When You Know

The ladies sitting in the meeting shivered in their sleeveless blouses as the temperatures outside soared to 110 degrees. Ironic that in Arizona in the summertime heat, we can be freezing in our overly air-conditioned homes and businesses. But the chill-bumps showing on the bare arms of these ladies weren’t from the cold, they were from the gruesome story they had just heard.

Karen (not her real name), was just 16 years old as she lay frightened on the exam table, waiting for the doctor to be done with the deadly deed. It was supposed to be a quick, simple evacuation of something deemed, ‘a clump of cells.’ But things weren’t going as planned…at least not for Karen.

The doctor in his starched white coat, sat on his rolling stool:  his hands grasping the instruments, as he positioned himself closer between the metal stirrups. He glanced nonchalantly at the nurse, “I’m going to have to crush the head.”

Karen’s body jolted in shock. Crush the head! What head? She wanted to scream, “No!! It’s not a baby, it’s a clump of cells!!”

The doctor’s callous words reverberated in her mind. Crush the head…Crush the head … No woman wants to hear the reality of abortion. When we can’t see it, when we think, ‘ it’s just tissue,’ then we can justify getting rid of this problem. But when you know the truth of abortion, when you know that you’ve taken the life of a child–a human being with fingers, toes…and a head;  how do you live with that knowledge?

In Karen’s case she took those excruciating thoughts of guilt and shame and let them poison her well-being. She did her best to harm herself. She stopped eating, to the point that she weighed a mere 85 pounds. She went into depression, and Karen not only turned her anger inward, she turned her anger outward, toward anyone in her path, especially her loved ones.

It was a miserable and agonizing life for Karen until she finally gave in, and gave up her life to the only One who could rid her of the guilt and shame—our Savior, Jesus Christ. When you know Jesus, and when you confess and ask Him to make you clean again, He will, and He will then see our shameful faces as radiant and sinless.

Those who look to Him are radiant, their faces are never covered with shame.

                                                                                                Psalm 34: 5

Karen now works to help women find relief from the guilt, shame and self-condemnation brought into their lives by abortion. And she knows the pleasure of seeing those radiant, beaming faces when they finally accept God’s unfathomable forgiveness and His mercy.