Marcie’s story in her own words ∼
“I remember someone talking about abortion, and I was just thinking to myself, ‘there is no way I would ever tell a soul that I had an abortion. Much less-three. It is not going to happen.’ It’s just so cool how when I look back, how God gently carried me through that entire process.”
“My sister and I were babies when my parents divorced. I really think that’s the core of where my junk started. My mom remarried, my dad remarried. I had a stepmom, a stepdad, and then both of them had another baby so then I have two half-sisters. I think that my parents were doing the best they could, we were just not really that much a priority. And I mean that not disrespectful towards them at all. As we grew up, I was just super close to my grandfather. He was the one person that was the best picture of God to me. It was like God with skin. We were super close. When I was nine years old, my stepdad was transferred from Texas to Colorado so we moved away from my grandfather. I try not to cry when I say this, but this is one of the hardest parts. He died while we were in Colorado. So then we came back to Texas after that. I guess at that point, I was kind of a bratty kid anyway, but I sort of just felt like nobody really-I’m not anybody’s priority.”
“I was saved as a child. And I do believe that God has his hand on my life because of the way everything ended up. But at the same time, I was not ever discipled. And so, I just did kind of whatever I wanted to do. I’m sure that my parents were probably like ‘we can’t control this girl,’ it was like I was going crazy. But anyways, I became pregnant at fifteen. And I remember going home and just being so afraid to tell my parents. But at the same time kind of thinking, ‘we never talk about anything serious,’ so this is going to be our first serious thing to deal with. The decision was made for me to have an abortion. So, I wasn’t really part of that decision, but at the same time I didn’t fight it. So my parents took me. The only thing I really remember is walking and seeing all the people on the outside. Like picketers saying ‘Look what you’re doing,’ ‘You’re murdering’ and all of that. The abortion clinic had warned us about all of that, so we just knew to tune them out, to not even listen to it. I was put to sleep, woke up, and it was finished. I was like, ‘that was easy’. Go home and cramp a little bit, and that was that. I never – I guess I never really thought about it. Well, I know I didn’t think about it at the time. But then I about immediately continued to have sex with the same guy. I immediately got into the same routine and the same rut. And you would think that it would scare me into thinking, ‘I hope I don’t get pregnant again’ ‘or ‘I’m not going to do that again’ but it didn’t. It almost did the opposite. And through post-abortion healing, I know now that it’s typically what happens to a lot of women. The more and more you bury it, the more you don’t realize how it’s affecting you, affecting your life, and hurting you. And so, six months later, I was pregnant again.”
“At this point I didn’t tell my parents, I saw how upset they were the first time. So I got the money together myself and paid for it myself. That experience was very different because I was awake. And it does hurt. It’s not a simple procedure. You’re just sitting there and you’re thinking, “am I really doing this again?” But you put that in the back of your mind and just push forward. Yes this is the best decision, and I’m not going to tell my parents. So that was pretty much that. I broke up with that boyfriend and was reconnected with my high-school sweetheart. At that point, not even knowing it I was thinking ‘I have to get married so I can get pregnant and have a baby’ because I was so longing to replace the babies I had aborted. And so at eighteen I got married. I literally left school one day, got married at the justice of the peace, and called my parents and told them. So yeah, great kid. Anyway, I immediately got pregnant with my daughter Brittany who is now thirty-four. We grew up together. I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing-I was eighteen years old. That marriage didn’t last, and I did the best I could as a single parent. I was a great mom to her in the fact that I loved her so much-but she saw things she shouldn’t have seen. She saw things happening in our apartment, things happening around her that she shouldn’t have seen, and so that was pretty much that. Then I dated around but nothing was really that serious until I started dating Mark, who I’m married to now. Of course we were sexually active from the beginning of our relationship, and immediately, I got pregnant. When I went to him and told him, I said “I’ve had abortions before, it’s not a big deal. I’m just going to go have an abortion.” And he’s like okay, fine, whatever. So that’s what I did. We broke up right after. But God had a different plan for Mark and I, so we ended up getting back together and got married. And of course the first thing I wanted to do is have a baby. So I got pregnant again and then we had our son Brock, and he is now twenty five years old.”
“I was kind of bumping along in life, and we started going to church. I was saved as a child, but I was never discipled, I was never involved in a church-or anything like that. But I would look at people at my workplace, and I would hear them say, ‘I’m going somewhere with our Sunday school friends’ or something like that. I remember just thinking, ‘Gosh, I want that life. I want community.’ I didn’t know that’s what it was called at the time, but that’s what I needed. My mom had always begged us to go to church, so we started going to church again after Brock was born. At this point I’m walking around, we’ve got this perfect little family, we got our little Minivan. Everything is great! So okay, let’s just move on with life, and I’m going to join a Sunday-school class, and life is great.”
