story of our adoption journey and we want it documented in this current series.)

On this 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision legalizing abortion on demand in all fifty states, I want to publicly thank my mom for choosing life. In doing so, I am in no way criticizing birth mothers who choose life and bravely made an adoption plan for their baby. I am also not degrading those who had an abortion and have lived with regret and remorse. I hope to write more on that later in the week. And, I am certainly not advocating that the biblical view of the married two parent family can be set aside because it's old fashioned and unnecessary in the 21st century.

What I do hope to show is that grace is greater than sin.

When I stand outside the abortion clinic in Dearborn, I see the young girls and women who pull in, alone, desperate, conflicted, and down right terrified, and imagine an 18-year-old named Jodie feeling those same things. I see one light a cigarette, inhaling and exhaling a few times, hoping to draw some courage from the nicotine to take the next few steps. I see her glance around at us there on the sidewalk, ready to offer help, and turn her head away quickly so as not to meet our eyes. Then I see her get out of her car, throw her cigarette on the ground, extinguish it with her foot, and set her gaze on the entrance door. As we call out to her, I know she wants to believe what we're saying is true. I know she wants to believe that there are other options. That even though her life will be hard, she can make it. That she really isn't alone. But she keeps moving forward anyway, trying to silence the voices. About ready to reach out for the door handle, she abruptly turns around, running back to the car with tears streaming down her face. It seems she changed her mind! She starts her car and speeds out of the parking lot.

That might seem like a happy ending. And, indeed, it certainly is for the most important chapter. But the story is nowhere near over and so I weep for her still. Because even if she chooses life and to raise her baby, I know how incredibly hard it's going to be for her. I know the jobs she'll have to settle for just to make ends meet. I know the social life she'll give up, because really, who wants to date a girl who admits she has a 1-year-old at home? I know the academic and vocational dreams that will be put on hold, some permanently, because her attention will be divided. I know the family tensions that will be present because of the constantly pressing need to find childcare and, at some points, even housing. I know the financial strain that will weigh on her day in and day out. And I know because Jodie did choose life. She allowed me to be born alive - not dead - as she could've easily done in her circumstances in 1975. And God has shown me much grace through that scared and lonely teen mom, who allowed me to take my first breath.

Not only did she give me life, but she also sustained my life. I don't believe we are captive to the doom and gloom statistics I hear regarding babies born out of unwanted pregnancies, because I believe in a God who is sovereign over statistics. He can take desperate situations and heart breaking realities and weave a beautiful tapestry, sewn with a blood-red thread, pointing to the cross that breaks the power of sin and death. He can turn the hearts of the mothers toward their children, motivated with all the natural affection common grace can offer. And I know because God did that for us.

My mom taught me many good things precisely because of our difficult circumstances. I would not have learned these hard lessons to the same degree otherwise.

1) There is something worse than taking nine years to complete your undergrad degree. Many women have climbed the corporate ladder successfully, stepping on toes all the way up. For some women, the most injured in the process, aren't the co-workers they've jilted and undermined to get where they are. At the bottom of the corporate ladder are thousands of babies, crushed underfoot, as their moms chose their death over the potential death of their career.

My mom's climb was incremental and slow, but as a successful business woman at age 55, she's shown me that pragmatism is no way to live your life. It's good to have big dreams, but not at all costs. She taught me it not only matters where you end up, but how you get there. And I got to have a small part in her climb.

While most parents were pulling all-nighters helping their kids complete last minute projects (and believe me, we did that too!), I was proofreading her papers. Every weekend seemed to be "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" for us. When she worked in accounting, I'd help her sort checks in numerical order, count change from the vending machines, and any other small task that would help her get it all done. I remember staying up into the wee hours to help her complete a huge project for her marketing class. Who knows how many magazines we scoured and cut our way through looking for examples of different advertising layouts.

Mom taught me it's good to reach the top, but it's even better to get there the right way.

2) You can choose life precisely because of the Women's Rights Movement. They want you to believe having a baby will ruin you, but it is that equality for women that allows you to give birth and still have opportunity. Anne-Marie Slaughter might be right that Women Still Can't Have It All, but that doesn't mean they can't have anything. Her article was fairly pro-family for a feminist writer, but still, I shudder to think how many abortions it set in motion. Even if the "arc of a successful career" isn't just right, or in my mom's case, is completely wrong, chances are, you still have a good shot at success.

