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

:: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 ::

Yesterday morning I got an email from a friend who KNOWS the Bible. She proceeded to berate me regarding my "flawed" belief in free will. Her viewpoint is that every child that dies in an abortion does so because God ordains it. At the first spark of life, my child was destined by God, she says, to die at 15 weeks in an abortion. God gave me HG, she says. It was His will for my destiny.

I told her that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans, that it rains on us all no matter who we are. I told her that abortion was not God's choice, but my choice. She said God would have saved my child if He had wanted him/her to live. Hmmm... so God didn't want my child to live; God wanted my child to die in a sanguine death at the hands of his/her mother. Hmmm...

I told her I absolutely rejected the idea. It was me. I did it. It was clear, even then, that it was not God's will.

She said she didn't know what was going on in my church if I believed that. She said she wanted to call my preacher and ask him what in the world he was preaching.

Some people get HG. I was one of them. God says (in the Bible) that kids are gifts and miracles and not to kill, but He doesn't prevent you from screwing your life (or someone else's life) up. It's His rule; He set it. She said, "The god you speak of is powerless against the will of man." She mired herself in the business of Biblical combat and started flinging verses at me to disprove my theory that God lets us get into the trouble we choose. "We sin," I argued. "We make choices, and He doesn't save us from them." Zinging back she says, "Praise God, He does! That's why He sent His Son." She's less interested in hearing me than she is in "educating" and winning. "Winning souls" she might say. "Winning period" I'd say.

At any rate, she has completely alienated me, and due to her lack of sensitivity, I really have no desire to explore her point of view. Her emails will go unanswered, because it's just not healthy for me to hear that God is the world's number one abortion provider. If He is, then let Him tell me. If He wanted my child to die that way, I will not understand, and it will hurt, but let Him reveal it. If that's the way it works, "Though He slay me yet will I trust Him." (Job 13:15a) But let my "friend", a person without a SICLE, shut her yammering pie hole until then.

And if this wasn't a good enough way to start yesterday off, I shortly thereafter heard from a dear friend who practices the Mel Gibson method of birth control: none. She has a child per year and will have three in diapers at the same time. I say "will have" because she called me (about five minutes after the email from hell) to place an organic dairy order (I'm part of a co-op) and to inform me that she was pregnant AGAIN. She now has five children, and with the four already born, there were no pregnancy problems whatsoever. Hers were all BEAUTIFUL pregnancies, and the babies were all born at hippy home to boot. Now I ask you... what the hell is that, people?!

What is it like to be pregnant and to walk around? Can someone please tell me? Because I had three hellacious pregnancies: one that turned me into an animal and made me kill my own child at fifteen weeks, one that ended in miscarriage at 10 weeks (on Christmas for cryin' out loud) after 4 weeks of being bedridden from puking my friggin brains out with HG... and finally the last pregnancy where I was confined to my bed for TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS (that's 7 months) with HG and an incompetent cervix from a second trimester abortion! GOD FORGIVES BUT MY CERVIX DOESN'T. (Someone please put that on a tshirt and mail it to me.)

"I'm pregnant."
Of course there's something of a long pause on the line while I'm sucking wind trying to force air back into lungs that have had it knocked out of them. "Congratulations," I say and, "I have to go now." My pregnant friend is crying because she knows, she loves me, and she is sorry for my pain. I tell her it is good to know that God blesses some people the way He has blessed her, and I will praise Him for that.

Some days are tougher than others.

SICLECell@hotmail.com

:: ashli 10:31 AM # ::
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