My Story: The wound that brought me home….home to the heart of Christ.
After my abortion, I died with my babies. It is the only way I could describe this tragedy. At this point in my life, I didn’t know God, and I didn’t think God knew me. I had nobody to turn to and no one to share my death. My shame was so deep that I had to fight to stay alive every day. It seemed like having the abortion would bring things back to normal, but it never did, I felt betrayed. Numbing my heart was the only way to survive because feeling anything meant dying again. Life was never the same again. My walls were up, hope was dead, love was lost…..I was repulsed by me.
By a miraculous act of grace, I said “yes” to a friend who invited me to a Eucharistic retreat. I did not know the first thing about the Eucharist but I was deeply drawn to it. It was the only place in the world where I felt as though my burden was light, Christ carried me. This began my love story with our Lord. I spent my single years being with him before the Blessed Sacrament, It was home. It was there at the foot of the Cross that our Lord revealed himself to me, I began to feel again, I felt his mercy. I experienced His love in those silent moments, it was personal, and very real; He was healing me. My abortion wound became the compass that brought me home to the heart of Christ. It was in my death that I found life again; a new life with Christ.
It would be 10 years after my abortion that I would enter into another relationship; my husband. I didn’t plan it that way, God did, but I didn’t always understand why. One thing was clear, He wanted my mind, my body and my soul, He wanted my all. He wanted to teach me to love Him first, from His pure heart and not from my broken one. I decided to live a chaste life. I needed a lot of healing, both from the abortion, and the “lies” from our culture. I needed to dig deeper and discover who I was as a woman in the eyes of God. It was His tender gaze that gave me back my self-worth. I realize that so many of us women suffer shame, and blame ourselves for the choices we were never taught to make. The blatant attack on a woman’s self-worth today, both from the media and in the culture is inescapable; we are swimming in a toxic pool of lies. Unless we recognize our wounds, we risk living a life of fear and restlessness. I needed to reclaim my worth in order to live the life that God has designed for me for all of eternity. Those chaste 10 years became the foundation of my life, my marriage and my womanhood. I am free, Christ freed me.
I thank God for the wound that brought me home to the heart of Christ. It was also that same wound that gave me my passion for the formation and transformation of women. Just because we are born a woman, it doesn’t mean we know how to live and love as a woman. The mission of the Art of Being a Woman Project was born out of my suffering. It is a common story of a woman who wanted to live from a place of worthiness, and love from a heart that is whole….but was never shown how. This project hopes to train women on the details of being a woman. We desperately need to go back to the basics of being human. Our goal is the transformation of our society though the formation of women. No one is wound-free, but we can all be free of our wound. Our Lord desires for all women to live a life of joy, freedom and peace. He wants to bring meaning to our wounds and use our suffering to bring others back to His heart. He aches for us to live a life of abundance, a life full of His grace.
Oh Happy Fall….Praise be our Lord for the wound that brought me home to the heart of Christ. He makes all things new.
Visit the Art of Being a Woman Project here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8vpoWHIO7U