Struggling to the Surface

Christian
It’s very hard to revisit these times, very painful.
Not only for the loss and the pain of losing this baby, but also for the pain I had inflicted on Christine. I should have been her protector and I did nothing. I was desensitized completely. Pregnancy was an abstract concept to me; it didn’t seem real! Pregnancy was dissociated from baby.
Now, when I see ultrasounds of babies at every stage of life, pictures, and movies of the baby’s development, I can’t understand how we could have done what we did. It’s beyond imagination, beyond comprehension! A baby in the womb is so real, so alive.

Père J.M. Desbois

Christine
God in his Providence put a very holy priest on my path, Father Jean-Marie Desbois, a friend of my Mom’s family. I cannot remember exactly when, after the abortion, I met with him and confessed, but I think it was pretty soon. I didn’t feel the effect of this Confession right away, and I kept on living in sin. I kept this terrible event locked inside and would push the lid of the box shut each time it would attempt to open.

Only after our wedding in 1977 did the healing really begin. What is this grace we receive on our wedding day? Christ gives us a tremendous gift at that moment: He offers us the capacity to love each other as He loved the Church. He makes us capable of sacrificial, self-giving, selfless love; He offers us Agapè.

July 2nd, 1977

I was broken by my sin, hurting deeply, unable to truly love and give myself. Christian was deeply wounded too. Christ had to heal us first in order to allow us to become able to love fully.

The healing happened in steps--and is still going on!

After the first step of Reconciliation, today I can see the second step in the powerful testimony of a friend.
It was the end of 1981, and we lived in Aix en Provence. My Mom had asked me to pray for my brother’s endangered marriage. We didn’t go to church much, but I had decided to stop at the cathedral on my way back from ballet classes. But then time was short and I was about to change my mind, when I saw one of the ladies in my ballet class enter the cathedral. I thought, ‘if she’s going, I’m going.’ I went in behind her and asked her if it was where she came to mass. She told me she wasn’t Catholic but liked to stop here to pray. She then told me the story of her conversion! I was deeply touched and envious! Her story triggered a strong desire in me: I also wanted to have an encounter with Christ.

Aix en Provence, Cathedral Holy Savior

I made up my mind to go to a prayer group in Marseille. My sister had been praying with them when she lived there. It was a huge decision for me because I had learned to drive in Nebraska, and driving conditions around Marseille were vastly different! I hired a baby sitter for our two daughters, as Christian was on a business trip, and I left. I was scared, but I made it! I wasn’t good at parallel parking and the only parking spots there were parallel. I was about to give up and go home when this huge, American style car left, giving me ample space to practice my parking skills! I had no idea what a charismatic prayer group was. I joined the group and started praying with everybody. At one point, the leader invited those who wanted to kneel in the center to be prayed upon. I hadn’t come all this way for nothing, so I volunteered. I knelt and everyone started praying over me. The leader said this sentence (I thought it came from the Bible): “Come, my child, come and throw yourself into my ocean of love.” To me it was God the Father addressing me! I felt a great peace and a great joy come upon me. I felt I had been forgiven, I felt loved as never before! It was February 2^nd, 1982, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. 

Marseille, Notre Dame de la Garde

The priest who was there also said that many knots were being untied within me and would continue to be untied in the coming months. This is how I started praying again. I started going back to mass every Sunday, and sometimes even during the week, or whenever possible. I started praying the Rosary daily, too, praying for Christian to experience this encounter also. I was back on track, the healing could continue!

Christian

It took much longer for me to return to God and the Church. But when I look back, it seems that I was away from the Church for a very short time; I hope that’s the way the Lord looks at this period too. Still it wasn’t easy for me to see Christine rediscovering this intimacy with the Lord. I felt kind of forgotten, neglected, jealous, maybe? The Lord was taking away the little time I had with my wife. I didn’t like it too much. But deep in my heart I knew!

I knew that that was the life we were called to. Of course, I resisted a bit, to show that I was still in control, and it’s true that I didn’t know what was going to happen, or where we were going but yes, we were called to the Real Life.

Us then, with Mathilde and Jehanne

Hitting Rock-Bottom

By Christine
For 35 years, I was absolutely unable to go back to our beginnings. I just couldn’t! I had blocked all memories because something terrible had happened that I simply didn’t want to remember.
Christian was distressed about this because we just couldn’t talk about the past. Our past.
Yes, there was a very painful event, but not all memories were bad! It took Christ’s grace all these years to heal me, little by little, and for the past 3 years, I have reconnected with our history, with our beginnings, with how we were then, and I have learned to love our story!

The pain is still there, but it’s a healed pain. I can face it, and even embrace it!

Here is what happened.

La Grande Motte

I had just turned 19 in April 1975. In June of that year, I took a job in a restaurant at La Grande Motte, a touristy place on the beach. The restaurant’s name was La Cambuse. I was housed there with another girl, la Grande Motte being too far from Montpellier (about 18 miles).

My period was late. I had seen a doctor the previous month and he had given me the pill to start taking on my next period. But this next period just wasn’t coming! I bought a pregnancy test… And it turned positive!

My first reaction was excitement! I impatiently served dinner at the restaurant and as soon as it was over, despite the late hour, I took my moppet to go back to Montpellier to share my big news with the man I loved (hey we didn’t have cell phones then!) This was extremely imprudent on my part because the road was not the most frequented one, especially at night.

Christian didn’t get as excited as I was. The look on his face wasn’t the happy one I had expected. This is where my memory starts to blur.

