To the core I am pro-life because God’s Word is uncompromisingly pro-life. To wrench anything contrary from God’s Word is to commit one of the more violent crimes against Scripture, a crime which bears a very high penalty. And while God’s Word tells us over and over again, in many ways, the truth of the sanctity of human life – He uses both His creation around us, and within us, to confirm such truths. In a very special way the Lord prepared my heart for His truth long before I could understand His teachings through the Word.
Therefore, I was first Pro-Life from my early years, well before understanding much biblical counsel, because of Patricia. Patricia was the youngest of seven siblings. Even before she was born, a part of her family died when two older brothers and sisters died in utero and her mother experienced very difficult miscarriages. These tragedies occurred years before contemporary ministries for such loss and the family never had the full support they needed for such crises. Patricia’s lost siblings were no less part of the family than she was! The pain was, and is, the pain of lost children.
Patricia’s family suffered through even more anguish when her mother later told the doctor that another child, then due to be born, had died a week earlier and had stopped moving. That stillbirth was heart wrenching. Patricia had lost yet another brother who would not even be given a legally recognized birth certificate or even a legal name. And yet once again the family shrank through the loss of a full, real, distinct and loved child! He too was no less a member of her family. The pain was, and is, the pain of a lost child.
With these three deaths, Patricia’ mother and father only had three remaining sons when she was born. As the youngest of these three brothers, I don’t really remember Patricia’s birth because I was only a year old myself. And when she died of SIDS six months later, yet another piece of our family died. The Lord had used her short life to demonstrate to us that she was no less human than any one of us that survived infancy, just as she was no more human than my other brothers and sisters who had died sooner, and that they were no less human than Patricia or us.
We were, and are, a family of two parents and seven children. With appropriate variations, the pain is just as real with the loss of each as we have shrank to no more than two brothers. As the Lord gives and takes away, I dread the days that we may face more losses of our own children and grandchildren, but look forward to that glorious day that I will be reunited with ALL my family, not just those recognized by the United States Supreme Court. Because my God recognizes each one of us just as He tells us in His Word, and in our hearts.
Patricia may have died at only six months of age, but the Lord still used her to teach us, and me in particular, one of life’s most important lessons – that I am pro-life!
KERRY MESSER / MBC Legislative Liaison