A message of healing and hope and two videos

I will begin this post, by saying that I am pro life.

After some thought and prayer I’m deciding to share three videos here. 

There has been lots said over the last few days much of which has simply pushed people even further apart from one another.

I genuinely believe that most people on both sides come from a place of compassion even if their emphasis is different.

So, as far as the three videos go, one is an interview with an OB/GYN who used to perform abortions. Although she doesn’t anymore, she is very compassionate to women in crisis pregnancy situations and urges those of faith to be compassionate and gentle with the words they use when talking about this subject.

In the current cultural climate, abortion will be more prevalent and more normalised. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t create any less of an impact on a woman’s heart and soul. It’s a traumatic event. We need to be mindful in how we talk about abortion so that we don’t do further harm to women who have already been traumatised by abortion.

Yet it doesn’t serve anyone to shy away from the fact that abortion means the killing of a small human life. 

Abortion is a grave matter.

This doctor says the church must reflect Jesus and  be a place of love, support and redemption for everyone and not simply target specific people in specific situations. We are, after all sinners in need of a saviour. 

Here is the video. The main point of her talk comes at minute 19. I love what she says here about how the church should be a safe place. 

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This video is the story of three former Planned Parenthood employees who also experienced abortion themselves.

The third video I’m sharing is by a wonderful nun 

( Sister Emmanuelle Maillard) who herself has a wonderful story of redemption and healing. All her videos are beautiful but I particularly recommend one called ‘Peace like a River.’

Anyway, I digress. 

Sister Emmanuelle shares in the video I’m linking to,  how women who have been hurt by abortion can find healing by going to Mama Mary.

Here is the video.

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If you have had an abortion, I don’t judge you. Many years ago I nearly had an abortion. 

I was young, alone, homeless and afraid. I know there are many hard situations where it seems like there is no other way and so does God. He understands the torment you went through. He is above all things Mercy and Love. There is nothing and no one that He can’t redeem, no wound He cannot bind, and no pain He cannot heal if we surrender our lives to Him, and ask forgiveness.

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If you have had an abortion and are suffering with terrible pain, run into the loving arms of Mother Mary. She will help heal you.

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Mary, Mother of Our Lord, was a teenager when she found out she was pregnant. She risked being stoned and exiled yet she gave herself to God’s will and God protected her. Above all, she understands your fear and your suffering. 

If only everyone knew the protection and love of our Heavenly Mother. If only, in our suffering we hid ourselves in the folds of Her Mantle, we would understand the Love God  has for all His children both small and great, both born and unborn.

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Please know that God loves you so much. He only wants you to rest in His arms so  He can heal you of your pain. Go to Him. Pour out your heart to Him. 

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‘God is close to the broken hearted and will save the crushed in spirit.’ - Psalm 34

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If you know anyone experiencing a crisis pregnancy, throw open your arms and lives to that person, support them in any way you can. Love them, care for them and pray for them. 

I would also call on those of us who are pro life  to vote for policies and laws that offer more help and support to the vulnerable and poor in society including better access to healthcare, good, safe housing and  better provisions for maternity/ paternity leave. This kind of social/ family support has been shown to significantly lower abortion rates as it creates a culture in which vulnerable women feel supported.

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I’m sharing one more video here. 

This video is one of the most incredible, moving stories I’ve ever seen. 

I want to say, however, there  are parts of this video that could trigger someone who has been through an abortion as it explains in some detail, the procedure at one point in the video. 

Patricia’s testimony is one of incredible redemption and the infinite Divine Mercy of God’s  Love I feel compelled to share it. If you can watch it to the end, you will find such incredible HOPE.

A Prayer

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy!
Our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, 
to thee do we send up our sighs, 
mourning and weeping in this valley, of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us; 
and after this our exile show unto us the
blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus;
O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary.

V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

There is a garden - Indeed, it is Spring there

It’s been a quiet season. These past few months have been wrapped in a soft blanket of grief. Autumn and grief seem to be so close to one another. 

My Daddy died in September one day before his 88th birthday. 

Nola said he got to celebrate his birthday in heaven.

We played Linden Lea at his funeral. It was the hottest September day I’ve ever remembered. All the Roses were blooming in the Cemetery Rose Garden. His flowers were entwined into a beautiful cross with a garland around the coffin. There were bluebells woven through the centre of the cross. The bluebell woods along the stray lanes and almost lost to modern life ‘Twitterns’ of Sussex were a beloved place for Him. The sort of place that goes beyond the stuff of earth. 

I miss him. His fierce, artistic, guileless spirit, his passion to know and experience life fully and deeply, his stark remarks, his perennial sayings, his stories. And yet, as the months have passed I’ve sensed that spirit still. It is the same but different; enlarged, unfettered, alive, soaring, close. Tangible as his old Irish Shillelagh leaning up against the bookcase. Untroubled by illness, loss, trauma, doubt, it shines, purified and pure by a place where we will one day see one another and love one another properly.

A place beyond the dim frosted ice glass sky of winter.

In May ( my Father’s favourite month ) I heard a voice. I’ve heard a similar voice only 3 times in my life I think. It wasn’t audible but it was clear as a bell. It came from behind my right shoulder. 

The voice said ‘There is a garden. Indeed, it is Spring there.’ My father was a gardener. He used to say ‘I paint with a spade.’ 

At that point he was far from his beloved garden, and laid in a hospital bed. I knew that this word was for both him and me. When I told him about it he said yes. He could understand. He knew. 

The girls have had dreams of their Grandad and in every one he was in a beautiful garden. 

I have felt his companionship on dog walks, as I read through his old diaries and school letters and while praying the rosary.

The diaries and letters are some of my most valued possessions. Garden diaries, travel diaries, liturgical diaries but mostly, plain, brief, simple records of everyday life.

How much beauty in the ordinary of those words recounting nothing more lofty than the planting of spring bulbs, a birthday tea, the anniversary of a wedding.

A glimmer of the ordinary everyday. How we take such days for granted!

It has made me realise that however, unimportant and flawed these simple, broken fragments of everyday life are a way of remembering, re- membering, re-connecting with something, though gone, remains in another form in the present moment.

"The details make life holy. If you want a little happiness in life don’t forget to look at the little things. It is a poet’s work to see the incidental, pluck it, place an appropriate silence around both sides and see the profound in what passes for a passing moment. It is an artist’s job to as much discover art as create it. Prayer is a way of making the common profound by pausing, tying knots around a moment, turning our life into a string of pearls."- Noah Ben Shea 

I have found myself going inward during the last few months. This inwardness has been further compounded by the lockdowns.

 I am beginning to feel a stirring of life within again now. Like the little bulbs I planted back in September that are slowly being awakened by faint yet growing light. 

Now as I find myself writing here once more I have a strange conflict. A perennial conflict. I want to write and share and yet I find platforms like this uncomfortable. They kind of wordlessly make it seem as if the one writing might have found the answers to life, the universe and everything.

I definitely haven’t.

Anything I write here is a fractional, edited version of my own limited, growing understanding based on my own experiences. 

Thank God for Grace. I need it. Every day.

Yet I’ve come to realise and accept that it seems that like the bulbs, much if my life is to be spent in quiet, unseen places which is probably where I feel most at home. Yet, seasonally, at the waxing of the light I stir. And each time of emergence finds me the same but a little different. 

Closer perhaps ( I hope) from the perennial plunging of tentative roots and reaching upward of tender shoots to that great light which awakens.