I haven’t blogged much lately. My mat leave ended in March, I started a new job as Executive Director of Canadian Physicians for Life on March 30th, and I’ve been trying to get used to my new life circumstances. I’m working from home, which permits me to be around my son all day long. I feel pretty lucky. These are pretty much my ideal circumstances.

But my PWPL blogging has been light. I hope to remedy that in coming weeks. I’m just struggling to find a new rhythm.

I attended the Christian Medical and Dental Society conference this weekend in Calgary. It was an amazing conference attended by passionate, pro-life physicians. I heard all kinds of inspiring stories. A couple shared how they have been serving in the pro-life movement together for 50 years. One physician shared how she had been attacked for her beliefs. Another shared how he served his patients to the best of his abilities while abiding by his conscience.

I respect these physicians more than they’ll likely ever know. I can’t imagine how tough the schooling and residencies must have been. (In fact, I spent a lot of time asking them how they did it. With my health limitations, I would have never survived either.) Being a physician is a hard calling, I imagine, but it’s a beautiful one. And now, with their professional regulatory bodies stripping them of their conscience rights, these doctors face additional challenges. I’ve prayed for pro-life physicians for years, and I’ll continue to do so.

I had a moment to share my heart with them during the conference, but it wasn’t quite enough to express my deep gratitude. I wanted to tell them that their courage and commitment to the sanctity and beauty of life – of all lives – emboldens myself and others to commit ourselves further to this fight to protect life.

In September, Ann Voskamp wrote the following words, which I’ve copied into my prayer journal. I’d love to share these words with Canada’s pro-life physicians:

You can hear it about this time of September, breathing warm courage into our exhausted places: “Just Call to Me. I guarantee I will answer you. I will make you strong & brave.” (Ps.138:3)

Be Brave. Hold out your Light to hold back the flood of dark. 

Be Brave. Your bravery wins a thousand battles you can’t see because your bravery strengthens a thousand others to win their battles too. 

Be Brave. And do not pray for the hard thing to go away. But pray for a bravery to come that’s bigger than the hard thing.

Be Brave. There are angels closer than you know. 

Thank you, pro-life physicians, for abiding by the Hippocratic Oath, for respecting life and being willing to fight in order to protect it. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for being brave.

photo credit: August Moon via photopin (license)

I love this and this.

The editors at Faith Today, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s magazine, interviewed a number of pro-life students and staffers in their most recent issue. It’s a quick but encouraging read. A few samples:

“I stay involved in the pro-life movement because abortion is a human rights violation that takes the lives of so many children. It has no parallel in history. We know this. With that knowledge comes responsibility. ” Alex vande Bruinhorst, Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, Calgary

“The thing I would like Canadians to know about abortion is that abortion is legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy, which puts us in the same category as North Korea and China. I’d like to ask each Canadian a simple question: Do you believe in human rights? Because if the answer is yes, then shouldn’t human rights begin where the human being begins?”  Jonathon Van Maren, Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform

I love the honesty of this statement:

“I stay involved in the pro-life movement in Canada because the pay is below average, levels of stress is high, I work days, evenings, weekends, and I haven’t had a real vacation in 3 years. I question my involvement in the movement every day and after almost 4 years of working for Campaign Life Coalition, I still don’t know why I keep coming back, but I do.” Matthew Wojciechowski, Campaign Life Coalition Communication Director, Toronto

Thank you student and staff advocates for all you do and all your sacrifices.

What does love look like?

Australian student Tommy Connolly, 23, worked extra shifts in order to adopt his 17 year old homeless cousin. She was pregnant, and he wanted to help her and her child have a better life.

Tommy Connolly, an aspiring athlete at the University of the Sunshine Coast, said he hadn’t seen his 17-year-old cousin for more than a decade when he moved to resume his studies and decided to get in touch.

He found out that his cousin had been sleeping rough on the Gold Coast, was 32 weeks pregnant, had no shoes or phone and was almost illiterate.

With the baby’s father in jail and her parents not on the scene, Mr Connolly said he took his cousin in “to make sure she’d keep the baby, stay off the streets and have a better life”. […]

Mr Connolly admitted he had taken on “the father role as you’d imagine,” but added: “[My cousin] does 90 per cent of the work – and if it’s one or two years of my life I have to put on hold to make sure two lives are going to be saved it’s nothing at all.”

Was it a sacrifice? Yes. Will his immediate life be harder and more challenging? Yes. In fifty years, is he likely to look back on this period of his life and regret giving of himself to help a girl and her baby make it in this hard world? I doubt it.

Love and support for women facing unexpected pregnancies can take all kinds of forms. Connolly proved that self-sacrifice and love, even from someone without extraordinary means, can and will change lives. It might even save them.