Some years ago I wrote a pamphlet titled, “Connecting the Dots.” One of the biggest obstacles in healing from abortion are the blocks it places in our lives for living today. People, places, and things that trigger our abortion experience make us react to present situations in exaggerated ways, because they reflect in some way the trauma of our abortion.
An example of this for me I always use is a mayo jar. Having had a saline abortion at the end of four months of pregnancy, I saw my dead son being placed in what looked like a huge mayonnaise jar. To this day, seeing those jars is a subconscious reminder of my abortion. The difference now however, is that I recognize that, and can quickly put myself in the present and not react to the past.
These connectors can manifest themselves in many different ways, whether it is an object like the mayo jar, a place, perhaps a restaurant where you went to eat following the procedure, or a person, what they looked like, smelled like, what they were wearing. In addition, it can be an emotional situation in life that triggers your defenses. Every fight becomes the ending of a relationship or abandonment, every loss the horror of losing your child. The list can go on and on.
In healing from abortion it is crucial to be able to identify those things that are connectors for you, so that you may then react to the present in relation to the present, not the past. This can be challenging, especially if you are not aware at first that it is a connector going off. In that regard it is important, when you are feeling overly emotional, to step back and take a look at what it is that is actually happening. Is it a normal healthy response to your present situation, or are you ending a relationship because there are dirty dishes in the sink and you had an argument with your spouse?
Many of us have spent years beating ourselves up because of abortion. One of the other ways this can manifest itself is for us to always think we are in the wrong. It must be us! We feel we are always the problem because we do not trust our own decision making process anymore. In healing and recognizing our own connectors, we are able to look objectively at what the current circumstance is, and take responsibility for our part, but also come to an understanding that other people are human too and make mistakes. It is not always us.
I believe our connectors will always be with us in this life. They are a wound of the abortion experience, but their power over us can diminish and even disappear as we grow closer to Christ and healing. Sure, Satan will try his hardest using his tools of deceit, to get us to listen to those voices and give up the quest for healing. He will tempt us to lose trust in God who he will tell us is not really there, or does not forgive us, in an attempt to get us to despair. He will try to crush our best laid plans, destroy relationships, and feed on our weaknesses. But the truth is, if we hold fast to the promises of Christ and seek true selfless support from those who can help us work through our connectors, we may stumble in our human weakness, but we will not stray from the path of healing because those who have traveled it before us will shield us from the detours Satan places in our path, and God Himself will lead us on the road to healing.
