God Loves Women Who’ve Had Abortions
Hey everybody.
I was working on cleaning the house today, and I suddenly felt like I should write a post about women and abortion. Well, I’ll follow that lead and see where it takes me. It’s been such a long time since I’ve written a blog post… Hope I can still do a good job for you 
Abortion is a really tricky, watch-your-step kind of topic. Even when you seem to have all your bases covered, someone always seems to come up with a new angle to attack it from. While it can be very hot and emotional, it can also be educational. So, if you wish to discuss some aspect of this post that you find to be lacking, I fully invite you to do so. The more discussion we have, the more we will learn 
I just ask that you try to keep a noncombative, friendly spirit if you decide to do so. If you wish to know more about my views on abortion, you can check out my other post Abortion- Scientifically Speaking
Anyway, onto the main point of my post. I wish to write about God’s love for women who’ve had abortions.
If you’re someone who has had an abortion, I can’t and won’t pretend to personally know what you’re going through- such a claim would be arrogant, foolish, and false. But for the purposes of this post, I will go by what I have heard and seen. Another thing I won’t do is condemn you- I’ve heard what having an abortion can do to you emotionally. The last thing you need in your life right now is someone clapping their hands over their mouths and screaming, “What have you done?!” No guilt trips here.
I want to skip making assumptions about you; I’ve not even met you or learned your name. How could I know what you’re going through? I’ll tell you what I do know: God loves your child, and He also loves you. He loves you more than you could ever imagine. You’re His beautiful and glorious treasure, created in His image- He could never love you more, because He’s offered you His entire heart. He came to Earth for you. He was beaten for you, He died for you. He went to Hell for you. He conquered it for you. He came back for you. He has offered and continues to offer you the chance of eternal life in His love. Whether or not you’ve accepted it, He loves you and will offer it to the very end. Your child is safe in His loving hands. He is the most beautiful being there is and His love for each and every person alive is wonderous and unfathomable. Whatever they’ve done, whatever they’ve yet to do, whatever they think, whatever they think of themselves, whatever others think of them, His love burns bright and eternal for their sakes. To each He offers them the same opportunity- share My love with Me. Live in community with Me. Taste and see that the Lord is good!
I have heard that when a woman has an abortion, she can oftentimes feel absolutely horrible- just devastated at what has been done. Full of remorse, but with no way to take it back. If this is the way you feel, I feel terrible for you. I’ve had little bouts of depression that are bad enough- I can’t imagine having to go through this unspeakable pain. God feels your pain and He weeps with you. His heart breaks for you, and He longs for you to come to Him and embrace Him for comfort. He is the supreme giver of comfort. Scripture says that He is near to the broken hearted. He will hold you and keep you safe should you come and cry on His shoulder. He will never abandon you. He loves you so much.
If you or others are telling yourself that God could never forgive you, this is not true. No sin that has been committed anywhere cannot be forgiven. He will forgive you of everything- if you will only come to Him and love Him with all your heart. He loves you and will never push you away. If you seek Him with all your heart, you will find Him. He will not hide Himself. He’s desperate to save you, you’re His beloved!
If you feel dirty: regardless of what has happened to you or even what you have done, He will wash you white as snow. He is the living water. He will wash you and refresh you and restore you. He never holds back from those who ask for it.
Jesus loves you, and longs to comfort you. He will not push you away. Will you come to Him?
God bless,
~Lily
They Paved Paradise and Put up a Parking Lot
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,
With a pink hotel, a boutique,
And a swinging hot spot.
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum.
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half just to see ‘em.
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Hey, farmer, farmer, put away that D.D.T., now!
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees, please!
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Late last night I heard the screen door slam.
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man.
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
~Big Yellow Taxi, by Joni Mitchell
I find myself identifying heavily with this song as I write this post. As I look out the window of my workplace, I’m watching what is probably a 200-or-so-year-old cottonwood being cut to pieces slowly and removed from the urban landscape. This tree has been here since before the founding of my hometown, and has grown to be a beautiful, enormous size and has offered lovely shade, home for birds, and the gentle melody of rustling leaves to greet me as I come and go. On the hottest of days, we could stay in its shade and not be overheated.
