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The first poem I ever published was called “One Single Tear”. I wrote it when I was 12, after learning what abortion was from an NPR show my dad was listening to. I was riding in the passenger seat and as Dad explained what it was they were talking about, I looked out the window and one tiny little tear escaped my eye. I penned the poem a few days later. My mom sent the poem around to family members and we did the old school copyright thing by sending it off in a self addressed envelope. At one point, my words hung in the waiting room of a doctor’s office somewhere in Northeast Georgia. I was proud of my work and although I didn’t have the language to call myself “pro life”, I most definitely was that, unapologetically. If you had given me a picket sign and pointed me in the right direction, I would have marched until the soles of my shoes fell off.

As a 35 year old, my life has been touched by abortion in more ways than 12 year old Kristen could have ever imagined. I have many friends who have had abortions, some while I’ve known them, some while being staunch pro-life Christians, most of whom did and still do love Jesus. I had a miscarriage a few years ago that resulted in a dangerous hemorrhage which led to a night in the emergency room and a procedure most commonly used in abortions. My discharge papers called our loss “spontaneous abortion”. And of course, most recently, I had multiple maternal fetal medicine doctors tell us that our best chance at keeping one of our baby girls was to abort the other one.

12 year old Kristen would have thought that the choice was easy. Being theologically pro-life means that you believe that the fetus inside of you is a person, a life, has a soul, is intentionally created by God, and is worthy of the same dignity and humanity as anyone outside of the womb is. If there was only one life at stake in my pregnancy, I could probably say that it was easy to choose what we did, but it wasn’t.

Chloe’s life was on the line too.

Pro-lifers celebrated our choice to save Lydia because in the pro-life conversations, the life that’s focused on is the life that’s most vulnerable. Lydia was the one that doctors were telling us to abort. We chose not to abort her, so we were celebrated. But what about Chloe? By choosing not to abort Lydia, we were gambling with Chloe’s life. Another vulnerable baby. Another child without a voice. I felt like Chloe was being disregarded entirely. While people praised my faith and bravery, I wanted to scream, “But Chloe could die because of this! She could die and it would be our fault because we had the choice to save her and we didn’t.”

I held the fate of two innocent, vulnerable babies in my hands. I never felt brave. I never felt strong. I never felt good about any of it. I believed strongly that we were doing the right thing. I fully trusted the Lord and believed that it would be ok. But I never, not once, felt like the lone warrior on the abortion battlefield that some made me out to be.

I just felt scared.

Choosing not to abort Lydia and to trust both of their lives in the hands of God was a forward motion under duress (as one of you kindly gave me to words for!), not a choice. It was “the next right thing”, as Elisabeth Elliot would say, but it certainly didn’t feel like a choice. Our beliefs about God, in a sense, tied our hands. Not because of obligation or some kind of religious “have to”, but because we so deeply believe that God is the author of life and that he is faithful and trustworthy. We couldn’t sacrifice one life to save the other. It took a tremendous amount of faith every single day to wake up and decide that our girls were safe in the hands of God, regardless of the outcome. But even so, we risked Chloe’s life for the statistically minuscule chance that we’d be able to keep them both. That wasn’t very “pro-life” of us. But we weren’t thinking about what we believed about when life begins. There aren’t ideologies in doctor’s rooms. Sweaty palms can’t hold on to anything when they’re aching to be held themselves.

Our only thoughts were : what can we do to give our girls the best chance at surviving and how do we honor the Lord in this?

Pro-choicers called it reckless.

Pro-lifers called it brave.

We just called it hell.

Did we really choose life if our choice put another life at risk? Did we really choose at all if our theological paradigms prevented us from doing anything else?

It wasn’t black and white and it certainly wasn’t simple.

And so when the world is up in arms about roe v wade being overturned and what that means for women and what that means for the unborn, I find myself thinking about 12 year old Kristen. She thought people who have had abortions were murderers and she wasn’t able to imagine a world where she’d be friends with people like that. Time and love for her friends would complicate the issue for that pro life little girl. I’ve stared into the eyes of women who felt exactly the way that I did, like they had no other choice, and I see myself in them.

