A number of years ago I remember having a guest lecturer for a Pastoral Counseling class I was taking in Seminary. He wasn’t a particularly dynamic speaker, but what he had to say was riveting nonetheless.
He was talking about some of the couples that he had counseled over the years for problems with their marriages. No names, just the situations. What really caught my attention was the common thread running through the problem. The problems weren’t the same, but the root cause was – at least in most of the cases.
It was abortion!
Not in every case, but in the vast majority. He said abortion was the case in about 8 out of 10 couples he counseled. And he had been counseling couples for over 20 years!
I was shocked. How could abortion be at the root of so many different marital problems.
As I listened to him continue to speak, and in the intervening years since then, I discovered the hidden devastation that abortion can cause. Oh sure, you can say it happened a long time ago and was forgotten. But it wasn’t! And, it wasn’t all the women either. Men were haunted by abortion as well.
Most often, it was an abortion that had occurred before they had become a Christian. So they never really talked about it. Not even to their spouse. Now, many years later the secret was still haunting them and causing issues in their marriage.
That is until they finally got it out and started to talk about it. The guilt and the shame they had carried around for years was more than they could bear. Until they finally realized the forgiveness that Christ could offer to them.
It wasn’t until they recognized that they could be forgiven that their marriage could begin to heal as well.
If you are suffering from having had an abortion, or allowing one to happen, and haven’t told anyone about it, please know that you can be forgiven. God’s unmerited grace is available to anyone who asks for it. But, also tell your spouse about it too.
Find the peace that passes all understanding.
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