Now, of course, this tree has been found to be ‘inconvenient’ to the big accountant firm next door, and has to be taken down. The accountant firm would like to install some sort of drainage system, and in order to do it on our property like they’d prefer, the tree has to go.
I’m not a hippy or tree-hugger by any means, but this really bites at my nerves. Not simply because they’re taking down our tree that we’ve all loved (though that is certainly a big part of it), but because it stands for something so much bigger, darker, and more loathsome.
What are we willing to sacrifice for our own convenience? How many have lost their physical beauty and health because our lives were just too hectic at the moment to eat anything but fast food, and were too tired at our few free moments to want to do anything but watch tv? How many have lost their spiritual beauty and health because we just wanted to take what cheap, quck fix was in front of us and move on to more ‘important’ matters? (Can I ask: if we are a moment on Earth, and for all of eternity after physical death, which is the more pressing matter?)
Quite often, the thing which appears to be the easiest and most convenient way to go is that which will cost us the most dearly in the long run. Ultimately, ‘convenience’ is a lot more bother and headache than plain, simple responsibility.
What if you took the fifteen minutes spent at McDonalds and instead used it at home to make something delicious, healthy, and better energy giving to take along? There are an abundance of these such recipes, and they often cost less in time and money than waiting in line for your Big Mac. It might seem like more of a bother, but what’s better: fifteen minutes lost making something that will truly nourish and replenish yourself, or taking a day or month or more, or even dying from a heart attack? How much more of a bother is that extra fifteen minutes then?
What if we took that half an hour normally used watching Seinfeld and exchanged it for a walk around the block, or even a jaunt on the treadmill? Even squats? Which lifestyle will have you looking ruefully at your waistline more often? Which lifestyle will have you panting, out of breath, out of shape, and aching from brief activity spurts more often? In the short run, the responsible one. But in the slightly longer one, Seinfeld definitely takes the cake. Which is more fun and convenient? Seinfeld, hands down. But are you willing to trade your body for a half an hour’s cheap laughter?
What if as Christians, instead of watching things that turn God’s glorious gifts into mundane, ridiculous, and even obscene things to be pointed and snickered at, we took them in their Biblical context and treated them with the grace and honor that He originally intended? What if sex was a gift and not a punch-line? What if kindness, gentleness, and humility were lifted up rather than scorned and mocked, in such venues as Jack Nicholson movies? Sexually explicit sitcoms that are off-color but oh-so-hilarious? What if, instead of honoring these things with our patronage, we came closer to Christ through prayer, service, and Bible reading?
Why are we just taking what the world has to offer? The world has a one-track mind for pretty much everything: mockery of God, and silencing of His people. Why are we giving money to those people who do their very best with all their breath to get people to hate or disbelieve in the One who has saved us from eternal separation from Him, the very nature of which is Hell? Why are we sponsoring those who so vehemently hate the One who loves us so much, and the One whom we claim to love with all of our hearts and minds and lives?
For convenience and what we consider satisfaction. It’s inconvenient to find someone who actually shares our beliefs and our love for Christ, and communicates it in their entertainment and charitable practice, because they’re few and far between. And the plastic jewels between the diamonds look flashy enough to give us an excuse not to go looking for the value. Why should we expend our energy looking for what truly matters, when what we think matters is right in front of us?
This was something that the first man to catch gazelles used as a principle for catching one of the few beasts that had eluded human capture for all time through the ages. He laid out sweet feed for the gazelles every night for two weeks. By this time, the gazelles had formed a habit, and would always come. Each night, he would insert a tall post in the ground, gradually building a blockade around the animals. On the last night, the animals went in through the small opening, and he blocked it behind them. In response to the media question of how he knew to do this, he replied, “I treat animals the way I treat people: I give them what they think they want, and in return, they give me their beauty and their freedom.”
Supposedly, humans are smarter than gazelles. But this strategy always seems to work on those with weak wills, and even many that appear to be of stronger wills. Satan offers us what we think we want: convenience. And in return, we give him our freedom and our beauty.
