Forgiveness and Healing for Post-Abortive Women

And I mean the most awful decision because other people wanted me to. I wasn't strong enough to do the right thing this decade was over, I wanted to turn back time that I can't and I feel completely empty and ashamed. My husband and I have struggled with the trauma of her portion for 34 years think about my baby often every year at the anniversary of my due date. Think about how old my child would today on Focus on the Family were going to be exploring how abortion impacts often in unexpected ways. As we get into this topic, it will be appropriate for younger listeners on John Fuller and your hostess Focus on the Family president Jim Daly jumbos comments are heartbreaking that we just heard because abortion is clearly not a simple fix or procedure that people describe teen girls and women who were looking for a way out of an unplanned pregnancy, don't realize the devastating consequences when they sacrifice the life of their child sounds heavy.

It is heavy abortion damages.

Everything your health, your motions and your identity, it will impact your marriage in the relationship you have with your future children and worse, it can damage your relationship with God. That sounds very negative. But God is also there with forgiveness. And that's the core of the program today and I want people to know right from the start that that's our aim. That's our passion to know that in Christ there is forgiveness. If you've experienced in abortion.

Your past. We do want to help you have great caring Christian counselors that are here for you. I'm grateful to the donor community that supply the resources to take care of that.

Simply call us and we will get back to you with the counselor if that's what you need now where we have a lot of great resources and support here for you and her number is 800 K and the word family can also find help.

Just click the link in the episode notes from our guest today work on the front lines of pro-life ministry. They represent the pregnancy resource centers that are scattered throughout the United States and Canada, which help women who are dealing with unplanned pregnancies. Many provide counseling for those who've experience in abortion as well so you can turn your local pregnancy resource Center for that help to Focus on the Family that we partner with the centers through our optional Program Where We Provide Grants to Get Ultrasound Equipment and Training for That Equipment. The Doctors Licenses to Help Cover a Clinic All Kinds of Things That We Attempt to Help the Clinics with Let Me Just Say and Make a Pitch for Supporting Your Local Pregnancy Resource Center. That's One of the Best Things You Could Do to Express Your Christian Concern and Love in a Local Way and I'm Sure There Is a Pregnancy Resource Center near You That You Can Get Involved with in Our Guest Today Are Lori Haynes and Lindsay Christiansen, and Lori Is the Director of Postabortion Support at the Living Alternatives Pregnancy Resource Center Based in Central Illinois. Lindsay Is the COO of the Park Ridge Pregnancy Medical Clinic in Lubbock, Texas and Is a Professional Counselor. She Directs the Postabortion Recovery Program at Park Ridge. Lindsay and Lori Are Welcome to Focus On The Family's Great to Be Here. Thank You. Good to Have You. Let's Start by Describing the Women You See in Your Counseling. There Is No Typical Woman the Average Woman Who Is Contemplating Abortion so Give Us a Portrayed of What's Happening. I'm Sure It's Teens and Even 2030 Something One Yes Cell, While There Doesn't Seem to Be a Typical Woman Who Seeks Postabortion Recovery. Generally What We Have Seen in the Linen That We've Counseled through the Years and Find a Couple of Different Categories One May Be There Maybe Six Months to a Year to Three Years out from There Abortion and Their Life Is Continuing to Implode. In Some Ways, and so They Remember That They Came to Parkridge and I Came to the Clinic for Help and They Remember Somebody Saying Hey If You Make This Choice.

If You Have an Abortion. We Want to Help You If You Struggle and Setting a Return for Some Counseling Another Woman That Often Comes to Seek Healing May Be in Her 40s, 50s or 60s.

Maybe Her Children Are Older She's an Empty Nestor Thinking a Certain Stage of Life. Women May Feel like Wow I Have Some Time to Think about Me and Some of These Things Are Rising to the Surface and I've Seen When Not Be so Courageous Because How Easy Would It Be for That Woman to Say It's Been 20 3040 Years.

Why Would I Even Go Back There yet. I Have Seen God Do Amazing Work in Amazing Healing with That Woman Has the Courage to Face That Choice Even If It Was Decades Ago. What Do They Say to You in That Regard.

Why Is That Spark There to Come Back Is Again Grieving the Loss of Means They Raise the Other Two, Three, Four Kids and yet There Was That Other Often Times the Women Coming to Last in That Age Range Have Heard about Us at the Church so They Hear about an Industry like Parkridge or Living Alternatives, and They Hear That There Is an Option for Postabortion Recovery.

I've Had Women Say I Had No Idea There Was a Place That I Could Go Just to Talk about That. They Don't Feel like They Could Talk about It in the Regular Bible Studies or the Clubs or Community Groups.

