I'll never forget that day, 8 years ago today. I can close my eyes and see the orientation of the room, remember the direction my feet were facing. I was just under 10 weeks pregnant with Gabriel, but since health care professionals count the two weeks leading up to conception as part of the gestational period, really, it had only been 8 weeks since he was conceived.
"It's still early, so I don't want you to worry if we don't hear anything." I couldn't agree to that, having miscarried less than 6 months earlier, but I nodded. The Doppler wand had barely hit my abdomen when a smile stretched across her face. "There it is."
The tears flowed freely from my eyes.
I didn't know then, how many tears I would shed over the course of the pregnancy, and during the short life of my baby boy. I didn't know that he had already begun to grow deformed, that the hourglass had already been turned. I prayed for God to send me this child, but I forgot to pray for a perfectly formed skull.
What I did know in that moment was that he was strong. He was there, he was alive, he was my baby. He was created in the image and likeness of God, a human being, ensouled from the moment of conception, and long a part of God's plan for this earth.
I'm sure it wasn't coincidence that in the few years before Gabriel's birth, God lit a fire inside of me for the unborn. My voice grew brave and loud and I thought, I could never be silenced on the issue of abortion again as long as I was alive. And that fire burned in me while the words "incompatible with life" were hurled at my heart, and while I lay in the labor and delivery unit for two days, and as I drove my son home under hospice's care, and while I held my smiling baby boy in my arms, while I cradled him in his sleep, and when I held him in his last hours through seizures. When his tiny heart stopped beating, I feel like mine did too, but just for a moment. It jumped started again, alive with passion for my son's legacy and a hunger to help the world to see the value of each human life.
I still feel that fire inside of me, but I'm tired. I cry for the lives lost in abortion, and I cry for our fallen world. I feel hopeless. I'm worried most people won't see the heinousness of this injustice until it is too late, until we are standing before God trying to explain why we allowed this to happen.
"If you don't like abortion, don't have one." Well, okay. I won't. But what am I doing to help the world to see that no one "has" to have an abortion? That in addition to ending the life of that unborn child, with every abortion we do damage to our own souls. We pit mothers against children, and we call it a right, when it is oh, so wrong. We sell it to our women as a solution, instead of assuring them that there is no problem with bringing a new life into the world.
Someone asked me yesterday, in furtherance of her justification as to why it is okay that she is Catholic and vociferously pro-choice, how many unwanted children I care for. That's what it's come down to: If I can't fix the world, I shouldn't argue that it shouldn't be destroyed. It's absolutely illogical. And it's discouraging, and it weighs on me, and I start to think maybe I should just fold and be silent and let the world have its abortions and trust that God knows I know that it's not what He wants. The thought of hearing, "You should have done more," eternity with my son out of reach, is unbearable.
We all know social media is no place to debate. I guess sometimes, I just can't help myself. I can't see lies and misinformation about the most critical injustice of our time, and let them be.
I don't get to kiss my son goodnight, I don't get to pack his lunch or wash his laundry or drive him to school. I have some pictures and a lock of hair and a footprint to cling to, and a hope that his life will continue to change hearts. His heart doesn't beat here anymore, but with every beat of mine I carry him with me and I just pray that someday, for all that I've done wrong and still do wrong, I will get to stand before God and hear those words we should all long to hear: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."
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