I was a sophomore in high school when I met and fell in love with the cutest, blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy I had ever seen. I knew the second I laid eyes on him that my life would never be the same; and it never was. It was altered in a way that I never could have imagined.

I was raised in a Christian home and knew that it was wrong to be sexually active so young and outside of marriage. I also knew the risks, but I didn't care. I knew that I was going to spend the rest of my life with him; so I gave myself to him.

And then . . . my menstrual cycle was late. It had never been late before and in the back of my mind, I already knew why. I knew I was pregnant. What I didn't know was what to do, or where to go. I couldn't even drive yet. I was pregnant, alone, scared and barely 16.

The weeks following are somewhat of a blur. However, I remember a few things. I remember wanting very much to keep my baby and giving him a name; Ryan.

I also remember my dad saying, "That baby will never live in this house." The tone of his voice and the pain behind his words are forever burned into my mind, And ultimately, that's what happened; my baby never came to live in that house.

Destruction
On July 12, 1975, I had an abortion. Even though the previous weeks passed by in fog, my mind recorded and stored every second, every picture and every noise of that day. And it came to pass, for twenty-seven years those memories tormented me, day after day, month after month, and year after year.

I spent the months following my abortion putting into my mouth anything I could get my hands on. I wanted to die. I wanted to suffer the same sentence I had imposed on my son: death. The pain, the guilt, and the emptiness were more than I could bear.

One night at a friend's house, I was on a rampage of drinking beer and hard alcohol, smoking pot and taking amphetamines, when I wandered off. I woke up the next morning alone in a graveyard, lying in my own vomit. With all the drugs and alcohol I had consumed that night, I should never have opened my eyes again. I know now that it was not my time; God kept me alive because He had other plans for me.

The experience of near death scared me enough that I stopped the drugs and the alcohol, and tried to put all of the memories behind me. However, the emptiness and the ache for my baby wouldn't stop. The guilt, the torment, the pictures, and the noises were all still there. I had no idea how I was going to get through it.

I didn't know then why I couldn't ask for help. I know now it was because I felt like I didn't have the right to mourn the loss of my son. After all, I had killed him. What gave me the right to mourn for him?

Façade
For more than twenty years I tried to live as normal a life as I could and most of the time, I was successful. Or so I thought. By all outward appearances, my life seemed to be perfect. But it was only a veneer that was covering the volcano that was living within me; a volcano that was lying there dormant just waiting to erupt.

I moved away from home and struggled through two failed marriages. For 10 years I was married to an alcoholic who spent most of our married life emotionally beating me up. I guess I stayed for so long because as long as he was beating me up, I didn't have to do it myself. Even though God blessed me with two wonderful children, every Mother's Day and every anniversary of the abortion was a cruel reminder of what I had done. When I looked in the mirror, all I saw was a mother who had killed her baby.

Truth
And then, twenty-seven years after my abortion, God brought me face-to-face with the father of my baby. I had moved back to stay with my parents and learned that he was working on a house two doors away. I always knew in my heart that one day I would see him again. So I took a deep breath and walked over to the house where he was working, and as I said "Hi," he just stood there with his hands frozen on the wall. Then he turned, looked at me, smiled, and placed his hand over his heart.

I know it doesn't always happen this way, but as we talked, he apologized for what he had done; he told me how sorry he was for the way he had treated me. He told me that he had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but running away from our baby and me was the biggest mistake he ever made and the only mistake that he ever regretted.

As I told him, through my tears, about the day of the abortion, he said, "He is in heaven with our Father." I responded to him, "What did you say? Why did you say he?" He said, "Because our baby was a boy." At that point, I absolutely lost my composure. You see, I always knew my baby was a boy. Even though no one ever told me, I just knew. Now, after all those years, here was my baby's father telling me he, too, has always known our baby was a little boy. I told him I had named our baby Ryan.

Mourning
The time had arrived for me to begin a healing process by openly mourning the death of my son, by not hiding it anymore, by not suppressing the pain. When my mother got home, I went upstairs to find her sitting in her library. I sat down in the chair next to her and told her that I needed to talk to her. She looked at me and said, "What's wrong?" and I fell apart. The cries of agony that I had suppressed for twenty-seven years were now exploding from the very depths of my soul.

The pain was so severe, and had been buried for so long, that for hours – literally hours – I had rivers of tears and outward guttural screams resounding from my body. My mother just held me through all of it. She prayed, and she thanked God that I was finally letting it out. She held me as tight as she could and softly said "Let it out baby girl - it's time."

Forgiveness
All those years, when I had been silently praying for God's forgiveness for killing my baby, I didn't realize that it wasn't God's forgiveness that was being withheld. I just couldn't forgive myself. What kind of a mother kills her own baby? What kind of a person takes the life of an innocent child? Who am I to deserve forgiveness for such an act?

I started immersing myself in my Bible and praying every night for God's help in washing away the feelings of unforgiveness towards myself. If I searched deep down, I knew God had forgiven me, but my despair would not go away. I had been asking God for several months, "Why don't I feel anything? Other people tell me they feel the Holy Spirit. Why can't I? I believe Jesus was Your son and that He died on the cross for me, for all of mankind, so why don't I feel anything?"

I was praying and listening to the song, "I Can Only Imagine," and I had reached a point in my life where I was broken, and on my knees I begged God to come into my life; to come into my heart.

It was at that very instant that He had the Holy Spirit consume me with the most incredible sensation of love throughout my entire body. It started at my feet and went all the way to the top of my head. Actually, it felt like it was going out through the top of my head. If I had holes in my body, I felt like beams of light would have been shining through them! And I truly knew with all my heart that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit loved me like no human can love.

Peace
The most incredible part of it all is the peace I had about my son. In a fraction of a second, God took the demons that I had carried for most of my life and washed them away like they never even existed. He gave me a gift of healing. I know now that one day I am going to see my son, because he's in heaven and he is waiting to see his mother. But more importantly, I know that he forgives all of us for what we did to him.

I am sure I will long for him to some degree until my earthly death, but I no longer feel the guilt or the torment that I carried all those years. God has taken that pain from my heart, washed it away forever, and in its place, filled me with the glory of His forgiveness and the wonder of His love for me.