As a nineteen-year-old "good " boy, I thought I was above getting myself into any kind of serious trouble. In high school I hadn't been one of those wild guys who set out drink his way through school or sleep his way through school. In fact if anything I was kind of a wallflower "nice guy", the kind that girls thought of as their brother. I was very active in the church youth group, went on mission trips in the summer sang in the youth choir. Being a wallflower I didn't start dating until I was a junior. I dated one girl for about a month and soon decided she wasn't type of girl I was interested in.

Spring came and so did spring fever. A girl who was class ahead of me, and I had been friends with for a couple of   years, we started hanging out together and soon she was as active in the church youth group as I was. Pretty quick we started feeling very strongly toward each other, our relationship was moving from a friendship to one of a more mature respectful love relationship. Everyone marveled at the maturity seen in our relationship, everyone accept for my parents.  They were not very supportive at all. Not supportive to the point of being cold and mildly rude. This did nothing but drive us closer together.  The girl's family loved me and welcomed me into their home and family with open arms. 

After her graduation from high school, with honors, she enrolled in the local community college where upon my graduation from high school I enrolled. Ah, new found freedom!! She lived on campus I continued to live at home. My parents were at least looking more tolerant, her parents were already planning the wedding. Our friends were of course supportive of our relationship; they were in fact somewhat surprised that my folks were so negative.  We continued to be active in our church activities though it wasn't quite the same for me anymore, my friends from high school had all left town f or college, now our relationship seemed to head in a new direction. She had friends on campus, I didn't, I had her.

It's all kind of a blur how things started changing, one week I would want to break things off with her the next week I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. We had been together for two years. I started changing our relationship. On the evening of our second anniversary were alone at the dorm.  Before that evening was over both of our lives were changed forever.  I took what was not mine to take. So much for virginity, we were in love. The following days were surreal for both of us not because what had happened was some wondrously romantic, tender, loving experience but because we were both so guilt ridden.  The silence was finally broken, and we swore it wouldn't happen again. 

The school year ended, she moved back into her parents home and prepared to go away to college in the fall. I continued to work and prepared for another year at the community college. It wasn't long before we were sexually active. We convinced our selves it was ok, we loved each other, and we were going to get married! She went away to school and I was alone again.  They say " Absence makes the heart grow fonder", I guess it does.  I don't think I truly was missing her , I was missing having sex with her. My drug of choice was having sex.  I became less and less interested in the person she was and became more like one of those guys I had so despised in High school who had no respect for girls. The time had come. I would end the relationship once and for all.    It's curious how things work out. When she came home for the summer, she could sense I was different.  It was the tenth of June, the sun had set about an hour before, the time had come and I was not going to back down from breaking up. Things didn't go quite as I planned. Her words still, sound in my ears today, “That’s fine, but I'm pregnant!”  How could this be happening to me/us. “You'll have to have an abortion, my parents will never understand. Either you have an abortion or I'll...” I don't remember what I said but I think I thought about killing myself. That night I drove around, trying to decide what to do next. I ended up a young pastor's house at 2:00 in the morning explaining to him how I didn't want to marry the girl and I certainly didn't want to have a baby with her. Sadly enough he didn't know how to council me.

The next night we both met with him.  After two nights of very little sleep, Sleeping only after drinking a few shots of vodka, I came up with the plan of how this nightmare was going to end. I made the arrangements, we would lie to our parents, I had become rather good at already, travel to a nearby city and get rid of this problem.

And that is what happened. We spent a day sitting in what seemed like an ordinary doctor's office. There wasn't anything ghoulish about it, apparently some of the clients had been patients before. I felt somewhat like I was somehow not apart of what was going on, like I was on the outside looking in on another world. However, this didn't last for very long. 

The reality of what took place that Saturday in June began to have it's effect on me within days of the abortion. She and I never talked about "it", the abortion. Soon we were like perfect strangers. She was hurting because of me. I was hurting because of me. But it was only a piece of tissue. That is all I remember about that summer. I continued to work, medicate myself with vodka, and tell myself it was the right thing for both of us.  Eventually, I thought I had hardened my heart to the guilt, the shame, the realization of what I had done to her.  I went on to college where I met my best friend.  God, whom I knew didn't care for me, sent into my life a friend, I shared my story with her.  Though I didn't know it at the time I began to heal. Instead of always being sad or guilt ridden. I only felt that way at certain times of the year.  My " best friend" and I finally decided that we should get married because if we married someone else they wouldn't understand our friendship.  

We married and after four years, my wife became pregnant.   Our joy was soon doubled when we learned we were having twins. Then the ugly demon from my past raised its head. I knew that somehow I was going to be tortured once again.  I kept waiting for the axe to fall. About a month after finding out about the twins as I was making deliveries with my job, I heard a Christian radio show, I don't know what program it was but I remember the host talking about God's grace and mercy.   He seemed to know that some of those who were listening were still being held captive by their past. It was time to let go of the shame, the guilt, the fear. Satan was holding them in the chains of the past. Satan was holding me by the chains of my past. 

I pulled over on side street and I wept for what seemed a long time. The first time I had wept over the abortion. I asked God to heal me that day to forgive me. He did and for the first time in six years I felt free and whole again. I know my experience is in many ways very different from some. Primarily because I a guy and to you ladies out there I'm so very sorry if you traveled that road because of some guy like I was. But, know this - that Jesus Christ can and will bear this burden for you. Guys, Christ wants to raise you up to be the man he can use. Let him have control of your life.  It's been thirty-one years since the abortion; it has been twenty-six years since God set me free. I still think about it but I'm no longer held prisoner to it.