Seven Quick Takes: July is my Favorite Month

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July is the month the Church has designated to devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.  You can read more about this important and salvific devotion at this post on the Community of Catholic Bloggers.

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We had a brief family vacation to New Glarus, Wisconsin.  Here are some scenes from that trip:

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Enjoyed seeing my son make a tree swing from a branch: 







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The number of students participating in our twice a month Witness for Life events has dropped off a bit in the summer.  Think part of it is the sleep-over parties and such that have them going to sleep between 2 and 4 in the morning.  Still it is a continued blessing to be part of this as I wrote about earlier in the month in this post.  Well the majority of the post is about the Name of the Lord, but there is a story in the midst of it about a young woman that was driven to a Chicago Abortion clinic for a surgical abortion and she would not go in, to the anger of her mother who drove her there.  The young woman was stuck without a ride home and I was blessed to talk with her for a while.  She is hoping for a boy!  It goes to a point I made in a post once that while "choice" is the slogan, there are many brought into the clinic under pressure, coercion by parents, step-parents, grandparents, boyfriends.  Some are in the midst of suicidal depression.  That occurred at the Planned Parenthood in Aurora on June 22.  A young woman texted her boyfriend, "I want this baby inside of me killed, and then I want to kill myself."  You would think the Planned Parenthood "counselor" would find it unethical to allow this woman to sign and have a life ending "procedure" in this state of mind.  Unfortunately, I don't know what happened next, but I think the woman was allowed to have that child inside of her killed despite her being of unsound mind.

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Here are two videos put together for our school's pro-life club. They might not be viewable on iOS devices.

  

If you can't see the video, try this link: http://youtu.be/ejofaurW_i8

 

If you can't see the video, try this link:  http://youtu.be/wfb7FdStCH4

In case anyone wants to make a small donation to help with gas and getting more signs, here is a link - please select the "Live Pro Life Group".

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I was blessed to take part in the Pro-life Action League's Face the Truth Tour.  Here is a video that explains what the tour's purpose and methods are about:

My husband encouraged me to assist with our school's Pro-life club, but he is not a fan of the graphic pictures campaign.  The campaign occurs once a year, and I remember when I had young children and the pictures were on display in the Wisconsin Dells where we were vacationing.  I looked but I told my children not to look.  I was not going to take my two older children unless they wanted to go.

If you can't see the video, try this link:  http://youtu.be/-UT5zSsHxA8

I participated in 5 of the sites during this year's tour.  Personally I experienced feeling a bit nauseated during the first event I held a sign, to then arguing for their importance during an event in front of the Art Institute of Chicago three events later.  Here's what I posted on Facebook after the Chicago events: 

Great experience participating in the Face the Truth Tour today. I still am disgusted by these graphic pictures but you'd be surprised how many thank us...even buying cold water for us, for showing the truth of what happens to an unborn baby in an abortion. I had really mixed feelings about doing this but when you think most know about Hitler and the Holocaust because they saw pictures of thousands of emaciated dead bodies stacked like wood, but few know that Stalin killed 10 times as many because they never saw pictures. Attending a Ukrainian Byzantine Church, and only learning after attending there of the 25-30 million Ukrainians, starved by Stalin, convinces me showing pictures of the truth is critical. How do folks vote for politicians who call crushed skulls and limbs torn from baby bodies without anesthetic women's health and a reproductive right? I hope they don't after they see the pictures. One black gentleman said our signs just turned him Pro-life. Another said seeing the signs 13 years ago (during the 1st Face the Truth events) saved his daughter from being aborted. He couldn't believe he and his girlfriend were planning to do that (what was portrayed on the signs) to their beloved daughter. Praise God for giving me the opportunity to participate. God bless all those who organize and participate and all that support us.

