I Have A Say Thanks to My Mom and Dad!!!

Being the oldest of 11, I am so thankful, especially now, for my Mom and Dad saying "yes" to life! Growing up, we never had a ton of money. My Dad was a high school chemistry teacher and my parents decided from the beginning that they wanted to have one of them home with us. My mom gave up her teaching career, and raised me, followed by 10 others! My Mom also taught all 11 of us at home for part of our childhood before we would head off to Nativity Catholic Grade School. My Dad worked long hours, eventually earning other degrees so that he could first become dean, then principal, and finally, when I was a sophomore, he was named Roncalli High School's first president. My Dad and Mom both sacrificed SO MUCH for us.

I remember, even as a young person, getting stared at by people, and I remember the comments they would make. I can still hear a dental receptionist asking my Mom "Are these all yours? You know how children are made right?" followed by a real insidious but ditzy chuckle, followed by a secretarial gum crackle. My Mom and Dad were always tight budget wise, and I'm sure at times ached with a desire to not have to take bags of clothes from other families so that we could have clothes. I'm sure my Mom and Dad had desires to simply go to Nordstrom and buy us and give us all our own new clothes and Gameboys and Reebok Pumps etc. I'm sure they at times really wished they could just get a new car and not have to drive a fifteen passenger van around. I'm sure at times they wanted really badly to just go to a restaurant and sit back and enjoy a big expensive meal instead of having to cut coupons and craft together economic meals on the stove.

But they chose life for us, and they chose sacrifice for themselves.

I often think about that ditzy secretary now when our family gets together almost every weekend for dinner to laugh and hang out. Some of the siblings might be out of town or busy with other obligations, but inevitably, all weekend long, every weekend, our family gets together. Sometimes, when we're out at a restaraunt, I see the couples who are alone with each other. They hardly talk to each other and the loneliness is palpable. A part of me feels bad that we're having so much fun with our 8 tables shoved together, telling stories, laughing good hearty and healthy laughs. Sometimes I wonder if one of the couples sitting in the restaurant quietly and solemnly is that dental secretary - who now has piles of money and can eat wherever she wants, but doesn't have hardly anyone to share it with. My heart breaks for the people who are alone, especially the ones who are alone because, when they could have been having children, they instead bought into the contraception lie and lived for themselves only.

I have a say today, and so do my ten younger brothers and sisters, because my parents chose life. Mom and Dad - thanks a million!!!

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

She Made Mistakes...and Now She Has a Say

I have a say….because I’ve proven to myself and to my detriment, that what the pro choice movement teaches is propaganda and harmful and forever devastating in the life of women. You believe yourself to be “protecting” our rights as women? Well I want to thank you for “protecting” me from the most joyous and life affirming job I’ve ever had- Motherhood. Thank you for making me believe that you can trick your body’s hormones to avoid pregnancy and the potential consequences are so limited that it’s a great answer to everyone’s “problem”. You work hard to convince women that killing their child is a reasonable choice to provide a resolution to a very difficult set of circumstances. You teach them that there are very limited chances for negative outcomes regarding abortion and that too is a lie. I hate myself at times for believing the lies told and for wanting to believe them as a way to escape my own poor moral standing and selfish choices. I did finally have a child after a long struggle as my hormones were so disordered that my body could not support a young fetus long enough for it to successfully gestate. I cried so many tears and was on my knees begging God for forgiveness for the choices that I made all too easily and freely and with your help. I take responsibility for what I chose, but I hate that you are at work and will be at work trying to undermine what I, as a Christian parent, will be teaching my daughter as she matures. The endless television commercials and print ads that remind young girls that they are “in control” of their own sex lives-what a sorry, sick and sad joke born of Satan.

Ironically, having my child has made the punishment for the choices I have made even worse. Though I have experienced boundless joy in sharing in the life of the precious creation that is my lovely daughter, I am also painfully and acutely aware at what I have destroyed. I loved my daughter from the moment I knew she existed, though I threw other children out like meaningless garbage because they didn’t fit into the life I was living. To have a child after you have aborted makes it so painfully clear… you cannot love one tiny embryo the instant that you discover it exists, yet declare the other to be a non-human mass of cells that can be discarded and forgotten. The joy of parenting my child is indescribable and limitless, though I am constantly reminded that it will happen but ONCE for me: One first tooth, one first step, one first day of school, one first soccer goal. Every “first” is a painful and shameful reminder of those babies I chose to view as burdens or as not fitting into my plan for life. I hang onto each of those first moments and I lament each one’s passing. Sometimes people think I am overly emotional about the passing of a normal milestone in the life of a child, but what they don’t know is that I am in mourning for not having had that moment with other children. I have shed many tears for the death and destruction I have caused. I pray that I am forgiven and I would like to believe that I am, but I have to live with what I have done. If I meet my children in heaven, will they know me? What will they call me, as I surely was not a mother to them? You are not protecting anything but Satan’s plan to destroy us from the inside out. What better, more effortless plan could there be for destroying God’s creation than to turn mother against child, and let us destroy our own?

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