Written by Tammy Rude, LeadHer Local Binghamton, NY Coordinator.
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The words kept coming. Frantically the words moved like tumbleweed during a dust storm slamming against the stone wall I had built. I couldn’t hold back the words in my heart any longer…Search me, oh God!
One rainy morning at the kitchen table, the Holy Spirit led me to a place I had been avoiding for over ten years.I had just finished writing the last scripture into my testimony when I placed my pen next to my bible, and I bowed my head asking God once again” Why can’t I love my daughter? Why do I always push her away with the very hands that long to hold her?”
The memory of the day I walked out of the abortion facility came flooding back. I began to sob uncontrollably from the pain that was welling up inside of me. Lifting my head off the table, my eyes drifted upwards as I cried out “God, what is wrong with me? I know you have forgiven me and in my head I believe it’s true but my heart is empty.”
As I wiped the tears that were flowing down my face, I placed my head on the kitchen table once again, but this time in complete surrender. I was ready. I was giving God permission to search my heart. All of it.
Within a few minutes, I felt His presence. Call me crazy… but I knew He was there. His voice was so soft, almost like a whisper as He spoke my name. Slowly lifting my head, I murmured” What is it, Lord?” It was then I heard the truth for the first time as it cut like a two-edged sword… “You can’t love your daughter until you love your aborted child.”
I knew He was right. Just like the woman at the well, I too, needed the truth spoken to me. I could see His arms reaching towards me and that’s when I saw him, for the first time, my child.
“Go ahead,” God said “Hold him, you need to hold him.” Those words went straight to my heart, for my heart had never held my baby.
At first I hesitated as thoughts began to fill my mind… if I held him it would mean my child just wasn’t about a bible study for the post-aborted woman or the words of how sorry I was for making this choice. By holding him, I would be placing him next to my heart, a place I skillfully guarded for years.
It would be the first time in sixteen years I looked into the eyes of Jesus and saw His heart…not mine.
He wanted me to love this child the way He loved him. He wanted me to be free to embrace the life he would have had. God wanted me to lay the burden of never physically holding my child at the foot of Cross in exchange to holding him forever in my heart.
It was on this day I was reconciled back to God. It was this day my child, Christian Daniel’s life was validated.
It wasn’t easy to unlock the door of where I felt justified and to allow God to step over the threshold and place truth in that room, but I’m so glad I did!
How about you? Have you kept a room locked in your heart? I want to encourage you to whisper those words that King David did so many years ago…Search me, Oh God. It will not be easy for you to allow God full access to your heart and into areas that you want to stay closed and hidden, but when you do, God will do something amazing.