In 1988, I watched a teenager walk into my family’s life. On the surface, she was strong-willed and stubborn, even rebellious at times. But on the inside, she was vulnerable, scared, alone, and insecure. She was 18 years old and pregnant with no place to call home. … She felt hopeless.
In 2007, I looked into the eyes of a 60-year-old woman whose skin was wrinkled and worn, her eyes forever tired and heavy from the weight of life. To say she had lived a rough life is an understatement. Together, we sat in the sun on a set of concrete steps in small-town Mississippi. I asked her questions and then listened as she shared her story. She was rough and tough on the outside, but on the inside, she was broken and beaten from being used and abused. Decades prior, she too had found herself pregnant and alone with no means to care for a child. … She felt hopeless.
On Friday, June 24, 2022, I watched a young lady, probably in her 20s, protesting as the U.S. Supreme Court announced its monumental decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She was strangely dressed with a pair of cat ears on her head, mermaid scales on her arms, and make-up painted on her face. She held a sign that said, “I will aid and abet abortion.” She cried and screamed for the right to murder another human … a baby.
I have no personal connection to this young lady. I don’t know her. I only saw her on the news. Yet I can’t help but wonder if her appearance and actions were merely a cry for attention and a cover for a plethora of hurt, insecurity, fear, and unbelief on the inside – some of the same feelings the first two women felt at certain times in their lives. … Perhaps, she, too, felt hopeless.
Three different women. Born in three different decades, living three different lives. All three strangers to each other. Yet all three found themselves in situations that seemed overwhelmingly hopeless.
As Paul Harvey would say … here’s the rest of their stories.
The teenager. … She was estranged from her mother and had nowhere to live. She found out she was pregnant, and the father was not in the picture. The stigma attached to an unwed pregnancy, at the time, forced her to drop out of high school her senior year. Abortion crossed her mind. But God used a counselor at a local crisis pregnancy center to speak truth to her about the value of human life, specifically about the life inside her womb. My parents took her into our home. They treated her as their own, provided for her every need, and walked beside her throughout her pregnancy. Praise God, she chose life for her baby even though Roe v. Wade gave her the so-called “right” to choose otherwise. But after making the courageous decision to choose life for her baby, the reality of being unable to care for that baby set in. Wanting what was best for the child, she gave the baby up for adoption to my parents who had been earnestly praying for years for another child.
A hopeless situation now redeemed … because my parents chose to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
The 60-year-old woman … She was a tough-talking, abrasive, alcoholic drug user who worked many odd jobs. She was a bartender, carnival barker, construction worker, and waitress, later living the lesbian lifestyle. She was poor, uneducated, divorced, and pregnant for the third time at age 22. Wanting to get rid of her “product of conception,” she sought help from some young attorneys and inadvertently became a poster child for the pro-abortion movement of the 70s and began working in the abortion industry. That is … until the unlikely friendship of a bold eight-year-old girl won her to Christ. The little girl wasn’t afraid to love someone as unlovable as this woman. The girl showered her with love, affection, smiles, and multiple invitations to church, one of which the woman finally accepted. And it was during her visit to church that day that the woman met Christ.
Another hopeless situation now redeemed … because a little girl chose to love like Jesus.
The young protester … There is not much to say about her simply because I don’t know her. I don’t know her story, and I don’t know what led her to join last week’s protest. I don’t know why she has such a strong desire to murder babies. And to be honest, I don’t get it. At all.
But what I do know is that she needs the body of Christ to love her and to be the hands and feet of Jesus to her. She may not realize it, but she does. Think about the impact the gospel could have on her. Look at the impact it had on the teenage girl and the 60-year-old woman all because the body of Christ chose to be pro-life in all aspects of the word.
So I can’t help but wonder. How will we as believers live and respond to others in this new post-Roe world? How are we going to give hope to the hopeless?
I’m going to start by saying some things I’ve never said before:
To the young protester, I love you and long for you to know the beauty of Christ and the value of life.
To the teenage girl (who is grown now and the biological mother of my sister), thank you! Thank you for choosing life. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for giving me a sister, and my children an aunt whom they love and adore.
To the 60-year-old woman (who is the late Norma McCorvey), thank you for sharing your life as “Jane Roe” with me. Because of Christ, you are “Roe no more.”