This isn't for everyone, and personally, I still think it is most important to reach the women going into the clinics by being there praying and sidewalk counseling, and by contributing to the funds of Crisis Pregnancy Centers and those that provide residency and medical care to women in crisis pregnancies.  As the woman who argued with me repeated (and to which I did not disagree), "You reach people through love."  Those women walking in need to know that God loves them, and that we his children will provide evidence of his love and care so that the woman and her child can experience that love through our gifts.

It is important though.  It is just once a year too, and these pictures do stay with people to be a counter to the lies of the other side. 

If you want to donate to provide water to those participating and gas for the trucks carrying the signs around, they welcome even a donation of $5, here is the link.

(Only read this next paragraph if you are able to stand graphic description of the most horrific of the pictures displayed)

The most awful image displayed in the tour is that of a severed head of an infant.  There were two of these images about 20 feet from each other on the opposite side of the street from me in front of the Art Institute of Chicago.  In between there, three counter-protestors had a spray-painted sheet that said "Abortion On Demand Without Apology".  They also chanted this.  As shocking as the graphic images are, to see those words---"without apology" and hear the chant between two images of a baby's head, with hair on it (must have been 22+ weeks I think), with the brain stem there, but the lower jaw not - that awful image of the reality of late-term abortion, and then to hear "without apology" . . . well it is inhumane, and perhaps, if you are "in the light" (see 1 John 1:7) evidence of the power of darkness and what happens when a person's heart is hardened.

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My favorite Bible Verses this week, as I was preparing to go participate in the Face the Tour Events:

"Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand." (Isaiah 41:10)

"But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. 

 Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing."

(1 Thessalonians 5:4-5, 8-11)

Join Jen and friends for other Quick Takes!



Back at the Front

Yesterday morning it was chilly and windy.  Still there was no question I was going to the "Witness to Life" at the Planned Parenthood Aurora with my kids' school.  Before I went my youngest was asking me how come I went so often.  He also said he knew why they made so much money killing the babies.  It was because, "The babies are worth more than millions of gemstones."

We didn't have a great turnout kid wise.  We almost had as many chaperones as kids, but we did have three new kids, 7th graders, come for the first time.

Sadly it was very busy yesterday, and there also seemed to be larger percentage of teenagers going in.  My "sidewalk counseling" position was on the side of the Planned Parenthood driveway that most cars turn-out of exiting the parking lot.  I saw the girls in particular crying.  I saw a woman in her 20s scrambling for her cigarettes as if that would make her feel better.

Because we were down in high school girl attendance, only 1 this time, I was the other primary counselor.  At this site, it is more parking lot yeller than counselor.  It was the first time I took this role as part of this is to give the girls the chance to act on their faith and love in a supported setting before they graduate high school, so they'll have the confidence and experience to do this in life.  So I usually just stand near-by, encourage them, keep them safe from traffic and any rude passer-bys.

Today was my turn though.  I was reading and posting scripture on the drive down, and felt strengthened by the Holy Spirit to make the most of my opportunity.  I've been going on these visits for 14 months now and this was the first time it was my role.

The window of opportunity for loudly speaking words that you hope will prick the mind, heart, and conscience of a woman, her friend, mother, father, grandmother, boyfriend are very brief.  It is also quite challenging as we know from personal experience when you are in pain you turn inward.  We also know from experience and scripture, that when one has made the decision to do evil, and suspend conscience and guilt until the follow-through is complete, you do not want to encounter anyone trying to get you out of auto-pilot and back into thinking with the better part of your God-formed mind and soul.

Also, as we were discussing on the bus, despite what Time magazine says about the pro-choice side losing, there is an increase of people that have had their thinking transformed by evil.  More and more we are encountering pro-choice advocates who acknowledge what is being destroyed is not a mass of fetal tissue, but a human pre-born baby, and their position is that life being extinguished is acceptable under various circumstances.  They'll begin with the emotionally charged circumstances of rape and incest (less than 1% of all abortions) and then increase it to include financial, emotional, relationship health of the mother.  This reminds me of a quote from a father who had incestuously abused his daughters over a long period of time, that the evil was so strong he believed that what he was doing was good for them and evidence of his love.

