On Virtual Groups …without this flexibility I would have never gotten the help I needed. My home town does not offer this kind of help. It has been a blessing to be part of this group. In these 8 weeks I was able to feel like someone finally understood me. My group experience was amazing. It allowed me to open up and realize my feelings were valid. I was able to see the pain I was feeling was normal and I was not alone in this. I was able to find my faith again and my love for God has grown tremendous. I was able to learn so much on how the Lords word can be so healing. (On the facilitators) They were a great support system. I always knew they would be there at anytime of the day. They welcomed me with arms open and zero judgment. They heard me and felt my pain. I was able to connect with them emotionally. I was finally able to feel understood. God to is my healer and my rock. When I felt I was done he showed me he wasn’t done with me. He has helped me heal little-by-little what others have damaged.
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Testimony K.S. – Gaining Peace and Purpose Through Virtual Abortion Healing Groups
Going through a well organized study virtually, exceeded expectations. It’s a safe, respectful and highly motivating environment. Well worth the time commitment and homework. Doing business with the past is empowered by peer support, moderated with sensitivity by a qualified leader. Viewing our stories through the lens of the bigger reality we all share, though the details vary, brings us to a place of acknowledgment, peace and purpose. Pieces of me are redefined by a bigger personal truth. Loss is recognized for all it is, not minimized or pushed past. It is given its proper dignity, attention, and name. The missing steps are all addressed, and it really does put us in a different head space. Finally. (On the leaders) Highly qualified, sensitive and responsive. Feedback very helpful. High level of support. Having a church rep present was important for my growth and healing regarding prior ignorance and insensitivity by church, and for me to be more tolerant and slow to judge. Could not have had wiser, sweeter leaders.
Testimony S.S. – From Decades of Emotional Pain to Freedom After Abortion in A Virtual Setting
After 35 years of pushing my thoughts and feelings aside, God spoke to me, telling me it was time for healing. I am so grateful for Mindy and her ministry for her selfless dedication to helping other women heal. This study was life changing and I would encourage any women that has had an abortion to give herself this gift of healing.
A leaders perspective on One Woman’s Abortion Healing Journey: Honoring Every Lost Life
In the early stages of healing the details of a person’s abortion experience are often fuzzy. As time goes by, the Lord strengthens them, and they gain a little courage to seek out the details to better understand what happened that day. Now, this isn’t the case for all women, some of us do not have anyone or anywhere we can go to find more details and some simply don’t care to know more.
Lady M. wanted to know more. She had done a lot of work on her healing journey. She knew she had three abortions but there were some details that weren’t clear surrounding her second. Just weeks before our first session, she reached out to her former husband (the father of the baby) and asked him about the details of that day. She remembered she came home from the abortion center but was having some complications, things just weren’t right, and she was told to return to the center. Her memory stopped there. He must’ve thought she knew what he was going to tell her because his manner was sort of casual and nonchalant as he told her she aborted twins.
There is a stigma to having an abortion. There is another stigma to having multiples. It was hard enough to accept she had three children lost to abortion, now she needed to reconcile the fact that there was a fourth baby she needed to acknowledge before the Lord.
It’s never easy. It’s never simple. Our hearts are forever linked to our children. God is gentle, kind, and full of tender mercies. Lady M. assigned her baby a gender, gave him a name, brought him out of the shadows, honored him by giving him the dignity of his humanity as she said hello and goodbye.
Abortion is traumatic. Abortion is not something we dream of doing when we get older. Abortion is not a badge of honor but a cloak of shame. There are many, including ourselves, who want us to carry that shame all our days. God does not! He endured the cross, despising the shame. He scorned our shame. He lived the life we couldn’t live, to die the death we deserved to die, and rose from the grave offering all who call upon His name new life.
If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation. All things have been made new. Hallelujah!
A leaders perspective – One Woman’s Return to God and Deep Healing From the Emotional Aftermath of Abortion
When Lady E. contacted me to sign up for a group, she couldn’t stop crying. I could feel her sorrow through the phone. Her emotion and pain were raw because she had her abortion in the spring. Lady E. had decided to take the abortion pills.
As with many young women who take these pills the veil of deceit is ripped away as they sit in the bathroom until their bodies finish expelling their babies. They are forever traumatized by what they see in the toilet. Their bathroom becomes a continual reminder of their abortion and many struggle to enter that room again. Once the process is complete, they are alone and faced with the decision of how to dispose of the body of their baby. Asking…
Do I flush it?
Do I bury it?
