And Then... God Stopped the Rain (Sidewalk Snapshots Vol. 2)

Praying outside of the local Planned Parenthood is always surreal for me (made all the more uncanny by its situation just across street from the YMCA that my family frequents almost daily).

Today was no exception.  It was a cloudy, drizzly morning.  I bundled the kids in their raincoats and warm hats as we headed 'across the street' from the "Y" where we spent our morning, to fulfill our 40 Days for Life vigil commitment.

Even my kids at two and four years old understand what going 'across the street' means.  Well, kind of.  Their strongest impression of sidewalk ministry so far may only be the fishy crackers they gorge themselves on and the sidewalk chalk they play with while I pray.  My daughter has recently shown signs of growing in her cognition of what's actually happening.  She understands that mommy prays the rosary and offers people 'information' (a few times, she's been the one to call out, "Want some info-may-shun?").

It was rainy all this morning and the night before.  Still, we managed to get out to the sidewalk and took our 'station.'  I seated the kids on the sidewalk under their little umbrellas and just prayed that no gust of wind came along to blow them away.

And then... God stopped the rain.

People doubt that things like this actually happen.  Why or how could God just randomly stop the rain for the hour that a mom with her small children stood praying outside an abortion clinic?  Plus, how can we know if it really was God's doing?  Maybe it was just the weather pattern changing at the exact moment we began our vigil?

I don't know.  Maybe it was just the weather.   There have been plenty of times that we've participated in a 40 Days for Life Vigil during a downpour.  Why didn't God stop the rain then?  Again, I don't have the answers to these questions.

What I do know is that as soon as we were back in our van, the rain began again.  And it has continued intermittently ever since.

In the few moments that the sun has come out today, I couldn't help but wonder, "Who's praying outside the clinic now?"

You never know.  God may just do things such as this, such as stop the rain for his battle wearied follower to show them, or perhaps to show those we pray for during 40 Days For Life, that He is watching and that He is with us after all.

Dear readers, have any of your ever had a similar experience, by any chance?

Chalk Markings (Sidewalk Snapshots Vol 1)

Standing on the sidewalk, in the midst of busy northern San Jose, with the whirr of traffic all around us, my daughter asks me, “Mommy, can you pwease make a hopscotch?”  I have to smile at her request.  Her playful entreaty for me to draw "squawes" stands in such high contrast to the very serious reason we are out on there.   It is not the first time she has made this request.  In fact, as is often the case, our colorful chalk markings from the previous week are still lightly visible on the pavement.

It doesn’t take long to find the pale remnants of last week’s hopscotch. I set my beat up “40 Days for Life” sign down, and grab her nubby chalk. Still clutching my rosary in one hand and reciting fragments of the Hail Mary in between square-art, I realize just how lucky, yes, how blessed I am to be there.

Not too long ago, I was just another heart that hurt every time I drove past the corner lot in the streaming traffic.  Then, I would simply make the sign of the cross as I passed the clinic.  But deep down, I felt a tug in my heart to do more.  Call it a personal invitation from the Holy Spirit, but the feeling stayed and one day, I finally went out and prayed by one of the nation’s many death camps for the unborn.

That tug or “call,” to my own surprise, has only intensified.  And so I consider praying on the sidewalk a blessing, for, because of it, I've grown in compassion for the mothers, fathers, workers and escorts who enter the clinic.  And I'm more courageous, or at least, not as fearful about going out there.  I used to be afraid of giving a visible pro-life witness to the world, but now I am not afraid.  I pray to feel love in my heart for everyone who goes into the clinic, for love conquers fear, and the people who enter the clinic are very, very afraid.  They tell me as much themselves. 

So now I pray year-round at the same site, but having the kids with me has changed things, as evidenced by our chalk markings.

There is also a sad side to all of our chalk play.  You see, the colors on the pavement all end at the cement line demarcating the clinic's line.  One you cross that threshold there are no more rainbows, no more lady bugs, no more flowers, scribbles, shapes or hopscotches.   There is only a dark tarmac driveway, a stranger to lead you to the door, and a world of pain, devoid of all color.

I'm convinced that God uses simple things such as chalk markings to further instruct us on the great disparity between the culture of life and culture of death.  By the same token, the sight of children on the sidewalk, is the most tangible lesson on this.

Which is why I bring them, though we must be an oddity to behold.  Imagine, if you will, a mom, kneeling on the ground, her baby boy staring out from his stroller, and her toddler girl watching every movement of the chalk in her mama's hand.  I draw the first hopscotch square.

            “See sweetie, it’s a square.  Hail Mary, full of grace...”
            “Squawe,” the little girl repeats back to me.

            “…the Lord is with thee.  Yes, four sides, a square.  Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.  Look, now we put a “1” in that square.”

            “Numba 1, mama?” her eyes widen in recognition of the number.

            “ Yes.  Now another two squares and a “2” and “3.” Holy Mary mother of God, pray for us sinners,” I draw a few more squares and number them, “now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”  The hopscotch is completed.  The girl is gleeful.

            I look up at the car windows of the traffic and see a few sets of eyes looking in our direction.  I also see one of the abortion escorts circling again in our direction.  I wish I knew what people think when they see us: a mom, her two small kids, an abortion clinic, a rosary, a stroller, chalk, life and death all at once.

            Some of them let us know what they think especially when it’s not very nice.

            But, armed with our arsenal of snacks, chalk, pamphlets and pro-life paraphernalia, we are undeterred.

