Home > Today's Christian
> 2005
> March/April
Loving the Rapist's Child
I thought keeping her would be a painful reminder of my attacker. Then God began to heal.
By Heather Gemmen as told to Susan Parsons
 1 of 3
It had been more than a year since Casey was stillborn, and it seemed Steve and I would never be able to have the third child we wanted so badly. Every passing month brought disappointment.
I sat in the doctor's waiting room, like so many times before. The nurse was used to seeing me there. She knew how hard we had tried since losing Casey. I guess that's why she just couldn't resist giving me a sly grin while practically singing her words, "The doctor will be right with you … and I think you'll like what she has to say."
The poor thing had no idea what I was really going through.
The doctor came in to share my dilemma. I was pregnant all right. And neither of us was smiling. We both knew that I had been raped.
What should have been glorious news instead brought devastation of heart, and memories of a brutal attack by a total stranger. I relived the night it happened.
Steve had gone to church for a late-night meeting. I was so tired. The boys were tucked in, and I had gone to bed before Steve left.
Sometime later, the light came on in our room. "Honey, turn off the light," I muttered in a sleepy grog. The light went out, but there was a sense that he was just standing there in the dark, and that was annoying. I opened my eyes to see the shadowy figure of a man in the doorway. It was not my husband.
I bolted up in bed but was promptly warned not to make a sound. Thinking of my two small sons, I complied. But the next moments were excruciating in every sense. At first I wailed, I begged; I offered to pray for the stranger who controlled my body, my life. But with a knife at my throat and threats aimed at my children, I silently endured a humiliating violation of my person. I was raped within the darkened walls of my own home-in the bed I shared with my husband.
Aloud, I asked God to forgive the man, and for a moment he stopped-I wondered whether he was feeling conviction for his sin and was going to leave me alone, or kill me. He did neither. He resumed his attack.
The trauma of rape is great. The horrifying moment grasped and exposed every hidden thing in my heart and life, from the present personal shame to deep-seated inferiority, and even the growing marital discord between Steve and me. Rape exacerbates these things, and chips away at anything that is out of order or not built on solid ground.
To have my doctor tell me that I had conceived was like hearing a judge sentence me to carry a lifelong reminder of the rape. My trust in God began to tremble.
'What will people say?'
It's easy to chant pro-life songs when you're standing in front of an abortion clinic holding a cardboard sign. But the melody is different when you're on the other side of the poster, faced with the reality that your life is about to change dramatically—forever.
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