“We were invited to a banquet, the celebration of life banquet that the pregnancy center does. I just was looking at it like, this is a great reason to get dressed up. We’re in our thirties, and I stayed home with kids all day, so let’s just get dressed up and go. I remember the testimony was a girl talking about-it was basically my story- exactly what I’m saying. I just remember I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t quit crying. Mark and I had never, ever, talked about our abortion that we had together. On the way home that night, I was just unloaded. I had never given him the chance to say that he was sorry. I had never told him I was sorry. It was just really, really cool how God did that. And so the very next Monday I called the pregnancy center and said ‘I want information on your post-abortion healing’.”
“During that interview, I know I just cried the entire time. The girl was so sweet, she said ‘You know Marcy this is a band aid that you’ve had on, and you’re trying to put this bandage over this huge scab. And now we’re pulling it back-and it’s going to hurt as you pull back all the layers’. And it did hurt, and it was very hard. But at the same time it was just so refreshing to be like, ‘I don’t have to hide this story. You can help someone else.’”
Jess’s story in her own words ~
I pray everyone hearing this story will hear YOU, Oh God. I pray that through my words, spiritual eyes are opened to Your heart and the healing work of your hands. I pray, God, they see Your faithfulness and your Truth and that the lies and the work of the enemy, the thief of joy, will be exposed. May your TRUTH go forth and push back the darkness and bring HOPE and LIFE. You are the author of life and not the author of harm. May this time spring forth a new season in the life of these precious daughters. We agree with and pray for all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen!
Lies. They have been part of my life since I can remember. At the age of eleven, there was one moment where lies entered my soul in a life-wrecking way. In one moment of abuse, I was silenced. Masking tape was placed over my mouth while I was being molested. More lies than I even knew about were being heaped on me in mass at that tender and formative stage in my life. That one moment began to shape the lies I believed about my body. The lies I started to believe looked like this:
*My body didn’t deserve better than to be used. Being a woman meant that men only wanted you for your body and their total goal was to exploit your body for their own pleasure.
*My body is disgusting, dirty, and is worthless.
*My body is broken and there is something wrong with it. I don’t think these things are supposed to be done to me, so maybe the wrong things with my body are why it was done.
Once the lies were introduced, I agreed with them. I embraced them and believed they were true. I dwelled on them and they became my perspective. The more they became my perspective, the more I focused on them and they infiltrated every area of my life. By fifteen, I started a ten-year process of self-mutilating and acting on the lies in a horrific and destructive way. I hated myself, my body, and being a woman. I also became addicted to food and covered up all my pain.
Even though I battled with lies day in and day out, I also had dreams and deep desires of my heart. God saw them. He knew they were there. I wanted to get married. I wanted to be a mom. By the time I entered college, these dreams seemed so incredibly far away though, and very out of reach. I pursued God anyway, and I wanted everything He had for me, no matter what. I would battle and break agreement with the lies. I kept running after Him and His healing and one day, God showed me a safe man – and we married. Our first couple of years of marriage were overshadowed by me walking a very tough and painful road of God healing even more of the childhood trauma. My Heavenly Father took me through another layer of deep healing and breaking agreement with lies. My husband and I were blessed with our first child and getting pregnant with her was not complicated. Our second pregnancy came after six months of trying, only to have our first miscarriage at eleven weeks. It was physically and emotionally painful. I was discharged from the hospital confirming there wasn’t a heartbeat three hours before boarding a plane to join my husband on a business trip. The following week in a hotel room, I miscarried our baby. I felt empty. Again, the old lies of “my body is broken” started to play in my head. My body IS broken. God, where are you? Again, another process of learning to trust Him and His faithfulness was taking place as I battled to not agree with the lies. I told Him I never wanted to have to walk the gut-wrenching pain of miscarriage again.
