Trust in God's Mercy...what's the alternative?

I've watched the above clip from The Passion of the Christ more than 100 times.  Sometimes I watch it to remind me of God's Mercy.  Sometimes I watch it because there are days when I feel just like the woman in the video - not because I had committed adultery...worse,I had an abortion.

When I started this blog a week or so ago - I was feeling pretty good and was hopeful about all the people I could help with my story.  Then after a few days, the shadows return and I find myself having to chase them away again.  That's the thing with abortion - it's always there, it will always be there.  There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about it.  Even before I started talking about it or uttered a word about it to anyone - it was on my mind and in my heart.  Sure, I stuffed it down pretty deep but it was there.  It was there, underlying my bad choices.  It was there feeding the destruction of my self esteem.  It was there every time I allowed myself to be used for sex when in my heart I knew there was more for me, that I was meant for better.   I just didn't know how to get there for a long, long time.

Then, one day, my life changed in an instant.  The day that I met my husband.  So in my joy after that day and all the happiness that followed and continues to today - I was able to stuff the feelings down deeper.  But, they remained, however dormant and festering beneath the surface.  The voices that told me I'm not good enough for my husband.  He's going to leave me.  I'm nothing.  My children don't even like me. 

I wish I could journal a "day in the life of a postabortive woman" for you.  The smallest of things can bring it all to the surface.  A sound, a voice, the news, a church, a baby.  At least now I'm finding my way to channel all of it toward the greater good - I hope - for myself and for whomever else I may reach with my story.

For a long, long time, I was this woman, crawling in the dust and dirt, feeling the judgement from others reigning down upon me, feeling the threat of a trip straight to hell when I died, never ever worthy to even look up at Jesus - who would never condemn, whose mercy is bigger than anything I've done.  And there are days even now when I'm back down in the dust and dirt - but I force myself to look up, say a prayer, call for help even if it's the silence of my own mind.  Even now I call out with a twinge of despair that I won't be answered but I have to believe that He's there when I do look up.