I cannot even image the nightmare of this scene or the wrestling of thoughts in her head. There are some things, once seen, that can never be unseen.
Lady E. was living in the aftermath of her decision. She desperately wanted relief from her sorrow and grief. She often said she was overwhelmed and couldn’t see when this sorrow would end.
Lady E. is one of those women who would not have sought out abortion had it been illegal. Her state made it illegal one month after her abortion with the overturning of Roe.
She was angry!
She was angry at the state legislation, and she was angry at herself for not walking out of the abortion center that day. She was angry with the father of the baby for pressuring her to have the abortion, as he had pressured other girls before her.
Oh, how hindsight is 20/20.
We talked many times before her group started and many times between sessions. The first half of her group experience was difficult as she struggled with her emotions. Midway through the group she contacted me for prayer because she was having a particularly difficult time getting herself under control. I sent out an urgent prayer request to our 53-member prayer team. Several responded with a typed-out prayer. In our next meeting I noticed a remarkable change in her countenance. She was smiling. She had joy written all over her face.
The night the prayer team was praying, she decided she needed to go to church again. Apparently, she stopped going to church several years prior. During the service the Lord met her, comforted her, and brought light into her heart. God wooed her back through those prayers. Her tears flowed as she learned about the prayer team covering her that night. She expressed how comforting it was that others cared for her during that time. I sent her the typed-out prayers. She printed them and reads them often.
I’m struck by the magnitude of God, the power of prayer, and how the two work together. God can move and work without us, yet it pleases Him to invite us into the work He is doing. By Lady E.’s testimony and the specific requests on those typed-out prayers, we saw God respond to our hearts as we prayed the desires of His heart, and we heard how it was displayed to Lady E. while she sat in church service.
Cast your burden on the Lord for He cares for you.
A leaders perspective – Gaining Confidence to Speak Out About the Emotional Effects of Abortion
Posted with permission by Lady. C.
Lady C. participated in a 2.5-day virtual group for abortion healing. This type of group is fast paced, with a lot of book work for the participants to complete between sessions. If a woman has distractions in her environment, it can make it a challenge for her to not only complete her work, but to continue with the group. Lady C persevered, she did the work, and the group members were able to see her come alive as truth washed over her.
Initially, Lady C would only speak when asked to speak. She is from a different country with a different culture, so I assumed she was shy to be in a group with American women. Fortunately, as the group progressed, she became more relaxed. She eventually began volunteering responses to questions in the study, and she shared thoughts about her past, her faith and her life. Lady C. was very articulate, and her knowledge of the Word was accurate. It was a joy to hear what she had to say, and her words blessed the entire group.
Post-group, Lady C. shared with me that when she signed up for the group, she was very skeptical. She said she felt she would be judged and criticized for feeling shame and sadness over her abortion. She shared that her perception had been that American women are all proud of their abortions and talk about them a lot.
She also told me that before the group, she cried everyday over her abortion. She shared that she now understands the forgiveness that God gives. She said she accepts that this was a part of her past, and she is now able and ready to move on. As she moves on, the passions of her life are to tell women about the awful effects of abortion to protect them from the same pain she has lived with, as well as helping others heal from a past abortion.
Lady C. is praying about co-leading virtual groups with An Even Place. She is seeking to connect women she knew in college who struggle with abortion in their past, to An Even Place for healing.
This story illustrates how we reach the millions that are silently suffering with wounds from abortion – one woman at a time. As each gains the courage to share their story, they can start the healing journey for another woman.
The Value the Church Brings to Those Wounded By Abortion
In the pro-life movement there are opposing opinions whether someone who hasn’t had an abortion should be allowed to be a bible study leader in an abortion recovery group.
The thought behind this is a person who has not experienced abortion cannot possibly minister to someone who has because they don’t know or understand what it was like then or now.
It is true. If you haven’t had an abortion it is impossible to understand the mindset of a woman as she was making that decision or if that decision was made for her. Afterwards, she is plagued with a different set of emotions that a person who hasn’t had an abortion cannot understand.
However, how many people who minister in jail ministry have been in jail? How many who minister to addicts have been addicts? There are some who share jail and addition, but it isn’t uncommon for a grey-hair older woman to visit a jail every week to share the love of Christ with the inmates. She cannot relate to them but she can relate the love of Jesus to them. She has her own story. She needed redemption too and that is sharable to anyone regardless of their commonalities.