For Some Reason the Enemy Continues to Make Them Believe That It's Not Safe. So When They Can Find a Place That Specializes in His Safe, They Often Realize I Need to Go. Can I Just Add onto That. I Think Now to with Abortion and the Media in the News. A Lot Of These Wounds Are Coming to the Surface and We Pray That These Wounds Would Come to the Surface so That People Could Get Help. I Think Another Thing When Women and Men Get Older There Start to Think about Generations and They're Starting to Think. Remember I Could Be a Grandparent, Had I Not Aborted That Child. I Could Be a Great Grandparent and so It's Always There. Lori You Have Spoken Pretty Boldly about Your Situation That You Had an Abortion Described and You Know Workers through the Feelings of That so It's That You Know Statement That Your Passion Was Born Out Of Your Pain. Obviously You've Given Your Life to This Now Describe What Yes Will First of All I Have To Say Brings You No Greater Joy Than to Share My Story Because God Can Redeem Anything in My Work with Postabortion. I Know That Many Many Women That Have This in Their past, Have a History of Trauma, Emotional, Physical, Sexual Trauma and That's Why You Have Such a Heart for Women and Even for Christians Who Who Not Even Want to Acknowledge It, That They Hold That Judgment in Their Heart Towards Women Who Make This Choice Because There Can Be so Much, for Me, However, There Was Not Trauma in My Life I Was Raised in a God Honoring Home with Two Committed Devoted Parents Was Raised to Know God Went to Church Faithfully Every Sunday and I Had High Expectations with How My Life Was Going to Go and I Did Believe in Abstinence until Marriage Got to College and Got into the Party Scene Was Drinking A Lot on the Weekends. And One Thing Led to Another and My Boyfriend and I Began a Sexual Relationship.

I Thought I Was Doing the Responsible Thing out Visited a Local Planned Parenthood and Got on Birth Control, but a Couple Months before I Was to Graduate from Nursing School. I Discovered I Was Pregnant. Now, That's Where the Quang Tri Is Because I Had This Moral Sense in Me That Abortion Is Wrong. I Mean, I Knew I Knew It Was Wrong, but I Was Scared I Was Ashamed. I Didn't Want to Bring Disappointment onto My Family Although My Mom and Dad There, Both with the Lord. Now They Would've Supported Me through That They Would Have a Friend of Mine.

It Hadn't Her Abortion Six Months before I Knew Who to Call. She Gave Me the Number of a Clinic in Chicago, My Boyfriend, to His Credit, He Did Offer to Marry Me at the Time, but That Was Not in My Plans. I Wanted Things to Go My Way so That Day the Worst Day of My Life in That Clinic. What Strikes Me Now Is My Left That Clinic. I Was Relieved I Had That Sense of Relief like Okay I Can Get the Life Taken Care Is Gone and That's the Whole Lie behind the Abortion Industry. It's a Quick Fix, but It's A Lot Of Times Impossible to Tell How You're Going to Feel on the Back and Let Me You Know in Some Ways I Hesitate to Even Ask This Question, but Oftentimes Those on the Other Side of This Debate Are Going to Say the Culture Was Just More Accepting of This of Religious People Would Keep Their Faith to Themselves Than Women Would Not Be Stigmatized like They Are. I Get the Question but I Think It Totally Misses What's in the Very Deepest Part of a Woman's Heart What God Has Placed in Them As a Mother and It Starts When You're Pregnant Right You Begin to Realize There Something in Here. That's a Mirror Called Spectacular. It's This Amazing and You Know All the Religious People in the World to Keep Their Mouth Shut, Is Knocking to Change What's in a Woman's Heart If She's Honest with Yourself Heavy Experience at or Have I Articulated It Writer Correctly Warm Wrong. I Think You Articulated That Well Jan Because the Women That Had the Opportunity to Work with. You Have Heard Their Stories Regardless of What Others Have Said or What They See on Facebook or in Politics. They Have Their Own Set of Values and and Really That's What Determines If Somebody Is Gonna Struggle Afterwards Is What Do They Value about Life.

What Did They Value and so It Doesn't Really Matter. In Some Ways, What the Culture Says or What Christians Say. I Think Lending Do You Have and It's God's Design. We Know That As Believers Is God's Design. From the Very Beginning to Bond with That Child.

It's so True Here Working against God's Nature. In That Way. I Say That Very Implicitly Guns Put This in Your Heart As a Woman.

