The Laborers are Few

Sorry all; I have been working on a new project. My rear end feels as though it is growing roots into this chair, I've been working so hard, but you would hardly know that. I want to tell you about my vigil at the abortion clinic for 40 Days for Life.

First of all, I am not an activist. I have never been to an abortion clinic for any reason at all. Through this process I discovered I was a little afraid of them, and getting "too deep" into the whole abortion issue. I liken it to Mother Teresa’s admonishments about identifying with the poorest of the poor, living with them, serving them, becoming one of them. I believe I have always had an instinctive repulsion of getting too close to these babies, and the people who kill them. Yet who could be poorer?

It was researching this issue in the Scriptures that provoked my vigil. While writing Valley of Hell, I was amazed at the outright confrontation the Bible makes on this issue, so that I now believe ignoring it is sin. Our society sanitizes it and makes it incredibly easy to do so, but there is no greater evil on earth today. It truly is a holocaust of millions and millions, all while we go about our perfumed, prosperous lives pretending it is not happening. Finding myself pulled into the fray even in this smallest of ways was disconcerting, to say the least, but I chose an hour and prepared to go.

Pouring rain was forecast for the whole day, so I gathered up rain gear, complete with hats and boots, for me and my eleven year old. Having been on several, the preparations had the feeling of a mission trip, the knowledge that anything can happen, good or bad, that God would multiply our small effort and use it somehow in a secret and eternal way, and the anticipation of being utterly cut off from anything comfortable or ordinary.

Although I knew he could go and behave beautifully, I called a babysitter for the three year old because it would be raining. I made and laminated a sign on neon poster board that said “LOVE.” A reader contacted me and made arrangements to go with us, and I was glad to have a man in the group, as it made me feel a bit safer. I knew my husband would be praying for us. I was ready, although intimidated.

The next morning, the babysitter called and begged off with swine flu. I could already see we were in for a challenge from the “principalities and powers in high places,” so I added prayer after prayer to St. Michael and the Blessed Mother for protection and fortitude to those I had been praying all week.

I threw together rain gear, snacks and water for the three year old, we drove to town for Mass, and then to a piano lesson. My heart pounded every time I thought about the clinic as I waited for my son to get out of his lesson; I think I expected spiritual attack and heavy spiritual oppression, and was afraid of that, but now I know the attacks were in the days before. I swung by to pick up my reader and we headed 45 miles into the city in the rain, my trepidation growing every minute.

When we got there,
there was already a woman there, and another followed the four of us up. We were not allowed on the clinic property, so we stood across the street directly in front. There was a pro-life counselor from the rescue center two doors down standing on the street on the closest side. She confronted every patron of the clinic with, “You don’t really want to kill your baby, do you?”

The two biggest surprises were that it was not oppressive at all for me and it flew by. Instead of evil, what I felt was a very deep sadness as I prayed and watched girls go in and out of the clinic. They kept their heads down like convicted criminals as they went in, but the sad thing was how their body language communicated the desire to remain out side the clinic.

While they walked toward the door with their heads down, their bodies seemed reluctant to reach it, as though they were being pulled back by an unseen hand. In the clinic, out to the car, back into the clinic, back out to the car. A mind and heart in complete turmoil. A tiny human being in the balance.

I knelt in the grass holding my sign; I prayed several rosaries. The kids were completely silent. My three year old held the sign and a rosary some, but mostly he just stood beside me. A lady, a mother, got out of her truck and screamed at me to “take that baby indoors and get him out of the rain” as she waited for her daughter to come out. If I cared for my baby I would not let him stand out in the cold and rain, she yelled angrily. I found that critique funny since my 3 year old routinely plays in the rain and mud, but said nothing at all; it was obvious my “speech” roared in the silence, and that the irony was hers to consider.

It got cold simply because it was so wet, but it was over in no time. Between 8 and 10 girls went in the hour we were there, and we live in a southern state in the Bible belt. Later we found out that throughout the 40 Days campaign in our city, one of the clinic nurses talked to the counselors about hating her job and asked for help finding another. She intimated that several of the workers there wanted out too.

There was also a young girl who, after talking with counselors, abandoned her mission to abort her baby and called a friend to pick her up, and several others left after briefly going in. I know just standing outside praying silently convinces people of being watched by God. I tried to imagine what I would feel in their places, and I know being watched by God’s people would scare me to death in a reverent way.

After participating in this vigil I have decided to go for training in the abortion counseling area. I used to do this kind of stuff as an evangelical. We called it “soul-winning” and I was very good at pulling people away from the Catholic Church. I think I will turn those “talents” to helping pull babies back from the brink of death. I am doing the vigil again, at least twice a year. That is my goal. My challenge for you is to do a Google image search of aborted babies.

As we serve God, we can't always see the results of our efforts, especially when it comes to the unborn. It would be impossible to be humble in our perseverance if we could see the fruits of obedience.  Someone said, "You can always count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can never count the number of apples from a seed." What we can count on is that we serve the Lord of the Harvest who said, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few" (Matt. 9:37).