How can the church minister to the church if they cannot or are told to stay out of a certain area of healing? Abortion is a grievous sin, to be sure. But to the Lord, so is lying, hating, fornication, gossip, etc. He went to the cross for all of it. Abortion creates division just by the mere mention of the word, let’s not continue to bring that divide into the church by restricting someone from entering into healing with another because they don’t share the same experience.
If the church is to heal we need to be able to trust one another, be open with one another, be transparent with one another, and to speak truth and life into one another’s lives.
That is what we aim to do at An Even Place. We want the church to be a safe place for all people to be. We want the church to use her gifts, operate in the Spirit, and live a full and abundant life. That cannot happen if the body is shrouded in secrecy and division.
There are two ways we are bridging that divide and fostering openness and healing at An Even Place. We offer opportunities for those who haven’t had an abortion to be a co-leader in our healing groups or we invite them to be dedicated prayer partners for the participants in the groups. The participants are being blessed over and above what we imagined by the interaction with these women. This is the church being the church in any context of healing.
The co-leaders connect with the participants with her own story. She has dealt with shame, anger, forgiveness issues, denial and she needed Jesus the same as a women participating in the group. Admittedly, participants are a little cautious when they first meet these co-leaders but by the 2nd session these ladies are one of them. They are sisters in Christ who share struggles, encourage one another, and build one another up. By the end of the group the participants feel the love of the church on a new level. Christ is glorified in this.
The dedicated prayer partners know very little about the ladies they pray for. They write them cards and letters, which I preview to make sure there isn’t anything offense in them, and I send them by mail. The participants don’t have any information on their prayer partners except what is shared with them and their name, as they sign the letter. Some prayer partners send prayers by text that I will forward on. At the end of the group, after both parties give me permission, I connect the two. It is really a sweet thing. One participant emailed her prayer partner this message: (shared with permission by both parties)
Tammy,
Thank you for your dear notes of encouragement. Aside from the pure power of love from a stranger and the living Word, the fact that you could extend yourself like that to what most people find uncomfortable, it had a value distinct from our peer support.
In our review session, we unanimously were touched by the contribution during sessions by the one person who was not post abortive. She represented to us all we wish the Church to be. We received love and wisdom through her active listening, her compassion, her connection with us through a personal life testimony. It had nothing to do with abortion but everything to do with being broken and restored. She was able to establish an important connection through her humility. Her insights were spot on impactful, painting a picture of a God who sees us differently than how we have been seeing ourselves.
Our (post abortive) peers were essential to corroborating the reality of our starting points and what happened inside. The Church was represented by this very busy mom with all kinds of life complications, and there was you pulling for us as well. The Church confirms Christ’s Word and His love through a redeemed human expression. Its His design, that persons can find healing through His truth and love poured into the saints.
It is no secret that we the Church have a long way to go. If post abortive Christians cannot receive acknowledgment from their own Body, how discouraging is that for the unsaved? I am so excited about servants like yourself, who are willing to purposefully reach out and take the Love of Christ to this huge and underserved population. It takes great love to serve a population that is hard to understand. It takes the Holy Spirit. It is life changing. I want you to know how special you are.
My broader vision is that in response to this love, many will be telling their stories and blowing up the myth that abortion is good for women. The other myth is that the Church/teaching of Christ does not care for women (insert eye roll from Mary Magdalen). I hear people say my case is rare, that is the current propaganda, their only card.
Caring for women injured by abortion can be more effective than trying to battle media bias and legislation. You cannot unhear or alter a multitude of non-digitized human voices. Let the opposition live in the airwaves. We live and move in community, and that is reality.
Thank you, thank you. Your prayers enabled me to complete this work. Thank you for showing me that healing love. Your work is noted.
Gratefully, Kat
Can you see the impact a NON post-abortive woman can have in the healing of a woman who has abortion in her past?
Bring in the church!
There are many in the body of Christ who want to put their arms around those wounded by abortion but don’t know who they are or where to find them. It’s what An Even Place will continue to do to bring health to the body of Christ.
A leaders perspective – Gaining a Strong Relationship With God Through Healing The Trauma of Abortion
God is so faithful to show His love for us and for our children. I’ve heard many stories of women who say they completely forgot about an abortion until the Lord brought it to their memory. Abortion is trauma for both the baby and the mother. It’s obvious the baby experiences the trauma immediately; the mother, however, might not recognize the emotional trauma and sometimes, the physical trauma, until a later date. At some point, however, the mother will ask herself the same question:
“How could I do that to my baby?”