Similar, isn't it, to those who accuse us of intolerance and lack of compassion, when we consider ourselves to be the ones trying to defend life?  As I once explained to an anti-legislation Liberterian, if you as a parent or an uncle would be moved to action if your son or nephew were getting bullied and injured in the school playground and those in charge were doing nothing, turning a blind eye that it was some kind of social Darwinism or some other concoction to support their inaction and cowardice, so are we motivated to come out here in the face of legalized slaughter of innocent babies within the wombs, while our officials, many of them shamefully "Christian" or "Catholic" in their belief system justify its continuation and tax-supported funding (Planned Parenthood received $500+ million funds in 2011 while earning $1 Billion in profits).

The first moment for yelling something is when the car initially turns past you, to say something loud enough that it can be heard over the speaker.  Usually I can only get out, "If you are here for an abortion appointment today, we are here to help you.  There are other options.  The Waterleaf Women's Clinic is only a block and a half away and everything there is free."

Then you vigilantly wait until they emerge from their parked car.  Many times they try to park as far away from you as possible so as to not have to see or hear the pro-lifers across the street from the parking lot.  Far away is actually good, because then there is time to fire more comments, again - meant to prick the conscience and heart of those walking in.

Yesterday I said these things, not all of them with each woman walking in, just as they popped into my mind, praying and trusting the Holy Spirit would give me the words, better than a script:

"The joy and love of holding your newborn baby cannot be surpassed in this life."

"Planned Parenthood lies to you and to the public.  If you are here for an abortion appointment, we are here to help you.  There is women's center a block away, privately funded to help women choose to give their baby life, instead of death inside this center."

"90% of all women regret their decision to have an abortion.  If you care about your daughter, friend, girl friend, please get encourage her to reconsider."

"Women aren't the only ones wounded by abortion.  Men too are wounded and regret lost fatherhood."

After one woman gave me the finger quite strongly out her window while turning in I yelled all the louder as she was turning onto the sidewalk toward the escorts and the door, "Your baby, your little girl or boy, could have your smile, your eyes, your laugh. This is a life-ending and life-altering decision that you cannot undo."

Something about her belligerently giving me the finger gave me the fire to hit her with the strongest thing I thought I could say.

A gentleman that is in the field across from the center every Saturday yelled over to me, "Wow, a strong voice."  I let him know I was a basketball coach.  A strong voice is good for coaching and last minute defense of life witness.

On the more humble side, not everything came out of my mouth as smoothly as it does my keyboard now.  I wasn't studdering, but it was not in any means a smooth delivery.  There is this time pressure.  They want to get in and away from hearing you, and you want to get as many messages out as you can so that when they go in one of them will resonate and change their mind.

When the women come out after having an abortion, we try to let them know that we are still here for them.  I yelled,

"If you just had an abortion, we are here to help you.  Please get this counseling phone number.  There is healing and forgiveness."

"There are other women who have experienced the pain and grief you are going through, and they want to help you with Post-Abortive Depression.  Please stop and we can give you the information."

"If your daughter, grand-daughter, girl friend, friend is suffering, please look up Project Rachel, if you won't stop.  It can help her find healing and forgiveness."

Still very much aware of my inadequacy, which is why I kept praying the Jesus prayer for the women, the escorts, clinic workers, and all those working with me to defend life.  It is a consolation to trust in the power and effectiveness of God.  Of course I was also praying that the walls of the monster center would fall into rubble and gravel like the walls of Jericho as I was leaving.  Even just a small earthquake tremor would have been nice.  But that is my fallen nature.  Wanting to see God's action externally rather than trusting the same Holy Spirit that loves and strengthens me was also pursuing those on the other side of the private property line.

Here's the link to the video of our visit to Planned Parenthood, Aurora, IL on 1/19/2013:  http://youtu.be/Guk1NkdJXb8