Our next pregnancy came as a huge surprise. Seven months after our first miscarriage came a pregnancy. It wasn’t just one baby, it was TWO. Twins. They don’t run in either of our families! I was experiencing the faithfulness of God! Fast forward to when the twins turned one. Another surprise pregnancy. We are amazed by God and excited to receive this baby! Everything in that pregnancy was flawless and perfect. Baby was growing. Everything was normal – until the day I had the most miniscule amount of spotting. We immediately went to the doctor. My doctor performed an ultrasound and the look on his face and the face of my husband will forever be etched into my mind. It was a look of shock and horror. Our precious baby was deceased. It was instantaneous that my first thoughts were “why?” and “It’s my fault” and “why can’t my body do this?” There was that lie again. My body is a problem. Once again, I was angry at myself and my body. At the same time, my grief was overwhelming. However, God was still there holding me through another miscarriage even as I wrestled with trusting Him and battled more lies. I believed lies about myself and others that looked like this, “Lord, I want another baby! Why is my body so broken and unable to do this? Why are you punishing me? I begged you not to have any more miscarriages!” Less than a year after our second miscarriage, I was pregnant again. I had a positive pregnancy test, only to have bloodwork done a couple of times to find out I would miscarry for the third time, which was our second miscarriage in a row. I hated my body when I was molested, and now I hate it for not being able to carry a child full term anymore. My doctor continued to look into causes. Tests came back normal. He saw my hormones weren’t level, but that was all we could find. Six months after our third miscarriage, the Lord spoke specifically by saying, “You need to ask for healing for endometriosis.”
Knowing the Lord does things supernaturally, I asked for supernatural healing. He was silent. Surgery was the option. During the surgery, the doctor discovered endometriosis growing in two places outside of my uterus, one blocked fallopian tube, and an infection! It was after this surgery that I felt a spiritual shift. My eyes were opened to how the enemy deceived me with lies after each miscarriage. This time, my eyes were opened in a new way. I saw the battle going on in my own life on the very part of my body that produces life. The cause of endometriosis is unknown; therefore, it was blaringly obvious I didn’t cause it! We don’t war against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6). There is a battle going on that is fully orchestrated by the enemy to steal, kill, and destroy. Whether he wants to destroy our ability to bring life into this world or it is to steal abundant life (John 10:10) through his deception that we agree with his lies, Satan will do it however he can. God created me and my body and He calls me beautiful (Psalm 139:13-14). I am here to tell you, precious daughter of the King, don’t let the lies of the enemy steal one more moment of your time regarding how you see yourself and your body. Don’t let the lies take the joy out of the relationship with your Heavenly Father! He is good and He loves you unconditionally. Take up your shield of faith, sword of the Spirit, and put on the belt of truth! It’s time to break agreement with lies and be set FREE!
Debbie’s story in her own words ∼
“I was in high school and I found out that I was pregnant. The next thing I remember is that my teacher was taking me to go have a pregnancy test done at planned parenthood. Now looking back, I think ‘oh my goodness, that was a teacher.’ But my best friend told this teacher about my pregnancy. We did have a talk and immediately I knew that’s what I was going to do. I wasn’t thinking about the baby at all, I was just thinking about myself. Because I wanted to graduate, I wanted to go to college, and in high school I wanted to be in the drill team. I knew without thinking about it that that’s what I needed to do. I went in and got my pregnancy test and they asked who had taken me and I told them that it was a relative. I remember telling my parents that I was going to a tournament and that’s how I excused everything.”
“Then the next thing I remember is going in for the abortion. I did have someone counsel me, and the counseling was a long, long time. From what I understand they don’t do it that way anymore, but I do remember talking to the counselor for a really long time. She was just asking questions and for me I asked ‘is it gonna hurt?’ and she said it’s going to feel like heavy cramping. I do remember specifically asking ‘is it a baby?’ because at the time I was a Catholic. It was one of those things where you don’t show up pregnant, but you also don’t have an abortion, so I didn’t have any place to talk to anyone except for this lady. Whenever I was telling her what was going on, that was a concern of mine. Am I doing the right thing? When she told me it’s basically just tissue, then I was pretty much sold. But she could see I was hesitating still, so she asked me ‘are you catholic?’ And I don’t know why she said that or how she figured it out, but I said yes. To which she said ‘well, we have a priest who can give you confession afterward.’ In my young mind, I was fifteen or sixteen, that was an approval. That was like okay, then I can do it. I thought if the priest can give me confession afterwards then he knows what we’ve done. Then he can give us confession, and I’ll be forgiven. That was what sealed my decision.”