He made it clear that he didn’t want this baby. I was devastated. I talked to his brother’s girlfriend, Dominique, who broke the news to me that Christian had had an abortion before. Still, I didn't realize at all Christian's suffering, I was too centered on myself. I talked to more friends, especially a sweet couple who already had a baby. They talked me into keeping the baby and I loved the idea, it was all I wanted. At the same time, I couldn’t picture myself without Christian, announcing the news to my Dad. I was afraid of him, afraid of his reaction. I went to see a doctor who also encouraged me to keep the baby. I wanted it so badly! But I wasn’t brave enough. I wasn’t strong enough. Abortion had just become legal in France on January 17th, 1975 (Loi Veil). 

Simone Veil, responsible for the legalization of abortion in France

Christian and I went together to a Family Planning center where they explained about the abortion. They told us that it was nothing, just some cells as tiny as a pinhead would be removed. We were completely misinformed, misled, and unprepared to face this evil. We believed them.
Then the decision was made and Christian took me to this strange place. I remember there were girls with babies there. A nun received us, yes a nun, but from what I remember she was a Protestant nun. She took our money. It was decided I wouldn’t have any anesthesia. It was more expensive. Then Christian left and I stayed for the night. The abortion would be done the next morning.

I was in a room with several other girls in my “condition.” One of them was having her 4^th abortion! During the night, I remember having a terrible panic attack! It's impossible to describe the feeling of absolute terror that overwhelmed me. I screamed, woke everybody up, the doctor came to calm me. I remember he was communist. He again told me that it was nothing, just a bunch of teeny tiny cells, not a baby. My memory blacks out here again. I know they had to put me to sleep, and then all I remember is waking up sobbing and bawling, a nurse trying to quiet and console me.

Christian came back to pick me up. I don’t remember much, except that he told me we would have other children. I know I tried to forget, to live as if it hadn’t happened.

“There is no question in my mind that we are 'disturbing a life process.' The trauma may sink into the unconscious and never surface in the woman’s lifetime...
But a psychological price is paid. Something happens on the deeper levels of a woman’s consciousness when she destroys a pregnancy.” Dr. Julius Fogel, abortionist

A wall started to build up around my heart, a wall that grew with the years, strangely even more after the birth of our first daughter. This wall kept my pain buried, kept me "safe" from it.  (to be continued)

Behind Every Abortion There is a Dad (Healing in the Sacrament, part 3)

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By Christian

 It’s not rocket science; behind every abortion there is a Dad.
My girlfriend and I had been dating on and off since we were 16. We left for college in two different cities in France. She was in Paris, and I was in Montpellier, about 500 miles south of Paris. I wouldn’t have called it a stable relationship. There was no marriage on the horizon, and we weren’t even really in love.
That summer of 1973 was a very difficult one for me; my Mom had come to Montpellier in February with terminal cancer, and she had passed away on May 17th. My girlfriend had joined me at her funeral in Alsace, my Mom’s birthplace. She had then gone back to Paris for her finals.
After my own finals in June, I went home to Morocco, to be with my Dad. I was 21. 

My family home in Meknès, Morocco

My Dad wasn’t doing too well, and I worked long hours supervising the harvest at an apple farm.
My girlfriend was vacationing in Spain with her family and one day she dropped by for a surprise visit, out of the blue, just for 24 hours.
We went to a nightclub with a group of friends, but we were not “together” at that time. Still, we ended up at my place for the night. She left in the morning, back to Spain and then Paris.

I was still working on the farm when she called from Paris to tell me that she was pregnant. She wouldn’t keep the baby. I suggested, not very strongly it is true, that we could get married, but for her it was out of the question. She needed money to go to England where abortion was legal. We had a few short phone conversations, mainly to talk about money and flights arrangements. We never mentioned the baby. One day she called and simply told me she was leaving for London. Then there was a last phone call, just to say, “It’s done.”
I felt completely numb. I was still grieving my mother’s death, and this only added to it.
College started again. I visited her in Paris in the fall, then again at the beginning of 1974. She told me everything about the abortion in a detached way. She didn’t seem to feel anything about it. Eventually, we got back together, but it didn’t last.
Awhile later, I learned by chance that she had gotten married at the end of the school year.

It was only years later that I realized how terribly it had affected me.
First, a very strong attachment had been created between the two of us through this abortion. We were “parents” and parents don’t have a baby without this strong attachment. It’s incredibly strong because it is nature’s way of keeping parents together; to make them fight together for their child for the rest of their lives. The baby may not have been born, but he was real and had created a psychological attachment between us.
Second, the abortion, on top of the fact that my girlfriend had left me without closure, had killed something inside me. I was lost. It seemed like all feelings had deserted me, as well as any desire for connection. I was avoiding anything that could start a lasting and serious relationship. I wanted the fun, but no strings attached. I was empty.

This was the state of mind I was in when I met Christine.

The sad thing is that this first abortion opened the way to another one.
There is not a day that I don’t think about these babies, not one day!

Christine and I participated in a Rachel’s Vineyard's retreat about ten years ago in Denver. I had to unearth all the pain I had buried deep within me, and all the pain I had inflicted to others. During the retreat I was granted an amazing gift. I had the vision of these two beautiful little guys, all dressed in white, playing peacefully together under a very large cedar, in a vast prairie. We have given them names, Philippe and Emmanuel. Christine has adopted Philippe. It’s a consolation but it doesn’t erase the pain.

http://janetpantryart.blogspot.com/2010/07/busy-busy-andmore-tea-vicar.html