In April 2004, I attended my first Rachel’s Vineyard retreat weekend for post-abortion healing. These are some reflections about the year after my first retreat.
In October 2004, I realized that I am a changed person; I am very different than I was in March before my retreat. I am forgiven and free. How has this happened? What is different in me — how do I know I’ve changed?
A metaphor for the process I’m going through dawned on me one day during my morning prayers. When I arrived at my first RV retreat, I was like a shattered mirror. At 18, I was a whole, beautiful mirror. My glass was totally shattered into millions of pieces when I had the first of my three abortions.
I brought all those broken pieces of glass to my first retreat — the painful shards wounding me spiritually, emotionally and physically. The brokenness had been ripping me apart for 36 years. The very action of going to the retreat finally acknowledged how broken I was.
The retreat process helped me to lay all my brokenness at the feet of Christ. I was able to ask Christ and my children for forgiveness. The mercy and love of Christ helped me to name and claim my wounds. Christ gave me a frame for the broken pieces of glass. At the retreat, I began to put the pieces of my broken mirror back together inside that frame.
The early part of the process was really painful. I had to pull all those broken pieces of glass out of my soul and look at them. This is excruciating work. With Christ’s love all around me, comforting me and guiding me, I was able to do this work.
I returned home from the retreat with my broken glass pieces and the frame of Christ’s love. Since then, I have been laying those broken pieces in their proper place inside the frame. This is slow work. Sometimes I get a piece in the wrong place, and have to work on it some more to find where it belongs. Christ’s forgiveness and mercy hold all those pieces in place. And the rewards for the work are splendid. Each piece that is put into it’s right place looks beautiful and makes the rest of the growing mirror that much closer to whole again.
My work on my remaining brokenness has been twofold. At my retreat, I promised my children that I would make something good come out of our pain. One way I have been doing this is by speaking out — through my voice or my pen. Each time I talk or write about my abortions and my healing another piece of my shame and guilt is cleaned off and fitted back into the mirror in the frame.
My second effort is interior work — quiet, prayerful work. This is harder for me; silence is still difficult. I am so used to living with external noise (people, TV, radio, computer) to drown out the internal pain that quiet is hard sometimes. As my wonderful retreat facilitator recently reminded me, “There are many quiet, personal, slow, interior steps which must be made too. These are the deep ones, which knit you together and make you into a garment of warmth and safety for spreading God's love and forgiveness onto others.” So, in this past year I’ve made a concerted effort to do some hibernating and do some inside work. This led me to the decision to attend a second Rachel’s Vineyard retreat in April 2005.
My second retreat helped me to see how much healing I have done. It also helped me to address some lingering difficulties. Some broken shards of glass still needed pulling out of my wounded soul. Again it was a painful process, but well worth it. God guided me through some more healing, so my mirror is more beautiful than ever.
God has been gracious enough to give me some objective glimpses of the woman I am today. I am forgiven and free. I am free of the shame, the guilt, the self-torture, the self-loathing that I carried for so long. I am free from many of my old behaviors and reactions. I am not taking things as personally or critically. I do not worry nearly as much about my living son. I am free to love more openly than I have been able to in many years. I am free to listen, to learn and to speak my truth. I am free from the chains of my abortions.
This journey is an incredible blessing. I don’t think my mirror will ever be perfectly whole again. My abortions did change me forever. But even with a crack or two or a few missing pieces, I am more beautiful today than I’ve ever been. Thank you Jesus! And thank you Holy Spirit for guiding my pen once more.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Susan Swander owns an insurance agency on the Central Oregon Coast. She belongs to Sacred Heart parish in Newport, Oregon.
