A Heart for Freedom (42 page)

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them
.
19

I am simply amazed to know that God and Jesus love me just the way I am—with my past, present, and future. I am God’s perfect workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works. Despite future challenges, this knowledge has become an anchoring rock in my soul.

At the Journaling station, we were encouraged to write a letter to God. My heart was filled with his love for me and my love for him. I told him I was willing to do whatever he asked me to do—whether that meant telling the story of my abortions or keeping them private. But like Gideon in the Bible, I prayed that God would confirm his will by showing me a sign. Two days later, he did.

36

Overcoming Darkness (Moving into the Light)

On April 25, we received an e-mail on the All Girls Allowed website from a Chinese woman who said she’d had an abortion years ago and now wanted to share some good news. I had a feeling her e-mail had been prompted by God, but I was also afraid her “good news” might be an attack. With fear and trembling, I agreed to speak with her by phone the next day. When she called, she opened her heart and told me her story.

Huang had known of me during the Tiananmen events but was in high school at the time. When she was in her third year of college, she became pregnant. Her boyfriend was a graduate student and told her that keeping the baby might affect her graduation, so she went for an abortion. She and her boyfriend eventually married and came to America, and she became a Jesus-follower. She was ashamed about the abortion, and she didn’t want to tell anyone about it. But it was tormenting her.

Then, two years ago, a friend came to visit. While they were having lunch, the friend shared that she’d had an abortion and felt guilty, but after going to an eight-week Bible study for women suffering over the experience of an abortion, she had been healed by the Lord and now was sharing her story with tears of joy rather than sadness.

Huang said she did not say anything about this at the time, but it began to eat at her. She wanted to call for information about the Bible study, but she was afraid. One day she saw her friend coming out of the library and felt the Lord encouraging her to share the story of her abortion. Her friend was immediately sympathetic and helped Huang secure a spot in the Bible study group.

As she was completing one of the lessons, Huang wept as she felt the full magnitude of her abortion decision, which she had never been willing to face head-on. She said it was as if a tsunami had hit her. But then the Lord began to heal her, just as he restored Saul after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

During one of the Bible study sessions, the women were asked to name their babies and offer them to God as a means of letting go. When Huang did this, she felt tremendous peace.

Without revealing the struggle I was experiencing, I told her I knew exactly what she was going through and I would explain why the next time we spoke. She pressed on, saying she felt the Holy Spirit was telling her to tell me he had a big job for me—and she would be part of it too. Then she began to read to me the words of Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Sovereign L
ORD
is on me,

because the L
ORD
has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the L
ORD
’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

a planting of the L
ORD

for the display of his splendor.

I was deeply moved, and I told her these were the very same verses I had used when offering the closing prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2011. I’ve learned that those kinds of “coincidences” mean that God is speaking to me about something.

That evening Bob went to bed early after we had stayed up late for several nights working through these issues together. But I could not fall asleep. Finally I called Huang again. I wanted to know the connection between the abortion stories she had told me and the preaching of good news in Isaiah 61.

Huang told me she had learned in the eight-week Bible study that one of the key steps to freedom is for women to share their stories publicly. Because God and Jesus are light, if we bring our hidden shame and pain into the light, we can be set free from the power of darkness. Once the truth is out in the open, the devil no longer has a foothold in our lives. But if we continue to conceal our secrets, we will still be held captive to the past. Jesus wants us to receive and enjoy total freedom.

That was a big challenge for me. The thought of disclosing such personal details made me feel exposed and weak. It made me feel I would be judged and condemned again—as I’d been judged by the saleswoman in 1987—by people who don’t even know me and by others who already oppose me because of their perception of my role at Tiananmen Square. Now I risked being misunderstood by both the pro-life and pro-choice sides. I was afraid something I said would trigger an unexpected explosion and condemnation.

Huang did not know what was going through my mind. She was overjoyed to realize that God had begun to prepare her two years ago for this moment when she would share her journey with me. Two years earlier, I wasn’t even a Jesus-follower yet. I felt nervous.
God, why would you call me, a brand-new believer in Jesus, to do this? It took Sister Huang fourteen years to get to the point where she is able to talk about her experience in public. I haven’t even had eight weeks to complete the Bible study!

* * *

The next evening, in our small group, I felt God was speaking to me through Philippians 2:5-8: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”

Because of past wounds, I am especially vulnerable to attacks on my reputation—the insults, the judgments behind my back, the silent avoidance. Then I knew God was calling me to humble myself, like Jesus did, to show my brokenness to the world so that he could bring healing to many, even as he brings healing to me.

That evening, as I kept reading Scripture, I felt God speaking to me on every page, encouraging me to press on. He strengthened my conviction that by moving ahead and sharing my stories I would bring good news to the captives—to every woman still suffering in silence, like I had for so long.