3) Life is hard. I knew about interpersonal struggles, financial problems, death, and abandonment at a young age. My naive, rose-colored glasses of adolescence weren't in place for long. But that has been a good thing. I was under no impression that my ultimate hope was in this world. I knew how messed up it was. And in time, as God showed me where true hope could be found, I appreciated even more the bright promise of eternal life against the dark backdrop of this sinful world I knew.

So as my mom taught me, we too want our kids to know sin, in their own hearts first, has consequences. We want them to see that sin makes life hard. We even want them to see us struggle through sin and argue from time to time. Because in our marriages, families, and churches we need people who don't blush at sin. Who aren't shocked by it, and who don't ignore, minimize, or hide it, but know how to deal with it. We need people who are less prone to throw the first stone and more prone to see the Physician came, not for the well, but for the terminally sin-sick. And that's all. of. us. We need people to love God and others much because they realize they are the ones who have been forgiven much.

4) You can be your child's friend. It has been said that teen moms and their kids grow up together. In some sense that's true. And there are advantages to it. Like sharing clothes, shoes, and make-up! But really, in all honesty, I liked being with Mom. She told me "no" on the important things, but she also said "yes" to a lot of unimportant things. She didn't parent for my approval, but she also didn't distance herself from me. We were a team. "Just the two of us. We can make it if we try. Just the two of us, you and I," we'd sing in the car together. And my friends would envy our closeness as she and I would sing what we called "our song," Huey Lewis' "Happy to be Stuck With You." We even had our own choreographed hand motions to go along with it.

5) Grace overcomes guilt. Being a mom is a guilt-laden profession. I've said before, I'm only seven and a half years into it and already have a long list of regrets. I can't imagine what it must feel like to start out with the cards stacked against you, so to speak, and to be fighting an uphill battle.

But, I've seen grace abound where sin abounded. I've seen joy and peace surface where there was none before. And I've seen a mother and daughter emerge from the battle, scarred and wounded, but hand in hand, because God offers forgiveness. And, to be honest, even those wounds are sweet, because they tell of His protection when Satan would've been pleased to devour us. They point to His power to seek and save, and keep what is His, at all costs. Even His own life. And because of that very good news, Mom and I can face our past, each other, and the future, through the power of His indestructible life.

Life. That's what this day is about. Life here and now. Fight for it. Give it. Sustain it. And eternal life to come. Preach it to yourself first, then share it with the world who so desperately needs saved from all this death.

 

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What Schaefer Taught Us - Final Part

While I could post more about what we learned from our time with 40 Days for Life at American Family Planning on Schaefer Ave, I think after today's post, I will have conveyed at least a few of the most important lessons as pertains to our journey toward adoption.

Today, the one last aspect I want to highlight about our time there is more personal. When I stood on the sidewalk at the clinic watching the women exit their cars and walk through the doors, I remembered my own start in life, unplanned and difficult. I saw my mom in those women and saw myself as the life-changing problem in their wombs that had to be dealt with.

As God often does, when we set out to help other people, he shows us how much we're the ones who actually need help. And although I had dealt with many particulars of my past years before, there was something about being in that circumstance that made my empathy surface to a whole new level. It reminded me that the past doesn't stay in the past and as much as we want to deal with it and put it behind us, we can never really let it go.

And I'm glad I can't be free from my past, because it's precisely why I was empathetic toward those women in desperate situations. Because I saw what my and my mom's life had become, against the odds, and had so much hope for them. And if they didn't have hope for themselves, if they couldn't imagine how that baby might actually stabilize their instability and sober their insobriety, I wanted to help them have hope, whatever that might look like. Whether by hearing our story and lifting their eyes from their present circumstances to what might be, or even in a more tangible way, like loving and raising that baby in their womb for them, that they just didn't feel equipped to parent for whatever reason.

Tomorrow I'm going to repost something I wrote after our first few visits to the clinic, telling a portion of my and my mom's story. It is still the most read post on this little blog, getting over 1,600 hits. While the numbers don't mean much, they do tell me that it was one of the most helpful posts I've written and that it is a message that needs to be heard. And because it reflects such a significant part of our adoption journey, it deserves to be documented in this series about our family's adoption.

