:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 ::

When I was pregnant with Tennessee every conscious moment was physically unbearable. There were fleeting moments of lying very still, breathing thinly, and thinking "I can do this." But naturally the vomit would come roaring out for the 6th or so 15-minute puke of the day and I would only feel worse afterwards. I begged for sleep, for death, for an end, any end as long as the suffering would cease.

Emotionally I can still relate as I'm yet in something of a crisis 6 years later. Every day I wake up missing a child who should be here. Abortion is my morning cup of coffee, and flashback suppression is my sugar lump. Another day... the battle of "living with it".

I must confess I don't believe in "post-abortion healing". I know every good "pro-lifer" just loves the idea, and my non-conformist behavior sparks the complete ire of the group I most identify with. I can't help it.

My husband and I expected a baby just like every other happy married couple who feels they have won the lottery by getting pregnant without even trying. We were over the moon when we found out. We held a dinner party for the family. Everyone was ecstatic. The pregnancy went horribly wrong.

Severe debilitating illness and medical neglect literally beat the life out of me. My husband and I took a 15-week-old child we loved to an abortion clinic and had our child vivesected and disposed of like garbage. The biology of HG is such that the instant the child was removed I was physically healed. I was no longer preoccupied with a shockingly brutal illness, and I was able to return my focus to my child. But oopsie, I had left him/her in a twisted wet mess at the bottom of an abortionist's bell jar. How, for the love of God, HOW does anyone heal from that?

I know a woman who lost a 16-year-old son the summer before I lost my child. He stopped at a stop sign and some kids shot him to death in exchange for a joyride in his truck. No one ever pestered this woman to "heal". No one ever suggested that if Jesus wasn't doing it for her she was rejecting His sacrifice. Everyone understood that she was a mother who had lost a child in a very disturbing manner. If she had to flip out a little, so be it; people indulged her. They didn't push her into their little mold and try to force her to be what they wanted her to be: all better. I'll be the first to admit that her grief was not trouble-free.

Perhaps people didn't really understand. Perhaps they had their own time table for what they believed was an appropriate, overt mourning period, but no one ever suggested that her heart would or even should heal. It was broken because her child was gone. No one argued. They could just imagine the faint outline of the reality of such a loss: for the rest of her life she would have to do without her son's smile, his voice... she would never know what kind of man he would have been or what kind of father. She would never attend his wedding or the birthdays of his children. For these two, time ceased to pass. Futures were gone. This was heavy. This was what no one wants. And no one ever deigned to suggest that believing in Jesus would, in this life, heal such a profound and agonizing loss.

I realize the SICLE is different in that it is asked for. I suppose this is why people feel it is my duty to heal from my child's sanguine death. I've done nearly everything I can to please the concerned masses (and entertain myself). I started seeing a shrink when my "pro-choice" peers suggested there was something wrong with me because "abortion only makes you feel better". I started taking medication when my husband said he couldn't take my emotional state anymore. I started going through "post-abortion" counseling programs when the "pro-lifers" suggested God would make it all better if I would just trust in Him and "give" my situation to Him. I did the programs, I even hoped, but I knew better.

God doesn't heal you just because you're hurting and you ask Him to. He's got His own plans. Two dead parents and 2 dead children in my 20's taught me that He does what He wants to do, when He wants to do it, how He wants to do it, and you'd better just buck up. Rest assured, I know He forgives me and He helps me find the strength to deal with my choice to slay my child. I know He loves me and is my ally in the daily battle of pressing on. But living with a square stone that rolls around so long and so violently in your heart that it eventually wears its edges away is not really my idea of healing, and that's what this is, you know... crying until the tears refuse to fall, screaming until the vocal chords refuse to sound, beating your fist until your hand is worn away, feeling until you can't feel anymore, living with it... losing Tennessee.

"Healing"? No. Destroying my child in a second trimester abortion (the day after I felt him/her move for the first time) was the start of an emotional cancer that will eat at me for the rest of my life. It's just the nature of the beast. It's part of a contract I signed in blood and paid for with the most precious gift there is: life.

SICLECell@hotmail.com

:: ashli 10:55 PM # ::
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