On Thursday, I worked up the courage to share my story with my team at All Girls Allowed. Their reactions were amazing. Brian, a recently married Chinese Canadian, told me about his own struggles with sin and how he came to understand the joy of forgiveness and restoration. Though he grew up with a lack of intimacy in his family, he is now experiencing the joy of being loved by his wife, and they look forward to seeing each other every night after work. He said we need to continue to search Isaiah 61 for an understanding of what it means to set the captives free, because he struggled with how to uphold the value of life without further singling out the marginalized: women, minorities, and the poor.

A beautiful young professional woman on my staff was brought to tears by my story. She said her mother had had an abortion and was afraid to tell her husband and children for twenty-six years. When she finally shared with her small group, she felt she was judged by the other women. Now she’s so hurt that she’s afraid to talk about it anymore. When I said, “The message we need to communicate is not, ‘Come to God and he will forgive you,’ but, ‘Come to God and he will love you, heal you, and free you,’” my staff member’s face brightened up. I could see that she already can’t wait to bring this book to share with her mom.

After the young woman left the room, I saw tears in the eyes of another woman on my staff. She said her family members were all die-hard Christians and pro-life, and she regretted that one of her sisters has a T-shirt that says, “Abortion is like guns killing babies.” I’m glad that God wants to bring truth to the righteous people as well, just so long as they don’t try to be God—convicting and condemning others and hoping that will stop the killing. My experience is that God has been most gentle. He teaches us in the most powerful way that a fetus is already a baby, and he turns hearts, but he does not hammer people. We can have the strength of our convictions without condemning those who have had abortions. Our role is to set the captives free, not further enslave them.

* * *

While I was testing the waters by sharing my story with trusted friends, Bob was on his own search for peace about sharing this information. I knew that in the back of his mind a single question continued to burn:
How could you let it happen so many times?

On the evening of April 28, I found him in the library at home, researching abortion in China going back to the 1970s.

“Listen to some of these facts,” he said. “More than two hundred million abortions were conducted in China in the 1970s and 1980s, ranging up to fourteen million a year. According to one study, more than 52 percent of women in China, ages twenty to thirty-five, had two or more abortions. Only 14 percent had not had an abortion. A study by Beijing Medical University in 1988 found that the abortion rate in urban areas was 101 abortions per 100 live births. That’s more abortions than births! Another report says that multiple abortions are on the rise again in China as young people choose abortions that are quick, easy, and painless as a means of birth control. China is a culture of abortion, and people even to this day think nothing of it. I’m amazed to find such jarring statistics so readily available from a simple Google search.
20
It’s a very well-studied and documented area of sociology.”

As I absorbed these statistics, Bob added, “So you were in the majority.”

Bob seemed at ease with this information, but something was still wrong. Though he understood that the situation in China is unlike America, he was troubled and distant—which made me sad. I’d been told that following Jesus means you move forward with Jesus even if your family doesn’t agree with you, but Bob is also the head of our household, and I did not feel right about disclosing the stories of my abortions without his agreement. I felt it made sense to him intellectually, but in his spirit he was still unsettled.

As the weekend approached, I was worn out, and my heart was aching—this time not for my past but for the tension that had developed between Bob and me. As he flew to New York to attend a retreat hosted by Dr. Tim Keller’s City to City ministry, I prayed, “God, help me. If you’ve called me to share this message of hope for women who have had abortions, you also have to bring unity within my family.”

By Monday evening, after struggling to finish the latest round of revisions for the book and send them to my editor, I was physically done. I felt I was coming down with the flu, accompanied by a nasty cough. The thought of flying out on Thursday for a college commencement speech only made me feel worse. By Tuesday I was down for the count, drinking flu remedies and feeling awful. There wasn’t a muscle in my body that didn’t ache. Whatever burning in hell would be like, it might not be too far from how I was feeling.

On Wednesday morning when I forced myself to get up and go to work, I had no idea what the day would bring. When I checked my e-mail, I found a message from Bob, sent the previous day at the lowest point of my illness. He made reference to a significant breakthrough he’d had at the retreat. I couldn’t wait to hear the full story.

* * *

On Sunday, May 1, the last day of the retreat, Bob had accompanied some of the City to City staff to hear Tim Keller preach at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Though sitting in a congregation of thousands, Bob felt as if the sermon—on understanding the meaning of grace—was speaking directly to him.

The key to understanding grace, Dr. Keller said, is recognizing that we were all
dead
in our sins (Ephesians 2:5). If we were merely
sick
in our sins, there would be degrees of illness and degrees of treatment. But dead is dead. When we’re dead, we don’t need treatment, we need a
resurrection
, and there is nothing we ourselves can do to bring that about. So grace is not only a free gift from God, it is also
indispensable
to our lives. On top of that, even though grace is a free gift to us, it was purchased at the price of Jesus’ life—which makes it
infinitely costly
, as well.