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There was an important distinction between me and the Bible college coed who had an abortion. When I discovered I was pregnant, I knew that, in spite their devastation at my betrayal, my parents loved me more than they cared what the neighbors thought. She didn't know any such thing; her Christian parents had scorned girls like me.

So if there was any hint of courage in my decision to abandon myself to motherhood prematurely, it was this: the exchange of the therapeutic shadow of a faith for an orthodox one. Or, as Puritan writer William Gurnall says in The Christian in Complete Armour, "God can, in fact, use his saints' failures to strengthen their faith, which, like a tree, stands stronger for the shaking… And here is all the devil gets: Instead of destroying the saint's faith, he is the means of refining it, thereby making it stronger and more precious."

How the next generation needs us to snatch back the victory from the enemy with faith that first rises valiantly from the failures of our own and then speaks with a sturdy voice. The narrative we transfer has to include our own repentance and it has to be more penetrating than the one I heard.

Twenty years of crafting a new narrative for my children came to a close on the lawn of a college much like the one where the sensate tale failed me. So hugging my son one last time before flying back to the palm trees, I left him with an exhortation: "Don't defraud anyone sexually, for God is the defender of all such."

Wryly he answered, "Can't a girl defraud me?"

"Yes," I conceded with a sigh, resisting the temptation to add, "But remember your mother, remember the pain she caused you, and let the wind take the sand far from you."

Christine A. Scheller is an editor with Calvary Chapel Publishing in Santa Ana, California.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

More on abortion issues includes:

Complicit Guilt, Explicit Healing | Men involved in abortion are starting to find help. (Oct. 27,2003)

Will the Partial-birth Abortion Ban Save Lives? | Most prolife groups say the ban in itself is not what is important. (Oct. 23,2003)

Prolife Groups Ready to Defend Partial-Birth Abortion Ban | Court challenge to new law expected. (July 14, 2003)

The Pastor Without a Paycheck | Randy Alcorn learned to live what he had preached while fleeing the wrath of abortionists and the judgment of the courts. (April 22, 2003)

Prolife Advocates Herald Partial-Birth Abortion Ban | President Bush promises to sign May 13 Senate bill. (April 23,2003)

Prolife Groups Respond to Conviction of Antiabortion Extremist | James Kopp faces 15 years to life for crime. (April 22, 2003)

Saved by Sonogram | Ultrasounds help crisis pregnancy centers reduce abortion. (Feb. 24, 2003)

The Abortion Wars | What most Christians don't know about the history of prolife struggles. (Jan. 22, 2003)

Saving Black Babies | Abortion has cost 13 million African American lives. (Jan. 10, 2003)

More by Christine A. Scheller:

The Little School in the Living Room Grows Up | A homeschooling mom visits one of the largest conventions in the country and notes how this form of alternative education has changed—to the chagrin of traditionalists. (Sept. 06, 2002)

No Dissing This Learning | Homeschools do as well, if not better, than their classroom counterparts (Sept. 06, 2002)

Missing the Rupture | How two groups address the real issues behind church splits. (May 09, 2003)

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February 2004, Vol. 48, No. 2