Remembering Our Aborted Children

I was reading my prayer list this morning. Actually reading it, person by person, instead of being too busy and just asking for "help for all on my prayer list" as I do sometimes...and I had an idea.

While this blog is in semi-hiatus from daily blogging, I thought it would be a good idea to post, on any given day, the first names of anyone's babies lost to abortion who they have since come to grieve. Sort of a "request-line," only for the blog's visitors.

There may be another site out there doing this (please let me know if you know of one), but there must be a way to do this respectfully, even anonymously if someone prefers, which I believe most folks do.

I may be biting off more than I can chew (if I get a lot of emails!) but if you email me (SEE THE EMAIL LINK "Annie" AT TOP RIGHT OF THE SIDEBAR) asking to post a short note remembering and/or praying for you and your lost child on the date he or she was aborted or, alternatively, would have been born, I will do my best to put up a "Memorial Post" on that date. Dads as well as Moms can write me. If you'd even like to remember a family member lost to abortion, not your own child, but maybe a niece, nephew or grandchild, feel free to contact me too. Even if the baby has not been remembered with a name yet, we will still do this.

If you wish to remain completely anonymous, we of course will respect that (as we always have). No email addresses will ever be shared with ANYONE, nothing. We have had perhaps thousands of emails from visitors over the past four years, and have never dishonored a confidence. We never will. We understand far too well what is at stake.

You can even go to Yahoo or Google Mail and create a free email account to use just this once so we'll never know the email address you usually use. We're not technically savvy here at this blog to know who anyone is when they email us and even if we were, we both have dayjobs and don't have the TIME to figure any of that out!

ALSO, we ask that all read our commenting guidelines first and EVERYONE ONLY POST ENCOURAGING, POSITIVE COMMENTS (SEE BELOW). NO DEBATE, NO OPINION, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, NOTHING FOCUSED ON ANYONE BUT THOSE WE ARE REMEMBERING AND/OR PRAYING FOR. As blog-founder Emily wrote in our guidelines,

It's important to me that post-abortive individuals who are involved in the post-abortion movement aren't embattled and attacked by comments left here.

That applies, especially with these Memorial Posts, to post-abortive individuals NOT involved in the post-abortion movement as well, of course.

Some ways we could memorialize could be:

L. and her daughter in heaven, Mikayla

For my daugher, Erin Madeline, aborted around Easter time, 1978.

Eve Christine, child of H.

February 1979: Luke Raphael, child of R.

February 11, 1983: Mary Lee, child of N.

18 yr. old mom of 2 y.o. daughter who aborted unborn son 1/20/04

A date is important so I can post it for that date, but if you have no specific date, I'll just post it as soon as I can after I receive it. If there are several requests for one date or one month, I will post them together in one post.

You will know that it is your memorial and your prayer, and you can be the only one who knows.

Imagine hundreds, thousands of our visitors reading and offering up a thought for you and your lost child on the day you might be hurting the most.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE TO THOSE NEW TO THIS IDEA:
The idea of Post-Abortive women memorializing our lost children like this, even giving them a name, can sound very strange. Please know that it is by no means new or strange. On Rachel's Vineyard retreats alone in the past decade or so, over 25,000 women have done just this. RV is just one of many, many Post-Abortive recovery services and groups worldwide (SEE SIDEBAR AT RIGHT under RESOURCES FOR HEALING).

Please know that it isn't morbid and it isn't emotional self-flogging. It is actually rather helpful--to us personally--to acknowledge our lost children. It works for women who have miscarried; why shouldn't it do so for us who chose abortion and later regretted it? There is tremendous loss in both instances.

Since Haloscan doesn't allow selectively closed comments, we ask that ONLY POSITIVE, HELPFUL COMMENTS BE POSTED IF YOU MUST COMMENT. Any rude or hurtful comments, or those which otherwise violate our commenting guidelines OR THE OTHERS STATED ABOVE, will be immediately deleted and those folks will be banned as well. Please read our commenting guidelines first, especially if you disagree with or can't understand this policy for these Memorial Posts.

So if you'd like to do this, for yourself and your lost child, my email address (Annie) is up top on the right of the page.



(This post was first posted on February 26, 2008, and will be post-dated as the head "sticky" post until we return from hiatus, whenever that is.)