The Christian faith doesn’t orient around platforms, people, or ideologies. We orbit around Christ and our faith shapes us into people who reflect his character. And of course, we all can and we all do shape Jesus into our own image, despite our best efforts. We focus on the parts of his personality that remind us of ourselves, instead of shaping our selves to reflect the parts of him we don’t. I don’t claim to have a certain answer on exactly what Jesus would do in any and every given moment. If we had him all figured out, why would we ever keep searching for him?

But what I do know of Christ, that I can be fairly certain of, is that hurting people were safe with him and people who weren’t “good” were drawn to him. And even though it’s fun to talk about the time Jesus flipped over tables, most of the time Jesus interacted with a table, he was sitting at it, sharing a meal with people he should’t have been sharing a meal with. He was relational first and foremost and always.

When you step off of social media, into the coffee shop, the living room, the soccer stands, the work break room, the church fellowship hall, do people who are hurting trust you? Do people who make decisions you don’t agree with feel safe in relationship with you or do they believe all they’ll meet at your table is a fight? Are people only safe with you if they believe all the tenants of faith that you do? Are they only safe if they’re politically compatible? Would you still care for them in crisis, even if they chose something you wouldn’t choose?

I think those are vital things to ask as we evaluate our character in comparison to Christ’s. Being a safe place for people isn’t a personality trait, it’s the character of Christ. We are called to reflect him, regardless of whether or not every aspect of who he is comes easy to us. If Jesus, who is the embodiment of righteousness, truth, and justice can say, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”(Matthew 11:28), surely we can do some measure of the same. Personality isn’t relevant to character.

Truth that comes from the Father never comes at the expense of compassion and love. You can speak truth without burning bridges. Truth without wisdom and without love is just noise. Think of Job’s buddy, Elihu, who met Job’s crisis with an astonishing amount of arrogance, “Be patient with me a little longer, and I will inform you, for there is still more to be said on God’s behalf. I will get my knowledge from a distant place and ascribe justice to my Maker. Indeed, my words are not false; one who has complete knowledge is with you.” (Job 36:1-4)

Elihu came to Job with all the arrogance of a recent Bible school grad, but he lacked wisdom, compassion, and empathy. In his urgency to usher his friend out of his crisis and a prideful desire to be right, he misrepresented the character of God to someone in the middle of heartbreaking trauma.

Job’s other friends said their fair share of arrogant and hurtful things, but before they even opened their mouths and said a single word to Job, they sat with him for seven days. They tore their robes and sat in the ashes and grieved with him. In their silence, they honored his tragedy. Maybe that’s why Job trusted them and allowed them to speak so much, even though ultimately, their advice led to a rebuke from God. That trust Job had in them earned them the right to sit with him in his greatest grief and speak to him what they believed to be true.

We skip over the significance of those seven days when we read Job’s story and we skip over that crucial step of Christian love in the living out of our lives with each other. We jump to saying “one who has complete knowledge is with you” and deny our brother and sister the dignity of just being present.

We rush to speak, to make statements, and expect others to do the same because we’ve been led to believe that sitting in silence in a heavy moment is waste. We want to rush people to theological certainty when what they really need is compassion and love.

The moment we’re in is heavy.

We’ve lived through one historical event to the next these last few years and I still feel lost sometimes in how to respond. So for now, I’m sitting in the heavy moment, listening to Jesus, listening to the people I love talk about the things that are close to their hearts, and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide my thoughts, words, and conclusions. Even if all of those things don’t look or sound the way other people want them to and aren’t shared with the world in the timeline that our quick scrolling culture demands.

Here’s 12 year old Kristen’s poem, from deep in the Big Red Tub of my writing.

I wrote this email before rereading this poem and I think 12 year old Kristen deserves a little more credit than I gave her. I didn’t remember that this poem acknowledged the pain of the abortive mother. “One single tear for the mother that cries”. I don’t remember considering the heart of the mother at all, but I’m thankful to have this to remind me that we can return to the softness we have as children with the wisdom of lived experience and a deeper walk with Christ.

Hope you’re having a great week, friends.

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