When that question comes, a woman may try to bury her trauma. She may try to bury it with harmful choices, such as alcohol, drugs, sexual promiscuity, anger, rage, eating disorders, and cutting. Some may try to bury the trauma with successes in education and successes in a career. The mother is seeking to numb herself from her new reality…her new normal. Once she has been pregnant, she can never be the same, for while the baby isn’t physically present, the baby never goes away.
Lady T. had two abortions but only remembered one. She sought healing for her abortion at a retreat specifically designed for abortion trauma recovery. Retreats and weekly recovery groups are designed with two purposes: 1) to restore women to a correct understanding and relationship before the Lord, and 2) to bring their babies out of the shadows and into the light, giving the babies their humanity and dignity. It was at the retreat the Lord helped Lady T remember her second abortion. God knew her two children, and He wanted her to know both children so she could bring both to Him. The Lord wants these mothers to stand in an even place, worshiping before Him and in the church.
When a woman takes this courageous journey to heal by giving herself permission to grieve lost motherhood and then permission to freely imagine who her baby might have been, her baby is no longer a source of shame, but one of joy. She no longer turns her face away but looks forward with great anticipation to the day when she will be reunited with each child in heaven.
As a good heavenly Father, the Lord wants us to live abundant lives. We cannot do that with hidden grief, shame, or pain. All these must come into the light for us to have a full and right relationship with Him.
Telling Our Abortion Story: Do We Have To?
This conversation often comes up in our small abortion recovery group sessions. Some say they will never share their story with anyone. Others say there are several people they won’t share their story with. Still others have told many people but cannot bring themselves to tell a certain few.
Then there are those, like me. Whether on social media, various small groups around town, church congregations, or groups as large at the March for Life in D.C. We have told our stories to countless groups of people. Finally, there are those who take to podcasts, radio, TV, or other forms to tell their story to the world.
For some reason there is the misconception that if you go through a abortion healing group you are required to tell people what you’ve done. It is a misconception, indeed!
To those who fear sharing your story. I say, “You don’t have to.”
Your story is your story. You get to decide who you tell and who you don’t tell. It is as simple as that. If this fear keeps you from signing up for an abortion recovery group, you need not worry.
While in the group you will be sharing the details of your story as you see fit. You will also identify with other women as they share their stories with the group. These groups are a safe and confidential place to work through thoughts and feelings that have plagued you since your abortion where many questions will be answered or addressed.
Much was taken from you the day of your abortion. In your healing you have permission to keep your story and share it when and with whom you choose – with one exception.
As a Believer, your life is wrapped up in Christ’s. He might want you to share your abortion story in a moment or with someone you are unsure of how it will turn out. Yet, you can always trust He has a purpose. If you are in Christ, you can be sure of one other thing – by telling your story you are telling His story, the good news of the gospel.
Leaders perspective – Facing the Dark, Hidden Secret of Abortion: Part 2
Last month we were discussing J.’s experience in the virtual abortion recovery group. We left off with J. strengthening herself in the Lord after week 4. All was going well until we were closing out week six. As I detailed the homework for the next week, which was to ask God to help these mothers know what gender the baby was and give them a name, as well as, write their child a letter.
This information hit J. very hard, tears poured out as she told us she didn’t think she was ready for this next step. She was face-to-face with the understanding that by giving her children names would make this all very real for her.
It is a common response for women who’ve had an abortion is to push away all those motherly instincts. You see, we are mothers to those babies regardless of how the child lived or died. Motherly instincts are God-given and don’t go away because our babies aren’t with us.
J. knew she was about to open a door to her heart she had kept locked, sealed, and hidden in darkness for decades. My co-leader (Carrie) and I spent nearly 1.5 hours on zoom with her and the other ladies as they processed what they were about to face. It was precious and sacred time. J. allowed us to speak truth and life into her as we read scripture, reminded her of God’s love and prayed with her.
This part of the journey can be incredibly difficult to navigate. As guides/leaders/facilitators we get to lead ladies to several peak experiences, but the climb can be emotionally challenging. For the women who make it through to the summit they are stilled by the incredible view and vastness of God’s beauty and love for them.
J. pushed through, tethered herself to the Lord and trusted her guides that she would see glory at the top. In so doing, she made a sweet connection with her children and now looks with anticipation to the day when she will meet them face-to-face.
What a joy it is to help connect mothers with their babies. For some it is the first connection. For J. it was hers.
Her faith is stronger, her hope more certain and she is more in love with the Lord which is a direct result of your faithful prayers and giving.
Thank you for your partnership with An Even Place!