Tears Fall…Justice for All Training

I have seen the same dream
Many times, it haunts my mind
It starts with a light
But it ends every time
Oh, so many faces that the world
Will never see
A reason for your life
But your heart will never beat

May the tears fall down
Let them soften this ground
May our hearts be found
God forgive us now

Oh, what have we lost because we chose
We’ll never know
And loving you is better than feeling alone
And all our claims to freedom
Have become these heavy chains
And in the name of rights
We keep filling nameless graves

…..”Tears Fall” by BarlowGirl

What am I supposed to say to someone when I stand there next to him in the shadow of a twenty foot picture of an aborted baby, and he says in disgust, “why do we have to look at this? This is offensive. If a woman wants to have an abortion, that’s her choice, we have no right to stop her.”? How am I supposed to respond when a girl insists that “it’s not a human, it’s nothing more than a clump of cells.”? Or the people who ask “what about underage pregnancies? Or women who are too poor to raise the child? Or when a child is simply unwanted?”

Today an organization called Justice for All (JFA) came to FLI and we had an intense, daylong training on how to address these questions. All week we’ve been anticipating today, we were warned about the graphic pictures we’d be shown, and last night we read a whole book about the issues we would be addressing today. It was with nervous hearts we entered the classroom together, unsure how we would handle the information we were about to receive.
The pictures would break your heart; I pray they break the hearts of those who don’t understand the value of the human life destroyed. I just can’t fathom how someone can look at those pictures and say “yeah, that’s not a human.” Or worse, “it may be human, but it’s unwanted.”
It was an intense day, the longer it went on the more overwhelmed I felt. We did a lot of role playing, and whenever I was in the role of Pro-Choice I never knew how to respond after the points of the Pro-Lifer. I agreed with them! Knew where they were going because of my own beliefs, even after a full day of learning what to expect people to say didn’t prepare me for arguing against my own personal views. Plus, the more the day wore on, the thicker my emotions became, by the last hour of the day I was fighting tears and I couldn’t even think clearly due to the thoughts of the tragedy that is abortion. At one point, we were again split into pairs to role play, and I almost asked the guy I was paired with how he felt about crying girls, because there was a good chance he might have one on his hands in the next few minutes! (don’t worry, I didn’t actually tell him that, didn’t want to freak him out, :-) and I didn’t really cry, just inside). I feel so overwhelmed by the buckets of information given to us today, I praise the Lord we have the weekend to process it all. But it doesn’t stop here.
Next week, early Tuesday morning, we will be loading up a bus and heading to Colorado State University. Justice For All will have their twenty foot, four sided display set up in the center of campus and we will all be there to talk to the students about it. I’m very scared and very excited at the same time. I have no idea what to expect, they told us so much today, but even so the unknown is frightening. I don’t know exactly what kind of conversations I’ll be having; I can only pray that we’ll all know how to respond to each person in love and gentleness (something I struggle with due to my debating nature).
Today was a hard day, I came away feeling heavy hearted for the lives lost and changed because of abortion. Yet, however hard and draining today was, it’s nothing compared to how I expect Tuesday to be. Please be praying for us as we address this with those collage students. Pray that they will have open hearts and minds, and that we will be given the words to touch them and lead them to understand the tragedy of taking a human life through abortion. Also pray that we will have clear minds and that we may perceive how it is that God wants to use this exhibit and us on Tuesday.
Today, as we sat in the Ogden Lounge, facing the nine foot version of the exhibit, listening as the JFA people laid information on top of information of all the things we need to know before Tuesday, we were all blessed by a ray of sunshine through Lindy’s baby daughter Lorien. Lindy is one of the women who work here, and today she had Lorien with her, just crawling around and saying “hi” to whoever would listen to her. It was so precious and refreshing to look from the disfigured and bloodied pictures of aborted babies, to be able to turn to the joyful, healthy, smiling child there in the room with us. During one of the breaks I went up to Lindy and thanked her for bringing Lorien today, I needed to touch a baby after the weight of the things we were being shown and told. Lorien is a reminder to us of why it’s so important to do what we’re going to do on Tuesday, to protect the children of the future and allow them to have life.
The mission of Justice For All is to train thousands to make abortion unthinkable for millions, one person at a time. If you want to know more about the exhibit of Justice For All, here’s their website http://www.jfaweb.org/