I'm so Glad You Brought That up Jim to Because I Am Involved. I'm on a Private Facebook Page Called I Regret My Abortion and I Am Surprised Well Really Not Surprised but I I Read on Therefrom.

Women Who Regret This Choice Okay and They're Asking for Help and They Say, Is There Any Postabortion Help That I Can Get That Isn't Religious to Me. I Really I Want to Say You Know What I Really Can't Recommend a Healing Program That Isn't Based on God Because the Bottom Line Is the Sanctity of Human Life. You Feel Badly Because in Your Deepest Censure Conscience.

You Know That That Was a Life. This Is Focus On The Family with Jim Daly and Our Guest Today Are Lindsay Christiansen and Lori Haynes and We Have Resources for You If This Is Reverberating within You.

We Have Counseling Staff That Can Talk to You over the Phone. We Have Articles, Videos, and More All Online Click the Episode Notes or Call One 800 the Letter a in the Word Family. Lindsay, Let Me Ask You to Describe the Counseling Process That You Use with Post-Abortive Women Were Some of the Key Components of That You're Speaking to Women. Right Now, That May Have Never Express Their Regret for an Abortion That They Had Never Talked about It with Anybody or Maybe Just a Handful People Well Start by Telling a Quick Story and Sell along Not Been Able to Work with Lauren and She Came to Parkridge and She Sought out Healing Because She Felt like No Matter What She Did, She Could Not Reconcile Her Choice of Abortion, so She Had Felt like She Chose That and Now Her Life Is Going Pretty Well. She Was Married. She Had a Daughter, She Was Involved in Her Church and so She's Thinking. Why Does This Still Bother Me. I Know Is the Wrong Choice, but Had to Be the Right Choice Because Look Where I Am Now, and so on Her Mind. She Had Reconciled That Surely This Must've Been a Good Choice Because Now I Have What I Always Dreamed I Would Have, but Every Time She Would Hear the Word Abortion Every Time She Would Even Hear Positive Teaching about That from Her Church That Shane Would Well up in Her so She Actively Women A Lot Of Times, Something Will Click, and They'll Identify Don't Make a Connection That the Shame and Guilt That They Feel Hasn't Gone Away like He Said Lori There's so Many Things That Try to Cover It up. Even Good Things Women Living Great Lives, Abundant Lives.

Yet There's Something inside of Them. That Just Won't Let Them Fully Living Color. One Time Somebody Expressed Me. I Think I May Been a Teenager at the Time, but They Said You Know the Lord Can Start Housecleaning in Your Heart. You Gotta Give Them Access to Small Closets and It Seems to Me As I Look at This Issue. Women and Men to Go through It Can Compartmentalize and Listen to That Small Closet Laura Check out the Bedroom Certainly Clean My Heart the Living Room's Wide Open. Oh, but Don't Open This Door and You're Also Kinda Describing the Lack of Grieving You Know That We Have To Cover It up to the Point That We Don't Properly Grieve the Loss or the Decision That We May Speak to That Issue of Grieving in the Process That Is Very Important to Me Personally Because after Having My Abortion That Was in 1983 I Met the Lord Jesus in 1988 and Oh My Goodness in My Religious Background. I Will Say It Was More of an Intellectual Belief Kind of a Ritualistic Belief, It Wasn't a Personal Relationship so When I Struggled. It Was in 1988 When Really My Bottom Fell Out Of My World.

I Todd Married My Husband Todd and We Were Thrilled We Had Our First Child Megan. She Was Born in 1988 I Immediately within a Week or Two.

Start Experiencing Postpartum Depression. While Very Very Common among Post-Abortive People Is the Sense of Expected Retribution and I Knew I Knew That I Was Guilty of a Terrible, Terrible Thing, and in My Mind I Thought God's Going to Come Back and Get Me with This Mean He's a Holy, Righteous God, and I'm Going to Be Punished Someday for the Envisioning He Would Do in the Context What You Would Have a Child That Had Difficulties. I Was Retribution in Your Imagination. A Lot Of Well for Me.

I Thought This Was My Punishment.

This Deep Suffering and Sorrow for A Lot Of Women and Men. They Feel like God's Going to Take My Living Child or the Rocks Going to Pull out in Another Area of My Life.

I Had Shared This Feeling of Retribution with My Sister Mary Who Would Recently Last Couple Years a Come to Know Jesus and She Share the Gospel with Me Those Verses Out Of Saul As Far As the East Is from the West.

Lori She Said That's How Far Jesus Is Taken That Sin of Abortion and All Your Other Sins. And You Can Be Free from That and Gentlemen, I Delight Just Shone and I Said I Want to Be Forgiven and I Knelt down at Her Home in Charlotte and I Just Prayed and Received Him As My Savior and That Was the Beginning of Just a New Trajectory in My Life.