We’re sacrificing the soaring glory of a pure, tropical beach with beautiful palm trees for a mall and a nightclub. We’re sacrificing a tall, wonderful cottonwood for a drainage system. You’re sacrificing your physique and heart for a ‘one time’ salt or sugar fix. You’re sacrificing your health for a half an hour’s laughter which fades minutes later. You’re sacrificing your relationship with the One you claim to love with all your heart for racy entertainment, or even innocent (in themselves) time-fillers. If it’s not worth dying for, don’t make it the highest consumer of your time. You have limited time on this Earth- use it wisely.
You have awesome, amazing potential. No matter what your natural intellect, you have the potential to be brilliant. No matter what your natural fitness level, you have the potential to be fit. No matter what your natural spiritual temperament, you have the potential to be radically in love with Christ, and a strong warrior in his army of prayer and praise.
Don’t take any less than what God Himself will give you; anything else will be flamingly inadequate- literally. If you do, you’ll find that you are trading your tropical paradise for a hot asphalt parking lot, your cottonwood for a drainage pipe, or your savanna for a small enclosure in a New York zoo.
Exchange the five minutes, and save your life.
~Lily
A Funny Thing
This is to be the first of my randomly placed random posts. To those of you who wonder and shake their head at such awesome display of randomness, it’s a MadLibs poem generator I found at www.languageisavirus.com. I don’t expect many comments on this, but personally thinking that this is hilarious, I’ll subject you to two of the poems I recieved, should you allow it ;)
delicious dove’s delicious dove
“I bake my baleen whales and all the Afghanistan shakes purple;
I giggle my yogurts and all is w00t again.
(I throw I bake you up inside my elephant.)
The pyramid go feeding out in quirky and piney,
And smarmy baleen whale shakes in:
“I bake my Afghanistans and all the yogurt shakes purple;
I giggleed that you w00ted me into elephant
And throw me peaceful, bakeed me quite purple.
(I throw I bake you up inside my elephant.)
Brad Pitt shakes from the pyramid, baleen whale’s Afghanistans giggle:
Exit yogurt and Barack Obama Mama’s elephant:
“I bake my Afghanistans and all the yogurt shakes purple;
I w00ted you’d throw the way you said,
But I bake old and I shake your name.
(I throw I bake you up inside my elephant.)
I should have Afghanistand a yogurt instead;
At least when elephant giggles they w00t back again.
“I bake my Afghanistans and all the yogurt shakes purple;
(I throw I bake you up inside my elephant.)
- Lily & Sylvia Plath
spiky popcorn’s spiky popcorn
“I sniffle my popcorns and all the popcorn sniffles popcorn;
I sniffle my popcorns and all is sniffle again.
(I sniffle I sniffle you up inside my popcorn.)
The popcorns go sniffleing out in spiky and spiky,
And spiky popcorn sniffles in:
I sniffle my popcorn and all the popcorn sniffles popcorn.
I sniffleed that you sniffleed me into popcorn
And sniffle me spiky, sniffleed me quite spiky.
(I sniffle I sniffle you up inside my popcorn.)
popcorn sniffles from the popcorn, popcorn’s popcorns sniffle:
sniffle popcorn and popcorn’s popcorn:
I sniffle my popcorn and all the popcorn sniffles popcorn.
I sniffleed you’d sniffle the way you sniffle,
But I sniffle spiky and I sniffle your popcorn.
(I sniffle I sniffle you up inside my popcorn.)
I should have sniffleed a popcorn instead;
At least when popcorn sniffles they sniffle back again.
I sniffle my popcorn and all the popcorn sniffles popcorn.
(I sniffle I sniffle you up inside my popcorn.)
Thank you, and good night 
~Lily
Abortion- Scientifically Speaking
Hello, everyone I will spare you from my personal views on abortion, however, I will speak of it in scientific terms.
Those of you who have taken Biology or Life Science in school might remember a scenario like this during your first week:
Teacher: “Class, how can we tell if something is alive?”
The class goes through some characteristics that they see in everyday life forms, but fails to come up with a comprehensive definition.
Teacher: This is how we can tell.
The teacher begins to write on the board.
The Four Conditions Common to all Life Forms
- All life forms contain DNA.
- All life forms are able to sense and respond to changes in their environment.
- All life forms have a means to extract energy from their environment and process it.
- All life forms have a method of reproduction.
