until you assist, you will not know

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable,
to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson


(image as seen on a blog)

Last week I wrote a post regarding Bill 481, Georgia’s Heartbeat Bill.

https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/beating-still-the-heartbeat-bill-or-the-day-the-sky-was-falling-in-georgia/

Since writing that post, I have read a myriad of other blogs and articles regarding the bill
as well as a promo for the movie Unplanned—a coincidental overlapping of happenings.

But we already know that I don’t believe in coincidence but rather in the workings of the Holy Spirit.

I have not seen the movie Unplanned, but I certainly hope to.
That is if my heart is strong enough.

I found it ironic that on the opening weekend, the Hollywood powerhouse movies
paled in the opening numbers versus the unorthodox Unplanned.

It is a movie based on Abby Johnson, a young director of Planned Parenthood who found herself
having to assist in an abortion—
It was the very option Abby, as well as her organization, had ardently been promoting and providing
for women–and yet it was during that very option of a women’s right that rocked Abby’s world forever.

It was during her assistance in a procedure, a procedure that Abby had ardently supported for
women as a woman’s right to choose…that changed her life forever.

Abby Johnson had been a Planned Parenthood director but had never seen images of
the baby during an abortion.
Today, she was pitching in to help the surgeon perform the procedure by manning the ultrasound.

What she saw made her cry.
The baby wriggled and tried to escape the vacuum.

“They always do,” the doctor deadpanned.
(from the movie Unplanned)

The day prior to reading the promo for the movie, I saw the image I’ve posted above.

A political cartoon of sorts…considered impractical by many …
yet not so far fetched as the hardened heart would imagine.

The doctor’s remark to Abby during the abortion procedure was correct—
a baby who is being aborted, fights for life.
They do not simply succumb to a suction, a burning painful saline solution or
a shredding scalpel.

The baby will fight to “get away”.

The baby wants to remain and wants to live.

It is not a logical thought process but more of a natural reactionary process.
When threatened with termination, a fetus will squirm, wiggle and move away from the ‘threat’
in order to survive.

And so it is with this in mind that I find myself more and more incensed by the likes
of an Alyssa Milano—the very vocal actress who is leading the charge for Hollywood to
boycott Georgia for allowing such a bill to become a law.

I read an article which reported how Milano had presented a petition to Georgia’s lawmakers
with 40 signatures threatening to boycott Georgia should Bill 481 become law.

Well, since the bill has passed both sides of Georgia’s governing body and has been
sent to the Governor’s desk for his signature, signing it into law,
Milano quickly made her way to the State Capital
where she presented a lawmaker with her concern.

The lawmaker calmly asked her in which district was she living and casting her votes.
Milano replied that she does not live in Georgia but was merely in the state to shoot scenes
for her latest television series…
the lawmaker turned and walked away.

The fact that an actress who calls California home comes to Georgia, insisting that Georgia
amends its laws to suit her political agenda, is in a word, assinine.

I have a great deal to say soon about abortion, adoption, life, and death…but the time
is not right as I am still walking a journey that is not yet complete but I do have
one thing to say to those women who clamor that abortion is a woman’s right.
That abortion is not to be an issue determined by male lawmakers as they are not women…

Milano and her ilk clamor that it is not “right” for male lawmakers to make
decisions for women and their bodies.

Last I checked female lawmakers were voting as well—

I don’t give a damn about a male lawmaker voting for, passing and signing a bill into law
that is insidiously cloaked as some sort of sacred women’s issue when in actuality
it is an issue of a man and women making a baby, a baby that is a by-product,
more often than not, of lust and sex….
plain and simple.

An innocent by-product, mind you, of poor decisions and selfish decisions…

And no we’re not talking about the smaller percentage of rape and other issues but
the majority of abortions as by-products of poor decision making and mere mistakes.

Who may I ask is standing up and voting for the vulnerable by-products?

It is not a matter of rights or timing or practicality or convenience.

To abort a baby is an act of murder.

And what I have to say to Alyssa Milano and her small army of militant feminists…
Go work in the “procedure” room—watch the ultrasounds, listen to the heartbeat.
You, Ms. Milao, have two children if I’m not mistaken…
would you happily give them over to death today?
I don’t think so.
So would you have given them over to death before they were born?

Until you perform an abortion, sit in that room, look at what is removed…
until you have that blood on your hands, you then tell me that you wholeheartedly
support murder.

Being adopted has always been a keen reason as to my intense aversion to abortion…
but I think having become a grandmother has only heightened that aversion.

This past year, I have marveled over, first, watching this tiny life emerge, then grow,
and change while learning…learning to smile, roll, hold, sit, stand, hurt, cry, laugh,
…I hold her and I wonder how anyone could have merely cast a death sentence over her.

Until you personally kill, then you let me know how you wish to tell
others how to vote.

“Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 24:17

the bitter

“I came to the conclusion that I had to love her enough to let her hate me.”
Carol Burnett’s reflection over having to put her daughter in rehab
for a third time)


(blooming spring /Julie Cook / 2018)

I recently caught a snippet of a transcript based on an interview with Carol Burnett—
an interview she had given regarding her life and relationship with her late daughter.

Carol Burnett, now age 85, was always known for her hilarious comedic performances and
her signature pulling of her ear at the end of each performance.
She lived, however, away from the laughter and the hijinks, a tenuous and even painful life
as a mother.

Her daughter Carrie died from cancer in 2002.
She was only 38 years old.

But before the cancer, before there was a reconciliation between mother and daughter,
as a teen, Carrie suffered from a variety of addictions.

Carol paid for rehab after rehab yet it was the third time Carrie was sent to rehab that
Carol came to the hardest realization for any parent…
“I put her in a third rehab place, and oh my God, she hated me.
I came to the conclusion that I had to love her enough to let her hate me.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a20135840/carol-burnett-daughter-death/

That one sentence speaks volumes.

To love enough, to be hated.

Loving someone enough only to realize that that love will not be met immediately in like kind—
but rather offering an open and abiding love which is to be met with vehemence,
resentment and even hate…
a love that is the epitome of the bitter reality of unconditional love…
is the most wrenching pain, for any parent, grandparent or guardian imaginable.

Painful and heartbreaking love offered freely, yet scornfully rejected.

We, as parents and grandparents, and even guardians, learn early on that we often have to love
our children and our grandchildren enough to watch them leave us for whatever reason…
be it simply due to moving away, growing up and away, illness or to the tough love as
they must be sent away to seek healing and help…

Watching them go, for whatever reason, knowing the pain and sorrow it wrecks upon our
own hearts, yet knowing that the going is the best solution or need for them is one of
the hardest acts a parent/grandparent must ever experience.

Imagine…a loving Father surrendering His only son to a known negative fate.

If you knew the outcome would be horrific, could you do it?

If you knew he would be hated, hounded, rejected, tortured and eventually murdered—
all for the sake of “other children” who had long severed all ties with
this loving Father….could you do it?

A consciously painful action that is truly quite unimaginable to grasp…

I know that my own heart has hurt.
Deeply and devastatingly so.
And so if my heart has nearly been broken, what of God’s…
What of God’s breaking heart?

What of Mary who knew that same pain of loving yet having to let go unto a fate
much greater than most could ever imagine or conceive?

And yet we will always choose love…
Love that is not met in like kind.

Because it is what love does.

Love, as the bitter taste of saline silently rolls down
our cheeks.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35-39