Lindsay, You Mentioned the Power of Community. I Don't Want to Miss That Because I Think in Some Ways Your Sister Lori Is Fulfilling the Power of Community, but What Would You Do with the Power of Community Was a Critical Cell We Conduct Our Postabortion Healing Journey through a Group and Sell Women Come and Meet Together and Let Me Just Say It so Difficult for Somebody to Even Make a Phone Call or Someone to Even Walk to the Door, Have Had so Many Women over the Years Say I Always Say What Is It Feel like to Be Here Today and Most of the Time They Say I Got to the Parking Lot and I Almost Drove Back Home and There's so Much Fear from Being Expose Them from Being Vulnerable yet It Is Amazing and I'm Sure You Seen This to Lori When They Can Get There and When They Can Start Talking and Start Sharing Stories. It's Amazing the Power That God Has Justin Is Beginning Moments of Community. Lori, I Don't Want to Miss This Someone's Going to Contact Us and Say What about the Man You Really Mostly Role of the Man in the Whole Story We May Grieve to. However, the Expressions I Want to Hit That You Have a Story about a Grieving Father Came to One of Your Deeper Still Retreat Such As Those Are Suspended Currently. Hopefully Will Get Back on Track Soon but Describe What Happened and Why Having Some Kind of Memorial Service, Which Is What the Outcome of This Was His Wife's Are Beneficial so As to Components yet Man's Role in This, and Then Power of Recognition Memorial Service. Yes, I'm Glad You Brought That up Jim to about the Grieving a Reconciliation. I Wanted to Talk about That but I Want to Speak Right Now to the Men out There Because This Is Not Just a Woman's Issue. We Know That for Every Aborted Baby. There Was a Father That Is a Father to That Baby or Babies Who Were Aborted Men.

Men Experience Postabortion Stress Symptoms, As Do Women. A Lot Of Men Experience Anger Coming We Know That God Puts in the Man Right the DNA to Be a Protector to Be a Provider to Be a Warrior Right for His Wife, His Family, His Children and He Abdicates That Authority When He Allows the Enemy to Convince Him yet. Just Pay for the Abortion Right, but Men Need to Grieve As Well As Women at Our Deeper Still Retreats That We Have One Session Is Built upon the Other.

We Start on a Friday Afternoon, Friday Night Is Telling Their Story Which Brings a Measure of Their Healing. Even Then Saturday We Share the Gospel and What Jesus Did to Heal You and to Forgive You of That Sin. One of the Session. Saturday Is Entitled Grieving and Reconciliation Because for Many People, Me Included, It's All about the Abortion. It's All about This Awful Procedure.

The Trauma That Happened to Me, and You Can Separate the Procedure from the Life That Was Lost. Men Owe Gentlemen, I If You Could See the Man That Come to These Retreats. Last Year We Had a Man Come to the Retreat, He Lost a Child. It Was Actually Him and His Wife. They Were Boyfriend and Girlfriend at the Time and We Use a Tangible Symbol to Represent That Baby and We Use Teddy Bears and I Know It Might Sound a Little Odd, but the Holy Spirit Covers That and We Have Enough Bears There for Every Aborted Child and This Man When It Was Time for Him to Go and Receive a Fair He Went up to the Table and Took the Spare and We Put Four Girls, Maybe a Little Ribbon and There May Be a Little Bow with the Little Boy Bears Maybe a Little Bow Tie, but He Grabbed This Little Girl Bear and Gentlemen, He Fell to His Knees Sobbing, Holding the Spare for 15 Minutes He Sat There Sobbing This Such Peace and Just a Bombed His Soul Because We Can't Separate the Procedure from the Life of Life Was Lost in That Life Deserves to Be Memorialized and Grieved Preemptively Not Morbid Kind of Way. But in a Redemptive Way, Where Actually That Manner. That Woman Can Then Look Forward to Heaven Being Reunited with That Is Just so Beautiful Again That a Person Can Find the Healing That They Made and It Starts with the Grieving Starts with Community. Lindsay You Speak about Powerful Moments, Miraculous Moments That You Sent Your Clinic, Etc. There Was One Older Woman That You Worked with, and I Think She Expressed It like Feeling a Great Weight Had Been Lifted off of Her Life Described in Why Did You Put That in the Category of a Miracle You Know God Has Brought Some Amazing Ladies over the Years and This One Woman Was in Her 60s and She Had Had Her Abortion When She Was 18 Sell More Than 40 Years Had Passed and She Told Us Her Story and It Was like over the Weeks She Began to to Lay down Burdens and to Lay down Grief and Pain and Shame and Anger and God Just Lifted That and It Also Enables Her to Own Her Part of the Decision in This Case, Her Parents Had Strongly Forced Encouraged Her Took Her to the Clinic When She Was 18. Then She Realized I Could Have Spoken up for It in That Context, and She Resented the yet and They Never Really Talked about It in Reading That It Shocked Me That the Parents Made This Decision. She Was 18.

