I got to know Marsha (not her real name) when she came to our Bible study with her parents.  Just 22 years old, she had two children and had been divorced twice.  During her second pregnancy, she found a relationship with Christ.  When I met her she was in that new Christian euphoria where it seems that life will be rosy from now on.

Just a few months later, her mother called me in tears.  Marsha was pregnant again and could not face being the single mother of three children.  She’d decided to get an abortion.  Her mother pleaded with me to talk to her.

My heart sank.  Nothing sounded harder than getting involved.  But I met with her and talked about God being the creator of life and that he never makes mistakes.  Marsha only wanted to know one thing.  Did God forgive her and could she ever return to him again?  She felt that since she’d blown it so completely after coming to Christ, that he could never want her again, so she might as well keep on sinning.  I assured her that Jesus waited for her with open arms to come back to him.

I met with Marsha weekly throughout her pregnancy – even during the last few weeks when she was hospitalized in order to keep the baby.  She had become a fighter for this child’s life that she had wanted to destroy a few months earlier.

The world would consider Marsha a failure at her young age, but I think of her with delight.