Abortion. Adoption. Parenting..

Today feels like Spring.

So we came to the park.

Spring air has this feel. This smell.  And it brings so many emotions.

I was watching S swing. And I remembered when she was younger, trying to teach her to kick her legs and keep her momentum. Then I saw her climb across the monkey bars and hang upside down.  I remembered the first time she did it. All by herself.  I was beaming.  She was too. I remembered all the years we spent on this playground. Playing together. Learning together. And I asked God for those years again. But I'll never get them back. Not those years with this child. Just she and I. And then I felt this awful feeling. Like a shadow of the last 5 years that I have missed out on DOUBLE the blessing. But I do have a chance to experience those ages again. One day. If they are given to me.

Abortion. Adoption. Parenting. Those the things are always on the forefront of my mind.  Those are the things I live with and experience every day as I speak with women who have aborted their child or are planning to. As I longingly begin our search for a child and look at all our choices. As I raise my own child myself. I have been see pregnancy and parenting from all angles minus making an adoption plan for my own. I've aborted. I've miscarried. I've had given birth to a healthy child. I've had an easy time getting pregnant. I've had a hard time getting pregnant. And seeing it from almost every angle possible...it makes parenting more of a reality.

Abortion is very real. Very real. And I can't stress enough how permanent and life changing the consequences are for everybody. Everyone on Earth. I didn't realize that when I was 17 years old. After I did it, I knew. I knew the pain. I knew the struggle. I knew that I had done something wrong. And I knew that I had to suffer that great loss more than anybody else around me. And every day I struggle with what my mistake left me with. But somewhere in all that pain. Somewhere - even when working with the women that I do, I somehow lose sight of the reality. I don't know how, but I do. I go along and I tell my story. And I go along and I tell women there IS forgiveness and I go along and I tell women this isn't what God has planned for them and their child. And my heart is in it. But my head doesn't realize what I'm doing. What I'm saying. My brain can't fathom-on a regular basis-what I have experienced. When I think of Lucy, my head can only for a second, handle the pain of picturing her as a child and feeling the actual absence of her presence. It's hard to explain. I just needed a place to lay it all out to myself.

This past month I've been lead back to the painful reality of what abortion really is. I recently had a women come and say she was getting an abortion the following morning. And it's never been more real. (Often I deal with post abortive women.  But only on occasion pre-abortion cases.) I was hurting. Hurting for her and for her child. Her child that was living and had absolutely no idea it was not safe in the place it felt the safest. And for her. Because she couldn't fathom the pain that lie ahead of her. I was angry. Angry that now I want another child more drythan anything and here she is giving hers up. (Sounds hypocritical, but I didn't understand it then. And I do now. And she probably didn't understand the reality either.) And most of all, I realized that I wasn't the first woman to go through the pain I did. And I certainly am not the last. I don't go to those clinics on a daily basis, but I know that I know that I know those clinics - all across America-are full-on a daily basis - of women across the board giving their children to an early grave. Not because they want to, but most of them, because they feel like they have to. And it was like a punch in the stomach. It hurt me to realize there is nothing in this world I can do to take away the fear that they are feeling. And I wish I could. Because that fear, that terrible, awful, gut wrenching feeling that makes you feel like everything is over if you don't kill your own baby....it's not a feeling I would wish on my worst enemy. And the feeling that they will feel after- whether it is 5 minutes or 50 years later- that nagging feeling that will haunt them forever....I can teach them to cope with it, but I can't take the pain away. I can't give them all the time they lost with their child. I can't give them the countless hours they would spend braiding their hair or singing them songs or playing games outside. Teaching them to do the monkey bars. I can't give any of that back. And it hurts. The truth. It still hurts. Because, like I said, I'm not alone. And I'm a fixer. I just want to fix it for them. Help those who can't help themselves. And I can't. Not the way I want to. And that's the reality of it. That's what abortion is.  Truly think about it for a minute.

You are taking a child. A child. A child who looks so much like a real person in a smaller from.  She might have blue eyes and curly brown hair.  And one day, when she lost her milk teeth, she would have the cutest little gap in the front.  But instead, she'll never lose her first tooth because she's getting forced from her mother's womb.  Either piece by piece or by starvation.  And that's it for her.  That's all she will ever know of this world-death.  And it's hard for me to wrap my brain around. That, in America, that's actually an acceptable decision to make if we don't feel like we have enough money in our bank account. Or we don't feel like our parents would approve. Or that we don't want to "give our children away." We have been raised and trained to deem it as okay. And abortion has been made easier with RU-486. Because it's like a period.  No surgery.  Just a pill. That's all. And if you are lucky,  and you are early on,  you don't watch your child come out one small body part at a time, all the while knowing it was literally at your hands. Or maybe some people just don't look. If they don't, it's even easier. But in the end,  it's all the same.

It's all the same.