They Took Her to the Clinic and Select the Never Spoke about It Again and I Don't Know about You Live. I Hear That Story Often That I Take Parents Took Me or My Boyfriend Technique and Then We Never Spoke about It Again and That Was so Painful and Then to Continue to Grow at Then This Woman Maintained an Amazing Relationship with Her Parents. She Even Cared for Them As They Were in Their Last Days of Life, and She Did That Faithfully and Then When They Had Passed. She Finally Felt like God Said It's Time for You to Deal with This Pain Power Feeling. I Love Stories like That Lindsay Lets Unfortunately Time Is up but Let Me Have You Take a Swing at That Person. That's Not Experience the Healing Speak to Her Directly and She's in That Spot. She's Resentful. Others Were Boyfriend or Husband.

Her Parents Played a Substantial Role in the Decision.

She Was Forced to Make and You Walk Away from That You Have This Terror in Your Heart You Knew What Was There inside You and yet Others in You Have Guilt That You Capitulated Your Guilty That You Allowed Them to Talk You into It so You Have This Compounding Problem Speak like Her Heart.

This Is Working so If You're in That Spot. We Want You to Call Us. We Are Equipped to Manage That Emotion. We Want to Absorb That and to Help You and to Coach You and to Supply the Resources You Need to Get on a Better Path, but Go for It. I Would Say Beloved Woman Love It Man. If You Have Lost a Child or Children to Abortion Know That Jesus Most Likely Uses Other People to Help You in Your Healing.

I Would Say Reach out Your Hand and There Is Help, Just Reach out Your Hand and Trust in Him and He Can Bring You Healing and Peace and You Can Have Joy and Destiny for Your Future. While You're Listening to the Year Living in the Pain Reach out Were Right Here John Will Give the Details in a Minute. Again, for Those of You in the Christian Community Who Want to Be Part of the Movement. I'm Telling You Now's the Time to Jump on the Bandwagon Because It Is Moving in the Culture Today of the Younger Generation Is More Pro-Life Than the Former Generation Changes Are Coming and We Have a Great Program Called Option Ultrasound Which These Ladies Are Familiar with. $60 Saves a Baby's Life. I'm Always Intrigued by Encounter Ahead with an Abortion Minded Person from the Clinic from Planned Parenthood I Said, What's the Average Abortion Is $600. Just like the Lord Equate This for 10%, $60, We Can Save the Baby's Life Together and It's in Concert with the Clinics These Ladies Represented Many Hundreds of Other Clinics around the Country Be Part of It. The Lord Sees That It's Not All Resources Your Resource That's Going to Save the Baby's Life. So Jean and I Have Done That.

We Signed up to Save the Baby's Life. Every Month, and I'd Encourage You to Do the Same Donate and Join Our Pro-Life Team. You Can Do That When You Call 800 K in the Word Family 800-232-6459 or Donate by Clicking on the Link in the Episode Notes and When You Get in Touch. Please Let Us Know If You'd like Us to Connect You with One of Our Caring Christian Counselors Was More Than Number 800 a Family. Lindsay and Lori, Thank You for Being with Us. Thanks for Sharing the Experiences Lori for Your Journey and It's Amazing. It's so Wonderful to See You Speak with Experiential Passion. You Know, Nobody Can Take That Away from You, and You Know the Pain and No One Can Steal That and You Know the Healing Power of Christ Right so It's Beautiful and Lindsay, Thanks for What You Do Is the COO at Park Ridge and Keep Everything Moving and Having Such a Heart to Counsel These Women Is Beautiful and There Are Hundreds of Women like You Working in the Pregnancy Resource Centers around the Country Bossing What a Wonderful Place to Be Part of This. Thanks. Thinking and Getting Closing a Reach out to Us Can Help in Anyway If You'd like to Get behind the Option Ultrasound Program with Your Support.

$60 a Month Once More a Number 800 K Word Family On Behalf Of Jim Daly and the Entire Team Here.

Thanks for Joining Us Today for Focus On The Family and John Fuller Inviting You Back. As We Once More Help You and Your Family Thrive in Christ