“The day of the abortion I don’t remember any sounds. I do remember the doctor and that it wasn’t a friendly thing at all, it was just a procedure. I remember looking up at the ceiling, then it was over. I remember getting in the car with my teacher, I was hungry so we drove through. And I went home and I burned all the paperwork. It was like I put the whole experience in a box and just put it away. That’s how I lived. It was something I never talked about. I remember a friend of mine tried to reach out to me to help me, and I told her I didn’t need it. It was kind of like I just stuffed it, and I know a lot of women do that, and that’s what I
did. Because I had things I needed to do. I had to graduate, I had to be in drill team, and go to college. I never thought I needed to deal with it at all. I got married, didn’t tell my husband (didn’t think I needed to), had a son, and it still didn’t come up. I didn’t even think about it. In fact, it was so buried that I remember being at church and my pastor on Mother’s day gave a gift to the youngest mother, and the gal that got up and walked down the aisle was this teenager. A teenager who was probably eight to nine months pregnant. And the whole auditorium was quiet. I know we were judging her, because I was judging her too. My pastor sweetly said ‘let’s all give her a clap for her keeping her baby!’ and God just kind of sweetly nudged me and said ‘don’t forget what you did.’ I still didn’t know how to deal with it, but that was something that I will never forget.”
“It wasn’t until I was in college and I was invited to church by a friend. I’m not really sure what the sermon was, but my pastor preached and I knew I had to go down the aisle. This was when I went back to church after being gone for a very, very long time. I didn’t go back to the catholic church at all because I went for confession and that was kind of complicated. My new pastor gave what’s called an alter call and I went down the aisle. And as I was going I realized that God had forgiven me all along. It was me who was not accepting that forgiveness. Some people call that not forgiving myself, but what that truly is, is not accepting God’s forgiveness. That began a whole new relationship between me and the Lord, completely changed everything in my life. It wasn’t long after that that I met one of my son’s teachers and she was a counselor at a local pregnancy center. I didn’t even know that there was a pregnancy center, so the minute she said that I knew that I had to volunteer. My thought was if I could help one gal, share my story with one gal, then what the enemy meant to destroy me with could be used for God’s glory.”
“It took me a few months to get the courage to go out and ask for an application. I finally did and I started volunteering. I helped with counseling first, then I helped with a baby room that we had at the time where we would give away baby clothing. After that the gal who was in charge of the post-abortion healing asked me to participate. I kept putting her off, time after time after time. Finally I didn’t have any more excuses, so I went through that program and it just was wonderful. There are hidden things that the Lord completely revealed and healed and that was life-changing too. When she decided to step down she asked if I would like to take her place and I said absolutely yes. So that’s how I’m here today. I figured that, you know, in God’s grace and mercy if there is anything I can give back to Him, even if it’s like a little pinky, then yes I am a willing vessel for Him so that other women can know that they’re forgiven and remember their child the right way.”
“The healing process was first accepting that God had forgiven me, and then it was helping others. I really yearned to tell my story to others so they wouldn’t go through the hurt and pain that I went through. It was working and volunteering at that local pregnancy center. God won’t overwhelm us, so it was steps for me and I think it is steps for a lot of women. I think the next step was digging deeper into the process of healing. Through all of that, even though I teach a class twice a year at least, there’s still some little things that God shows me. Just keep on healing.”
“Because I know post-abortion well, I guess the first thing I would say to someone who is hurting is to tell them “I know how you’re feeling. All those feelings and thoughts that you have, you’re not crazy. Those are real. You’ve been through a traumatic process and trauma changes you, which means abortion changes you. It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling. Are you having a hard time sorting through those feelings
and feeling you’re not forgiven and all that? I highly encourage you to go through a healing process, even though you may feel like you may not need it or whatever. Don’t be afraid, that’s only fear and fear is not of the Lord. God wants to be able to use you and your story for His glory, so let Him. In the end it’s not really about you. It’s about God’s glory and the way you can do that is by the power of your testimony. You can get there. Even though you feel like “oh my gosh how can I feel joyful about this?” In God’s word it says that you can. So believe Him, trust Him in the process. That He’ll meet you exactly where you
need to be at the right time and you’re the one who needs to take that step of healing.” Here’s the thing, I sat in church thinking I was unworthy to serve because of my abortion. Think about how the enemy would use that so I could be ineffective for the kingdom. I don’t know how long I sat in a pew. I think about all those women that may be feeling the same way. So the opposite is no! Get your freedom so you can be effective for the kingdom, so you can give God glory, so your testimony can touch others and change them to get their freedom.”
“I can wrap this all up with one scripture, because this was me. James 4:9-10. ‘Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done, let there be sorrow and sincere grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, gloom instead of joy.’ That is exactly what I went through, I felt I could never ever feel joy again. I was so sad, I was so sorrowful, I was crying all the time. I stuffed it all in. You think that you’re in a hopeless situation, but God. If you read on, this is what it says ‘then, when you realize your worthlessness before the Lord He will lift you up, encourage, and help you.’ In that point of your despair look up to God, because He will reach down and grab you and hold you and love you and forgive you and give you grace and mercy.”