 

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What Schaefer Taught Us - Part 3

In April 2013, we were thankful to see American Family Planning at 4132 Schaefer, close its doors for good. Stricter legislation to regulate abortions was instrumental in this closure, since Dr. Ann didn't want to comply with the new requirements. We knew God had answered our prayers and was even being merciful to those who didn't readily recognize it, removing the ease of obtaining abortions in that area. In June, Matt was asked to participate in the Memorial Service for the thousands of babies who lost their lives there over the years. For the first time in all of our visits to the property, we were able to legally set foot in the parking lot, which actually felt more like a graveyard. The sun peeked from behind the clouds that hot summer day, in contrast to the bitter cold mornings we had spent there just a few months before. It was a kind reminder to us that the Son is risen with healing in his wings. Ultimately in the next life, but still in this life for those facing the tremendous difficulty of an unplanned pregnancy and for those who continue to deal with the post traumatic stress of having an abortion. Here are Matt's timely words.

 

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What Schaefer Taught Us - Part 2

Margaret Sanger, former President of Planned Parenthood, said infamously in the 1930s, "Colored people are like human weeds and need to be exterminated."

Her goal of genocide and Hilter-like eugenics has been alarmingly successful with more African-American babies being aborted than born in places like New York City.

The strategic placement of abortion clinics in minority areas contributes to this. (I do realize this is a controversial issue. Some observe that it is in those minority areas, which are often low-income areas, where clinics should be since those are the people who are the most adversely affected by an unplanned pregnancy and those are the places where unplanned pregnancies occur more frequently.)

Then there's also the contribution of white manipulation, heavy-handedness, and oppression which my friend Hope shared with me.

Hope, a previous member of an African-American church in Detroit, told me of Planned Parenthood approaching church leaders of black congregations and offering money to them so they would refer members of their congregation for abortions. This wasn't to "help" the poverty-stricken during a time when they were trying to get on their feet economically. This was all part of Planned Parenthood's goal in the "Negro Project," to eliminate those they saw as unwanted and undesirable in society.

Who inculcated these minorities and lower-income individuals with the mindset that it's better for them to walk to the nearby, conveniently located abortion clinic to get an abortion than it is to walk there to get condoms? Planned Parenthood made the bed for them and they are lying in it. Abortions are how Planned Parenthood wanted births controlled. Not condoms. Condoms don't always work. But killing does.

Unfortunately, there is conflicting opinion on the matter of abortion in the African-American community itself. One outspoken pro-life black pastor declared, "The most dangerous place for an African-American is inside the womb." This statement created no small stir among African-Americans in the recent past, some trying to use it to educate on unprotected sex and its consequences. Other blacks dismissed it and were offended by what they called racist wording.

Amidst the confusion, one person was clear on what his goal was in the abortion industry. That man was Dr. Joon-Nahm Ann, abortionist at 4132 Schaefer in Dearborn, MI.

Upon entering the back door of his clinic one of those freezing mornings in February of 2012, he looked at us and gave us the Nazi salute. And who were the women sitting in his waiting room that we had watched go in the front door just minutes before? A disproportionate amount of African-American women.

Coincidence? Or precisely the way Sanger planned for it to be?

 

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What Schaefer Taught Us - Part 1

In God's providence, Kim Bean from 40 Days for Life contacted us in mid-November 2012, asking if we would take over the leadership for the next 40 day prayer vigil coming up in February 2013. We met with her at the end of November to see what would be required. As we prayed about it in the following weeks, we decided if she would agree to co-lead the next campaign with us, we would do it.

She agreed and on a frigid, snowy Saturday morning in February, we layered up our clothes and our hearts and topped the hill on Schaefer Ave in Dearborn, getting that same sickening pit in our stomachs as when we watch Schindler's List. The darkness of what went on within the concrete walls of that little white box of a building seemed to make the sun hide its face.

We knew the laws and we knew we'd follow Kim's experienced lead.

