Wrecking Ball

"To Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, to Him be glory."

Yesterday morning I spent another four hour shift at Hope.  Yesterday was a day in which I desperately desired for that name to be true, for our center to truly be one that brought hope.

Yesterday I watched a man's life get hit by a wrecking ball.

As a training male counsel, I never get to talk with, or even see, the women who come to the center. But I got to see a man wrestle with his future, with his desires, with his morals and what he knew to be the right thing to do and yet, because the right thing is often so hard to do in our minds, he did not want to face his own convictions.

As I am bound by confidentiality, I cannot say more.

What I can say is that I had a deep desire to tell him things would be alright.  But that would be false hope. Not because things will not be alright, but because things can often get worse before they get better.  I truly do believe that "for those who love God all things work together for good."  I truly believe the Creator of all things works intimately with even the smallest details of our lives, like any good painter would care for the details of his creation.

I had a deep desire to show him how things could work out.  But that is not for me to thrust into anyone's life.  I give the counseling information that I can when he can take it.  But after seeing an ultrasound of the baby... I have never felt anything hit me the way that I know seeing a picture of my child will hit me.  Everything will change, and for the men who come in that situation, everything does change.

Already it's amazing to see how little information people have about things like "the pill" (yes, you can get pregnant on the pill; they actually reduced the amount of medication in each pill to stop the side effects but that makes it much less effective, some studies say less effective than condoms).  Planned Parenthood doesn't tell women what actually happens in any of the abortion techniques.  Yesterday, I watched a video that was shown to Congress a few years back, and in it I saw a live abortion.  I will be forever scarred, not by the video, but by the truth shown in the video--that these so-called "doctors" who have taken an oath to do no harm not only break that oath, but some admit to taking pleasure in doing so.

This is a jacked up world.  But the truth I've seen at Hope is that there is good, and that bad can even be turned into good.  To see women, so scared of this new and life-altering event, embrace that desire to nurture life that every woman has--that gives me hope.  To see a man, watching his vision of the future fall to pieces, hold his pregnant partners hand in tears--that gives me hope.  Hope that even in fear of facing "mistakes," and I use quotations very intentionally there, people find strength.  Something within them that says, "You know what you must do.  And I will help you do it."  That paradox, of strength in the throes of fear, is just another instance of the life of my paradoxical (and never contradictory) Lord manifesting itself into our world.  And His is a life that brings life from death.  From dreams deferred, He brings new ones, and may even resurrect the old if He deems it need be done.

"You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.  When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.  So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you."  John 16:20-22

Be blessed today my friends