Choosing Life

The past few weeks have been a bit hectic with balancing work and two weeks of training to extend my capacities in my volunteer work at the pregnancy center. I started volunteering there almost a year ago as a receptionist. It is only 4 hours a week and since I am a nurse the office staff was thrilled that when I was there I could do the urine pregnancy tests (non-medical people hate any kind of bodily fluid). In the fall the new nurse manager asked me if I would be interested in being trained to do limited OB ultrasound. I said of course!!! How exciting to be able to show these young women in crisis their baby's beating heart.

The training was 2 parts. The first part I did in December in Virginia Beach at a 2 day conference where we learned about the legal side of the ministry and what laws are in place to protect us and that we operate under for limited OB ultrasound. The second part was 6 days over a 2 week period where I actually practiced scanning on 'models' (pregnant women who volunteer to come in and be scanned so we could learn how to do it). In those 6 days I did over 60 ultrasounds of various gestational ages as well as 1 set of triplets and 2 sets of twins :-)

I am still overwhelmed at the gravity of what is at stake when clients come into the center. I have always been pro-life but after learning what is taking place in abortion clinics and the lack of ethics and even the lack of getting basic informed consent my heart is just broken. So part of why I am volunteering is so that our clients who are in crisis and are considering abortion can have all the facts about their pregnancy including seeing their baby and its heart beating. I knew the anatomical facts of development but to see a baby at 5 weeks gestation that is only 1/3 of a centimeter in size with a beating heart is absolutely AMAZING!! It is not a 'mistake' as some people like to call it, but rather it is a miracle and a life created by God. And I pray that I will be open to wherever God is leading me in this and that He will use me to bring glory to His name!!

Psalm 139:13-16
13For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.15 My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.16Your eyes saw my unformed substance;in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.