When we married, we talked of how we would read books with …

A childless couple in our ward fostered two beautiful children. They were to be adopted. My wife & I took care of them in the nursery. The children called these people mommy and daddy. And then, one day, they were gone. Taken back. I will never forget the wife crying as she spoke

It was almost worse than a death. This couple sold their home shortly afterward and moved far, far away. Left everything behind. There was no coming back from that

I think of my wife picking up that beautiful edition of Heidi, clutching it to her chest in the book store. "It's so beautiful I think I'm gonna cry," she said. It's the same volume sitting on the shelf now, covered in dust

I read these tired, wretched little comments and cynical "gotchas" flung at these, my fellow believers & sufferers in Christ, with a detached heartache that I can only consider sacred. We have descended the abyss of sorrow--what have you to offer? A lame joke about Jordan Peele?

"You don't get to have your own child--as we dismember our unborn, your lot will be to house and feed the children of drug addicts until some gov't employee deems their parents have jumped enough hoops to get them back. And you will weep with joy at this privilege."

And even that's not enough. Many like us are happy to open their homes, even for a year or a few months, to these children. But then it becomes "There are so many more, there are hundreds of thousands of them. Why aren't you making enchiladas for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM?!"

It's just a nihilism, like every argument they make. The force of those awkward couples holding up paper signs over their broken hearts--they are too powerful. How can one argue abortion against such power? Instead they go to "nothing you do in life matters, all is meaningless"

I rejoice at the story of Elizabeth, whose unborn child leaped in her womb as she approached Mary.

"I know in whom I have trusted. My God hath been my support; he hath led me through afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep"

"O all ye that are spared a life of heartache--the dog moms, the coomers, the tattooed, the deranged--will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?"

It's never too late

When we married, we talked of how we would read books with our future children. We were so poor--we started with nothing. But every month we'd go to the book store and purchase a beautiful children's book. We made a whole shelf of them.

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