By Dave Andrusko
This may seem a reach, even for me. But consider…..once, in the space of a couple of hours, I received via e-mail a poem from a thoughtful young man and a link to a powerful story of dedication, determination, and devotion. Together they prompted me to remember old truths in new ways.
The poem is a mixture of quiet eloquence and full-throttled anger at the sheer brutality of abortion. As I read the lines, filled with pain and a sense of betrayal, it reminded me of a two-sided truth that is so easy to overlook.
We must never “lose our edge.” It is incumbent upon us to never allow the deaths of nearly 900,000 unborn babies a year to become a dry statistic, like the Dow Jones average. It is imperative that our sense of indignation never be dulled.
We can’t forget that each time the abortionist shears a little head from a tiny torso, a hand from a wrist, a foot from an ankle, he leaves behind not only the mangled remains of a little child of God but also a small part of his own already diminished store of humanity. A child paid with her life. In the long run the price the abortionist pays may be even steeper.
And then I read the story of a father of “many broken children” whom he “chooses… to be triumphs.” Their disabilities run from relatively mild to profound.
In the case of one of their girls, the discovery of a heart murmur led to uncovering other medical problems and eventually a diagnosis of Down syndrome. As so often is the case the “counseling” that was offered encouraged the couple abort.
The father writes, “For us this was the second time facing a severely disabled child and the second time that the medical community would suggest the disposability of a life. We, of course, knew better because the journey with Mary Beth led me in particular to an understanding of why there is brokenness, why we suffer, and how to look through God’s eyes to see the intrinsic value in a human life.”
The father concludes with a sense of peace that I could only hope I would attain were my family’s life so challenging. “At times, giving up my plan for life has been difficult and often agonizing,” he writes.
“However, I found that when I finally gave up trying to find meaning in life through achieving my personal wants, I was blessed with a unique sense of peace and freedom. Amazingly, my expectation that dedicating oneself to service would be a cross to bear has in fact been path to liberation.”