My Alternate Universe

It feels like I have been away a long, long time. It feels like that because it is true.  I haven't stopped writing.  I have done an amazing amount of writing actually.

I stopped writing my blog because it was too hard to be consistently honest.  Or maybe a better way of saying it is that I worried all the time about offending someone, everyone.  I have these very strongly held opinions.  Sometimes I have a tendency to express them without wrapping them in grace first.  I am a mess without grace.  I can look into a mirror and hate what I see.  And yes, I have a persona that I think I have to maintain all the time...except when I am standing in front of said mirror.  But my resolution this year was to try and glorify God every single day.  In my life, in my words, in my actions. Be intentional.  Its January 24th and I am finding my way.

So here I go.  Wading in to the controversy of the day.  The controversy of the last 40 years.  Watching America become this unrecognizable place and yet we shrug our shoulders (for the most part) and say "Live and Let Live" and yet, isn't that the whole point? We don't "Let Live" in America.  It amazes me what we can't  do in America.  How we've allowed ourselves to be backed into a corner in so many areas.  For example, I can't by a soda over 16 oz. in New York City.  That's not a decision I can make any longer. I am apparently incapable of controlling myself when it comes to soda purchases. But guess what?  I can kill my baby if I want.

 I can't buy decent light bulbs that actually light my rooms anymore. You know, the incandescent ones that actually turn right on and flood a room with a natural warmth.  But I can kill my baby.  In San Fransicsco I can't get plastic bags to carry my groceries but I can kill my baby.  In Concord, Mass I will be fined $50 for buying/using a personal water bottle like my Crystal Geyser or Arrowhead water.  Personal water bottles are BANNED, Baby!  But, speaking of Baby.  I can still kill mine if I want.  I cannot say a prayer in school or place a memorial cross on a hill top but I can kill my baby.

I have to get a license to hunt and kill a deer in most states.  But just one and no does - just the bucks.  But I can kill as many of my babies as I want. Really.  There is NO LIMIT on how many babies of mine I can kill.  I read about a girl in New York who had killed 13 of her own babies.  I bet that's not even close to the record.

It feels like I am writing a Twilight Zone script  except its true.  40 years of Roe V Wade has produced the death of over 55 million American children.  We as a nation wept for those 20 darling children in Newtown, Connecticut. The horror of that day: Seeing innocent children murdered through absolutely no fault of their own.  20 precious lives. Lives cut short before they blossomed into the fully grown people they were meant to be. Where, then, is the anger, horror, anguish and sorrow over the 55 million children who were and still are being killed through no fault of their own?

55 million.  If you killed every single person alive today in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Ohio combined you'd have about 55 million deaths. Unfathomable.  Imagine who we've lost.  The next great minds of science and medicine.  The next extrordinary painters and writers. The athletes and muscians.  The  parents and grandparents of our future generations. Extraordinary, really.

And there is no main stream outcry.  In an editorial published today in Salon Magazine, "So What if Abortion Ends Life?" by a woman named Mary Elizabeth Williams, she is honest enough to state that she knows (believes) life begins at conception but doesn't care. She wants women to still "be the boss" (and states the unbelievable statistic that ONE in THREE American women will, in their life time, have an abortion. One in Three???).  She writes that an aborted fetus is "a life worth sacrificing" if the mother finds that child inconvenient or what ever other reasons a woman has for aborting her child.

I hate to think how we will be judged by the Giver of all life.  Now this is the part about the goodness of grace.  The part that reminds me and everyone else that God has lavished us with love and grace.  We can literally swim in that unending grace.  We are loved and forgiven through the blood of our Savior Jesus Christ.  I do not know any of my friends who had an abortion at some point in their life who are not welcome to lathered on grace. I don't, I can't judge anyone who made that decision.  I am in need of grace as any human. I am truly a mess.  I have done awful things.  I have thought about doing even worse. I am redeemed through that grace.  So this is not about pointing fingers to the past.  This is about standing up and helping those who are at risk for the future.  This is about seeking an alternative universe where men and women take responsibility for their choices and first do no harm.  A better way of using Ms Williams own words, "Saving the life of a child is worth the sacrifice".