            And this is just one snapshot of praying “on the sidewalk” told through the lens of a “sidewalk” mom who is just one of thousands of such mommies and daddies and grandparents out there on the gray concrete, weather beaten trenches of the nation’s grassroots prolife movement.  But there are countless other snapshots that need to be told and shared.  Some contain real tragedy, others real misunderstanding, others: the innocence of a child such as one little girl drawing on the ground in front of The Tower of Mordor known as Planned Parenthood.

How about you?  Do you have any “snapshots” or sights you encounter when you hold vigil at the sidewalk?  Care to share?

Bringing Children "to the Sidewalk"

In hardly any other instance is the contrast between the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death more evident than when families bring their children to pray outside an abortion clinic.

In my family’s case, the difference between the two ‘cultures’ is only intensified by the fact that the area’s largest abortion clinic sits right across the street from our YMCA. It’s hard to describe how surreal the close proximity of two such disparate realities actually is.

On any given day, the YMCA holds camps, swimming lessons, child-care and classes that ring of the uplifting sounds of life. There, children laugh, play and learn. It is a place so full of energy that visiting is like plugging yourself into a health-outlet so that you leave more fully alive than when you came.

But not fifty feet away, quite the opposite is happening. Next door, at America’s number one abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, reign the sounds and sights of tears, brokenness, silence and death. There, many children are being denied the opportunity to ever know life outside the womb while children just across the way are experiencing the goodness it can contain.

And so one morning each week, after crafts and fishy-crackers we all board the Nichols mobile and head across the way ‘for a walk’ (that’s all my little progeny really understand at this point). The beauty is that my kids don’t cease being kids on that sidewalk.

I try to imagine the viewpoint from the staff inside the clinic as they sit ‘protected’ by a bullet proof facade, security cameras and metal detectors while just outside their windows stand those very threatening ‘conservatives’ with their strollers and children who are busy playing Ring around the Rosy, hop scotch, tag, sharing snacks, and waving ecstatically to the police who come circle the block at the clinic’s request.

Little else rivals the very compelling irony of this picture: where the so-called champions of ‘quality of life’ have become the purveyors of death, while the supposed opponents of ‘women’s rights’, who happen to mostly be women, along with their children, are busy doing all the living right outside their doorstep.

I tell you, the ‘different sides of the line’ caricature, perpetuated by the media, of the heroic staff of Planned Parenthood sitting harangued by those bully right wingers falls apart once you are actually there. What you see speaks for itself: outside their clinic, children are living, and inside they are dying.

The parking lot alone presents an eerie portrait. It is full of people (mostly minorities) sitting solitary in their cars presumably just waiting for someone to come out of the clinic. It’s quite the opposite of what happens at a hospital, isn’t it? Family and friends generally remain in the hospital waiting rooms to support you during things like surgeries and child birth. Not so at Planned Parenthood. The “support” is only as close as the distance between the building and the parked car (in many cases it’s just a drop-off and pick-up arrangement). Occasionally someone will get out of their vehicle to come talk with us, but for the most part, they stay put.

But they can still hear the kids. It would be hard not to.

There are strong opinions widely circulated about this but I consider bringing the kids to the sidewalk a good, Christian witness, and that’s why I bring them. The rare individual will still verbally abuse us despite their presence, but, this may be a reaction to how the kids, just by being there, drives home the reality of what happens to unborn children behind the high walls of Planned Parenthood. The juxtaposition of their beautiful innocence against the walls of an organization founded on racism and blood money is one that society needs to see and really spend some time contemplating. It is their presence on the sidewalk which reminds us how we all started, and hopefully, how we can be again.

When the “True Compassion” Bough Breaks, Society’s Confidence Does Fall

NARAL and Planned Parenthood make their daily bread off of society’s fear. They have convinced many that deprivation of abortion services is some sort of attack on women’s health, if not public health in general. What’s more they’re working very hard to persuade us that pro-life groups want to wage a “war on women,” on healthcare, and especially on the poor.

But this so-called "war" is ideology based, not gender based, and it owes its existence to great extent to the fallen limb of faulty evangelization: a doctrine of “false compassion” that sacrificed the truth in the name of political correctness and told America that it’s okay to kill the unborn for the sake of some materialistic notion of the common good. In doing so it ended up eliminating the entire basis for what the common good actually is: it destroyed our sense for the value of every human life as integral and necessary to that society.

By extension, it has severely altered our confidence and assuredness of our own self worth for the negative.

And so, of course people are going to “choose” abortion, “choose” to get rid of “the problem” because their sense of their own humanity has been violated by a cultural ethos which is downright hostile to any mention of the sanctity of human life. Human beings are commodities now, whose worth is assigned, and so it isn’t a far stretch to see how, in the profiteering world of an abortion provider, an aborted person is just another means to a financial ends, much like a living person.

My question for NARAL and PP is this: now that we base worthiness-to-live solely upon the happenstance that we are “valued” or “wanted” or a “choice”, then are we less worthy of life when we make mistakes, when we fail, or when we are betrayed? Do those inevitable life tragedies now make us superfluous commodities that society can discard? There are, after all so many more highly “valuable” and desirable people out there.

Of course not. We are not always going to be productive, or do the right thing, or be regarded highly by our peers, but this should never be equated one’s intrinsic worth.

But for NARAL and Planned Parenthood, it is. And they sell their dehumanizing ideology to a society whose notions of the inherent dignity of the human person have all but been eliminated, both by them and the “false compassion” movement which says “do whatever is culturally acceptable at the moment,” whether it hurts you or the culture you live in.

And yet if you talk to anyone, and I do mean anyone, they will agree that, at least, they consider themselves and their life to be important. Fancy that. People instinctively confident, or at least possessing some sense that their own life has value. A little more of that mixed in with the generosity to allow someone else to feel their own God given self worth one day is just what our culture needs (and, by the way, that's true compassion).