Florida Catholic | Healing My Relationship With Jesus

Healing my relationship with Jesus

One in an occasional series of columns about Project Rachel post-abortion ministry in Florida.

MARY LOPEZ HUSTON | SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA CATHOLIC

Published: 12.21.07

“You mean you didn’t want to have an abortion?” Her question pierced my heart. Wow, I thought, she doesn’t know. Of course I didn’t want my abortion. I had no choice.

But how could she know? Who would expect her to? Only recently have women like me, women who have had abortions, begun to speak out more and more. Only recently have our stories and the truth about abortion been revealed to shed a new light.

I was 19 when I had my abortion. I was living at home and torn between two worlds. My home life was a mess. I was terrified of my father and on edge most of the time. But in my other world, I was smart, and somewhat attractive and popular. I felt special and my boyfriend made me feel special. One day, these two worlds collided. I had conceived a baby and the father was willing to marry me. But somehow I knew in my gut that could never happen. Not because of him, but because of my father.

I feared that my father would kill him. And it was very apparent when I told my mother and she said, “Your father will kill you,” that I would be killed, too. Now, for most families, the words “your father will kill you” mean hide in your room or give him a couple of hours to cool off. Unfortunately in my case, the message was literal. I knew my father would kill me and my boyfriend. But that wasn’t what I was worried about. I was worried that he would take it out on the person who always got the brunt of my father’s anger — my mother. And I couldn’t bear to be responsible for that. So, I had no choice. I had an abortion.

“This time I said yes to heaven instead of hell and attended a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat.”

Now trust me, no one knows more than I that it was I who walked into that clinic and that it was I who killed my baby. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my daughter and the fact that I have not been able to conceive a baby since. I won’t go into details of the abortion. Suffice to say, it was hell. The truth is, I had to push the memory of it down in order to survive. Only one memory stays with me: me, the doctor and some woman standing over me in a very large, empty, cold room with large windows. As I felt the life being sucked out of me, tears flowed down my cheeks like a faucet that wasn’t shut off. I looked toward heaven and sang out loud a song from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” I knew I wasn’t loving him or my baby. What I realized later was how much I wasn’t loving myself.

When I walked out of that abortion clinic, two new worlds emerged in order for me to live with what I had done. In one world I was a successful, driven businesswoman who cared greatly for others, and who, by the grace of God, began a journey back toward fullness in my faith and activity in our church. In my other world, I carried the emotional, physical and spiritual scars of a secret for 25 years; a secret I felt could never be revealed or accepted by my other world. To me, our faith saw abortion as the sin of all sins, and those of us who committed one as being completely selfish and void of any love for our babies and our fellow human beings. In my mind there was no way these two worlds could be reconciled.

But one day these two worlds collided. That was the day I heard about Rachel’s Vineyard, a weekend retreat that offers healing and hope for men, women, anyone, who has experienced the pain of abortion. This time I said yes to heaven instead of hell and attended a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat. Rachel’s Vineyard gave me back what I had lost 25 years before. There I found compassionate, caring people who understood what I had been through. For the first time, I could share my secrets in a very confidential environment. Many wounds were healed on that weekend. I experienced a weekend retreat that to my surprise was a Catholic retreat. The same faith that I was afraid would never understand was now healing my wounds with its love. Rachel’s Vineyard helped restore my relationship with the only person who could completely heal my brokenness and make me whole: Jesus. This time, I came to him for help. And this time, God gave me a brand new world, a world where his love, his forgiveness and his peace now reign. I now live in one world. His world.

And I dream of building his world, a world where, like the good Samaritan, we all see and help heal the wounds, the wounds our brothers and sisters are carrying around as a result of abortion.

Lopez Huston is a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat team member in Jacksonville. For more information about Rachel’s Vineyard, visit www.rachelsvineyard.org or call 1-877-HOPE4ME. Comments concerning this article should be addressed to projectrachel@thefloridacatholic.org.

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