-end scene-
So, if there are four conditions by which we can tell if something is alive, perhaps we can apply this to infants in the womb. If they fail to fulfill any of these conditions, then the pro-choice people are correct. If they fulfill each of these conditions, then the pro-life people are correct. Let’s examine this, and see how babies in the womb score.
- Babies contain human DNA, each half of the set donated by each of the parents, which are human, and so give their child human DNA.
- Babies are able to sense sensations such as pain from very early into gestation, and at all stages are able to sense the presence of food given by their mother. Having sensed this food, their cells take it in and process it.
- Babies have an umbilical chord through which they recieve food, and they are capable of performing the energy-processing function of respiration.
- Babies, at all stages, are capable of cellular reproduction, in both Mitosis and Meiosis. And once their bodies have developed, they posess eggs in the womb, and sperm in the testes, and as a Scottish scientist has found, they are viable to be planted in a barren woman’s womb and are capable of being fertilized.
So, babies do fulfill the qualifications of life at all stages after all. I will leave it here, and let you draw your own conclusions as to how ethical abortion is.
God bless,
~Lily
The Door in the Knoll is Opened
Hello, everyone! I know that people hardly ever read a blog’s first post (as they are generally cheesy introductions and a sort of “what I’ll probably be talking about” index ), but I guess I’ll do it anyway.
Those of you who have read any of Terry Pratchett’s three books of the Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegles should instantly recognize the second word of my name. I am a feegle fanatic… even if I probably would leave their drinkin’ a’ themsel’s So, all Pratchett-loving bigjobs are welcome here!
Though I am a lover of Discworld, I am not in agreement with Mr. Pratchett’s philosophies. Truth is a mathematical reality which is shown to exist second by second (example: 2+2=4 is true consistently). I do not believe in multiple gods, and I disagree with the notion that whatever you think will happen to you in the hereafter will happen. That makes our universe sound like an imaginary place where the whim of the characters is done simply with a turn of the page. Terry Pratchett is a very smart man, but I don’t think that he has gotten this right.
I am a pretty well researched believer in the veracity of the Bible, the deity of Christ, and the single path to Heaven. I am also a pretty well researched disbeliever in evolution. Warning: Though I won’t ever argue, I will debate (with a policy of no sarcasm, generalizing, or insults, and as much fact as possible) until either the issue is resolved, or one of us burns out on the discussion.
I am a conservative Republican based on my party’s current leanings. I can’t see myself becoming a Democrat for a while yet. I believe in the sanctity of marriage, the value of human life at all stages, and the necessity of national defense while minmizing collateral damage. I believe in secure borders, and less ridiculous citizenship processes. I believe that we should cut off all dealings with China, and be dependent on internal businesses for our national economy. I believe in minimal government involvement in our daily lives, and leaving internal aid to be handled by churches and charities.
I believe in recycling, conservation (to a point), and minimizing pollution. However, I do not believe in Global Warming. I do not allign myself with the views of organizations and people such as the Sierra Club, PETA, or Al Gore. My policy is to keep politics and the environment (and most other things) as separate as possible.
I will not be making very many political posts on my blog due to the high amount of friction it tends to cause, and the amount of friction I’ve already handled. I want people to understand what I believe and why I believe it, but after a while, a girl can only take so much of people getting angry because I think a certain way. Abortion is probably the only thing I will speak on that has a political flair.
If you’ve ever been to Fanfiction.net and read stories by Flaming Quill, you are seeing the same author of this blog. Those who know me from Fanfiction will tell you that I am notorious for long stretches in between my updates. I’ll try not to keep you waiting for too long, but I’m going to be extremely busy this summer, so I might not get around as much as I’d like to.
I am a fan of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and similar humor (except the part with Zoot :X I don’t like her) so you may occasionally run into some random humor. Hopefully it will be funny instead of stupid, and those of you who are not fans of such things can just skim a bit. I love the Manah Manah song, and I make up words based on the words: blah, arg, w00t, and oh man! Some of these strange hybrids include: blarg, w00tle, marg, margoh. Maybe I’ll come up with some more. If those freaked you out, be assured: I generally only say them aloud, and not in text. If it’s in text, it’s generally in the context of private messaging with those I feel comfortable.
Well, that’s my statement of beliefs and tendencies for the moment
God Bless,
~Lily
