As some of you know, I’ve had my share of health challenges over the last few years. Ann’s blog and her book, One Thousand Gifts, have blessed me as I walk through this period. I love her writing and her heart.
Yesterday she blogged on Gosnell, in a published note to her son. (She did the same when she commented on the Steubenville case, and that post went viral.)
That’s how you and I sort of began.
I had bent over the tiles of the doctor’s office like I might hurl.
Like I might lose everything and the leaves, they’d clung to the rain splattered window.
And it’s not like I saw the doctor spin her chair or saw her lean forward. I just heard the mechanics of her rotation, the spinning of everything.
Just will be forever razed with what she said next, the way she’d said it like you could simply snip off light and not long feel the dark:
“Have you considered an abortion?”
I had just blown out the candles on my 21st birthday cake. Married 90 days. Starting my third week of my third year of university. Terror can make people feel like all they have is terrible choices.
Here me, Son, and remember it every time you hear the word abortion: Abortion isn’t so much about a woman having choice — but a woman feeling like she has no choice.
For one lifelong moment, the atoms of everything split and spun and hung.
Her line that “abortion isn’t so much about a woman having a choice – but a woman feeling like she has no choice” reminded me of this quote:
No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg. – Frederica Mathewes-Green
Isn’t that a vivid quote? When I heard it the first time, I knew it would stick with me.
Ann closes her post with a challenge to our communities and to the pro-life movement. It’s worth a read.
by 
I have a hard time with what I consider to be Voskamp’s syrupy tone–and the music playing from her web site. But the quote is good and obviously her points are good ones. And not every writing style speaks to every person. My favourite writers tend toward the pragmatic, less poetry. Although I have been known to write the odd haiku from time to time. Here’s one now:
Music on web sites
Distracts me from the purpose
Turn that volume down
Moving, I know. Tissues all around.
Note to self: Do not buy Andrea One Thousand Gifts for Christmas.
Please note that this is a shortcoming in the genetic makeup I received: low tolerance for rom-coms, unless they involve Colin Firth, in which case, tolerance increases many times over, low tolerance for exploring feelings, emotions of many kinds and, in some instances, I lack the basics of understanding what make relationships really worthwhile. You should probably try and help me through this, so 1000 gifts could be really great.
Imagine that, 1000 gifts!! So awesome. I prefer to receive them throughout the year, not all at once.
You’re becoming quite high maintenance, Ms. Mrozek.
Comes out at about 2.7 gifts per day, if you are spreading the gifts out over a year. 1.4 gifts if we do it over a two-year period. It’s whatever you prefer, Faye.
(At very least, I find myself funny.)