The story of Rain Dance

What is an infertile woman supposed to do with a woman who has chosen abortion more than once?

Write a novel?

You’ve got to be kidding!

She wanted banana cream pie. She hated bananas. I looked at her and the truth splashed across my mind.

In the car I asked her the normal “first” questions anyone asks a single woman in this position.

How are you feeling?

How far along are you?

What are your plans?

I was anxious to know her response to the third one. She had no plans so I offered to take her to get a free pregnancy test and some counseling. We went the next morning.

She came out of the appointment and sat next to me. A geyser of tears raced down her cheeks.

“They lied,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“They told me it was only tissue.” Silent sobs now shook her body as she opened her hand to show me a tiny plastic image. An imitation fetus. About the size the baby in her womb would be.

“My baby already has a heartbeat. I didn’t know the others did too.”

The others.

I knew in the time it took my heart to beat once more what she meant. I sat in silent shock.

Later she told me how many and I shivered. I wanted to scream at her, “How could you?”

Instead Jesus put different words on my tongue because what came out was, “Are you okay?”

She wasn’t but she had decided to carry the child in her womb to term.

Back home, I took a long walk wondering why I had to live with the truth of what I knew about my friend for the rest of my life. And she wasn’t the only one. They were everywhere in my life; these post-abortive women.

The truth is freeing but it’s never free. I knew I was responsible for what the knowledge I’d been given I just didn’t know what to do with it. Or the emotions slamming around in my gut.

“God – what do you want me to do with this?” I asked the One I trusted most.

A love for this woman and the others I knew who had also chosen to terminate their pregnancies flooded my heart. It was such a big love it took my breath away and I couldn’t take another step. I stood in the middle of a gravel road and clutched my chest. Anyone coming by would think I was having a heart attack and would have called 911.

I was having an invasion of the heart. Love infused every nook and cranny in the mysterious center of my being.

I’m really not quite as spiritual as this sounds. As soon as I caught my breath, I cried out to God, “It doesn’t make sense!”

A single thought eased over my heart and slid into my heart. “It doesn’t have to.”

The voice I heard with my spirit was right. But then, God always is.

In less than a week, Jon and I ended our infertility treatments. We’d gotten no answers and weren’t pregnant. Grieving, we watched our dream die.

As this new found love for post-abortive women grew and flourished in my heart, I was like a new convert. This part of being pro-life felt revolutionary. I told everyone who would listen. Some people found my enthusiasm strange and uncomfortable. Many encouraged me to “go for it” but they intended for me to go it alone.

A few and then a few more confided they believed in what was happening in me … that I was right in believing the next step for the pro-life movement was to openly embrace post-abortive women. These women knew what I was talking about first hand. In control of their reproductive rights, they’d chosen a legal procedure to end their unwanted pregnancies.

All of them agreed on one thing…having the right to abort what is often defined as an unviable fetus doesn’t make it right.

I had no way to tell their stories or to give them a voice. Childless women faced their sorrows alone too. Both topics were too political and intimate – even for the church to deal with beyond the surface.

Being pro-life was fine and even expected by some in the congregations I knew and loved but, the topic rarely got more attention than a mosquito on a summer evening - a good swat now and then and we were done. Anything more than that would mean emotional involvement. Although evangelical in faith and full of emotions by nature, I also wanted to be accepted where I worshipped…not considered weird or heaven –forbid – an activist!

Getting up close and personal would be risky and messy and hard. This was going to mean not just wearing my heart of my sleeve…it was going to mean I had to let it stay out there…in danger of being misunderstood and maybe even condemned.

Keeping abortion to a political debate seemed like the right thing to do…except for the voices.

While cleaning my house one day, an idea for a novel twirled around in my head. I shut off the vacuum cleaner and said, “It’s a great idea God – pick someone else!”

He didn’t.

Characters came to life in my imagination. Day dreams became scenes. I heard voices as two women told me their stories while I begged them to “hush up!” They visited my sleep, my journal, and many of my waking thoughts. I asked God over and over to give them to someone else. I wanted to write kid’s books not novels.

I said no thank you in every way I could think of. I didn’t want to write about my intimate journey into rejection, misunderstanding, shame, and sorrow. No stinking way.

So, I told Him again, in case He missed it the first time so long ago on a small gravel road, “It doesn’t make sense.” And for good measure I added, “It’s illogical.”

Again, He agreed and then reminded me that it didn’t make sense for His Son to come to earth at least 2000 years before my birth to pay for my sins…and as illogical as that might seem…He did.

Out of the death of one dream another was born.

Words started to fill pages. A new found freedom became mine but again, it was costly. I had to put things out there I didn’t want to. My baby dreams had to die again for them to be felt by readers. I had to go there over and over as I edited and redrafted.

Today as I remember I’m amazed. I have readers and that’s always a bit of a trip for a writer. The thing I love most about my readers is the way they love my characters and see the abortion issue differently. It’s no longer a political issue they leave on Washington’s doorstep. It’s personal.

Some who can’t identify with infertility or choosing abortion, feel a heart-level connection with women they at one time didn’t want to know and who were left to carry their pain in silence and secrecy.

I can’t tell you how beautiful it is when a woman comes up to me at a book signing or a women’s meeting and whispers in my ear, “I’m a Stacie,” or “I’m a Jonica.” I get to hold them and love them in person. A few from both sides of the story have said, “You gave my silent shame a voice. I’m free.” Every now and then a Stacie whispers, “I read Rain Dance and now I’m forgiven!”

I’m so glad God picked me.

I love living my illogical life.