Women are so different from men. I think it would be very foolish to say we are alike and I'm not exactly sure about the word "equal" at all. "Equal under the Law" perhaps, "to be valued as highly" perhaps...but we are just not the same. For some mysterious reason, I prefer the company of men for conversation especially. Okay, some men. I am a thinker and I like to be surrounded by thinkers. Most thinkers seem to be men...or perhaps men are encouraged to think. It was clear in the 60s that boys were encouraged to do well in math, and girls were supposed to take home economics. One of my first deliberate moves to change the status quo was to take Electronics in the vocational building. Tell me I can't do something and just watch me. I grew up watching the stats for the Viet Nam war every night. Don't tell me war is a good thing. Don't tell me killing is okay. I used to think everyone had the 'right' to an abortion if she wanted it. And I think I still do, because we live in a world that does not value life: war, famine, selfishness, greed, hoarding...and only the ones who can afford it get health care.
But abortion is personal. Men in a field who shoot a gun don't see the faces of the people they kill, they don't really feel any loss of life deep within them. They aren't ever really certain that their personal bullet snuffed out the life of another human being, that a child might starve because a father is dead, or that child will grow up to hate because his father was killed, or that part of your own soul gets eaten away each time you do violence, "in the name of God."
Abortion is personal. A man suffers almost nothing for his few moments of pleasure but a woman must live with the results of his desire...and hers. I've yet to meet a woman who had an abortion who does not experience the pain of that choice every single day. It's personal. Not good enough to have a child. Not worth my time. The father won't help. My parents will kill me.
Too many times, I have heard from a woman my age whose mother told her to kill her own child, her granddaughter. I don't want to deal with it, you don't want to deal with it...so just flush the problem down the toilet and forget about it.
It just doesn't happen that way.
You can go to confession about it. That is, if you can swallow enough pride to admit you killed a life. You know it is your heart, but owning it is another thing entirely. Owning it enough to deal with it...ah, well, that takes grace.
But the confession, if you are a person that believes in confession, is only the first step. It is really hard. But the next step is harder. (I may have written about this before)
You have to forgive yourself. The canned answer to that problem is "If God has forgiven you, then do you think you are better than God?" Sometimes that will shame a person into forgiving herself, but generally that is only a bandaid on the wound.
You have to forgive yourself. Oh my, how hard that is to do!
We look out into the abyss and see the gates of heaven in the distance and there is no trail, no worn path, no light...but there is paradise, out there...and to get there you have to take a step into great darkness, thinking you are going alone and that death is immanent(?). "For it is in dying that we enter into eternal life."
Forgive yourself. I suppose I write about it because I have had such a hard time forgiving myself for so many sins, little ones and big ones. That grace thing is so hard to accept. It means I was/am not in control and I need help. Damn...what a place to be in!
In the midst of trouble, we rely on our own strength until we can no longer rely on our own strength. And then we either surrender to the dark forces that torment us or we give it over to God. Hell of a place to be.
So the abortion thing. I had to make that choice one and I chose life. I was lucky. I easily could have chosen something else. I wonder sometimes, if I had known I was adopted at that point in my life, if it would have been easy to kill Beth. (And yes, I'm calling her Beth on purpose...she was not just a mass of cells coming together) Who knows? What I am certain of is that I will never have the right to judge another woman for her choice. What I can do, it walk with her to the path that leads to healing. That's is, if she chooses me for that job.
I have my own dark places. One big one, one that I did not know was a big one, was "the shooting." In a very dramatic way, my actions caused pain and suffering to someone else. To many 'someone elses.' And I really never got over it until I heard Mary Lou's voice. I did run into another girl from that day, while teaching at CCCC. I saw in her face, as she made the connecting, a kind of recoiling from the memory...and instantly the pain was real again for me as well. How do you forgive yourself for such things?
Let me be clear, some people don't have any issues with guilt. God bless them! But for those that do, I continue to write. Things that have happened over this last week point me to writing about it.
How far is it to heaven? It is both within our next breath and as far away as the next universe. It depends entirely on us. We cannot achieve heaven on our own merit. But our free will allows us to say yes or no to the graces offered to us.
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After the shooting, and the little girl was released from the hospital, my mother handed me a cloth Snoopy overnight bag and told me to take it to her. Eight years old, I walked about six blocks to the apt. complex where she lived, where a lot of families of Viet Nam soldiers lived while their husbands were overseas. I knocked on the door and her mother answered. "May I see ??? (I do not recall her name)" The answer was abrupt, "She sleeping." (or something like that). She took the bag and I walked home, staring down at the aspalt on the street.
I can't undo this one. I must be evil. Being pulled out of Catholic School was proof enough. Not even good enough for Catholic school. And the girls whispered about me. Something wrong with her. Don't ask.
So I decided to be the smartest person on the planet. I was going to replace all those dark thoughts with statistics about astronomy. I had memorized our solar system. I looked up into the stars, thinking "I am going to understand them. I am going to find a place to go where darkness of the soul finds light again." I knew it was up in heaven somewhere.
God took my darkness and made it light. God cleaned my robe for me. God gave me the strength to forgive myself. And then he told me, "Go and do likewise."
More than once in this week, I have companioned saints as they ask those questions no one ever wants to ask.
Be aware and listen. There may be a hand reaching out to you. Take it. It's your gift.
Love,
Cindy
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