Contrary to what the media will have you believe, pro-lifers aren't a bunch of Bible-thumping, clinic-bombing, lunatics untouched or unaware of the complications of the issues surrounding the abortion debate. Many of them are people who go on the front lines to find people who need help and resources and seek to give whatever they can to help that expectant mom through this significant unplanned event in her life. Some are liasons equipped with all the information an expectant mom would need to know, able to refer her to medical facilities, or housing options, or utility funding. Others are out there to give what they can of their own possessions, their car, their house, their money, and their time not just for the sake of the baby but for the sake of the expectant moms and dads who are in desperate situations. And they aren't just committed to these people for the 9 months of pregnancy. They are committed to making lasting relationships to help see them take healthy steps for their future. One family owned a nice bed and breakfast in an unscale area and offered the rooms to families needing housing.

Pro-lifers also aren't ignorant that the people who work at these facilities need jobs to support themselves and their families. So relationships were built with them to see what their needs were and if we could help find them a job outside of the industry. One of the workers would wave to Kim and even crossed the sidewalk to hug her regularly before her shift started and thank her for her kindness and help. She wanted out but felt trapped.

Amazing commitment and love. Not judgment and condemnation. Where do you read these stories in the headlines?

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We Have Obama To Thank

As Pastor Ken says, "Everybody works for God."

And President Obama is no exception.

The November election of 2012 was formative for us. A pro-abortion president was reelected for another 4-year term. As I stated in Sunday's post, earlier in 2012, we had briefly explored 40 Days for Life as one option for how to more actively stand for life but hadn't settled there yet. I'm not sure excalty why this was the case, but the election of 2012 brought with it the full weight, for the first time in our adult lives, and subsequent realization of the morally slippery slope we were on as a country and it hit us square between the eyes. Maybe we were at a more settled state in our adulthood, no longer working our way through the very preoccupied seminary years. Maybe we were at a more settled state in our family life, emerging from the darkness of dealing with long and difficult pregnancies as well as having growing children whose eyes were being opened to the sad world around them. We were keenly aware the slip had been happening for many years (read decades) before, but for whatever reason, we had clarity at this point and knew this was our time to try and take matters into our own hands instead of passively relying on conservative politics to do what needed to be done.

Journal entry from November 8, 2012:

"Obama winning reelection has made us certain about getting involved in [some type of] Right to Life action. We're going to have to be more active this way, since our time in the voting booth is one thing, but not quite enough."

 

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Wilberforce, MLK Jr., Kim Bean, and Adoptive Parents

Early in 2012, God orchestrated a few circumstances that challenged us in our thinking and consequently, our action. I read a biography of William Wilberforce and John Newton and we watched Amazing Grace, a movie about their fight against the slave trade. We also were educating our girls more about the Civil Rights Movement and in turn got more of an education ourselves. Matt encouraged us to identify what the main civil rights issue was of our day that we were ignoring like so many white-privileged Christians had done in the past with the issue of slavery. We became convinced the issue in our day was *abortion. Obviously, some Christians (and Catholics for that matter) had been fighting for life for decades before, but we had never personally gotten involved in actively trying to speak up for the most fundamental right - the right to live - of those who couldn't speak for themselves. *(Interestingly, earlier this year, Thabiti Anyabwile, posts his similar conclusion here.)

We weren't sure exactly where to get started, but explored an opportunity with a ministry called 40 Days for Life which we heard about through our homeschool co-op. We visited an abortion clinic near us to hold a peaceful prayer vigil organized by that ministry. We also attended a memorial service for babies whose lives had been taken there within the past year. It was on these occasions we became acquainted with a woman named Kim Bean, leader of the Dearborn chapter of 40 Days for Life.

Kim is one of the most approrpriately compassionate people I've ever met. I say appropriately, because she isn't controlled by her emotions (although she feels the right things passionately) and she opens her mouth discerningly, with great wisdom. Her influence was unforgettable.

Around this time, not realizing how the two tracks would eventually coincide, God also crossed our lives with a few families, also from our homeschool co-op, who had adopted transracially. We were praying about adding to our family again and had considered the possibility of adoption, but were still very uninformed. With these new friends, I had the chance to get some of our questions answered. I would sit in the nursery when it was our time to serve together and just grill them with questions. I also got to see them interact together as families and some of my uneducated apprehensions were dissolving.

In May of 2012, we attended our first meeting at Bethany Christian Services in Madison Heights, to gather more information about the possibility of adopting. Sadly, the main things we took away from that first meeting were that there was an overwhelming need, particularly for minority adoptions, and that it was overwhelmingly expensive! We knew we didn't have that kind of money and left less certain than we were before that this was something God would have us pursue.

 

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