What possessed me to open the seemingly secure, safe, and dark room where I kept my feelings and the identity of our son who I aborted in 1974?
In the past whenever I tried to take a light into that room it made me agitated and angry. There was love in that room mixed with profound sadness and guilt. It was a sacred space of sorts but at the same time filled with sins and sorrows.
I never at any time considered that our son would rather be with us outside of the room in the light.
The definition of conversion is a change of nature or form or to turn around.
My “turning around” came slowly as I ventured more and more into the light- God’s Light. I was gently guided around each corner and into the nooks and crannies of the memories of my past. Many times, as I received healing graces I never looked back as insecurity and regret were replaced with clarity, forgiveness, and freedom.
The more light I had within my heart the more obvious became the silent, dead darkness of rooms in my heart I refused to approach.
I have personally witnessed miracles of healing and recovery for women and men who attend post abortion healing retreats.
By an impulse of divine grace, I attended a Rachel’s Vineyard weekend retreat. It was there I opened a tiny window into that room and with a trembling hand held a small, flickering candle of hope-filled light and looked in. Surrounded and supported by others at the retreat who shared my fear and dread I saw there were no gruesome ghouls or bloody specters, but the face of our son held in the arms of Jesus.
Post abortion recovery is not an instantaneous cure. Continued years of seeking and finding peace and reconciliation spured me on.
I served on Rachel’s Vineyard retreat teams which helped to galvanize my mission of seeking out other souls imprisoned in the dark night of denial and repression.
Like the layers of an onion I was peeled by a loving God exposing further channels of grace that I had blocked.
I had put off, for no reason so I thought, placing our son’s name on the Memorial Wall for the Unborn at one of our local churches.
A dear friend had already begun the process of obtaining the plaque and it encouraged me to move forward with it.
When the day came to go and receive his plaque and place it on the wall, my husband and I drove rather quietly to the cemetery.
When we arrived the lovely lady in charge of the wall placed the little plaque in my hand. I saw his name and felt the weight of the plaque in my hands.
I thought that I could never be surprised by God’s generosity to His beloved children. However, on that day a door that I did not even consciously acknowledge was blown wide open and a torrent of blinding, life-giving light rushed out.
My heart jumped, and I felt like I would faint with joy and wonder.
I have always been a visual and tactile person. My thoughts about our son were ethereal lacking any kind of solidity and substance.
There had been no body to see and hold and bury.
But in my hands was Benjamin: like a glittering warm star; a smiling star, a star that said, “Hi Mom.”
There was no guilt or shame, only recognition of someone I knew, that I had known from all eternity.
With tremulous hands, I placed his plaque on the granite wall alongside other children and then I sat back and just stared. I heard in my heart, “Well done, daughter. It is finished.”
1 Thessalonians 5:4-5 – For you are sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
The room where I kept our son has since been opened wide and cleaned and blessed. Now thoughts of his running and playing in the sun flit in and out of my heart.
I will not hide this magnificent light under a bushel any longer.
Written by Pat Pulliam, retired Regional Coordinator for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign
