Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

Dear Austin Christopher,

Today, you would be a much younger version of me, if I had allowed you to be born. Each day something or someone is born, flowers are born, the morning star is born, but you were not born, through our fault, my most life long grievous fault. Your mother, who today lives in another state, really hesitated. No one tried to dissuade us from that fateful decision.  I have been angry with myself for not saying "no" to the atrocity that we committed. Many times I wish I could go back in time and change so many things. But time machines don’t exist; they aren’t part of the structure of our reality and we must live out the consequences of our decisions. The only way we must travel in time is in our own mind and our own soul. You were just waiting to see the light, my son, and that light was taken from you by the decisions that were made at a time that I was not strong enough to carry out my Catholic beliefs.

I denied you the morning, the afternoon, the night, the dawn, water, heat, cold, books, symphonies, poems, friendship, the bridge in our city, the smell of rain falling on the earth, lullabies, bread and wine. I denied you smiles and tears. I denied you eyes, hands, a heart. I denied you the right to cry out for your mother and father. I denied you the right to be born. The only thing I didn’t deny you, was that which I could not:  The fact that you are in the gentle arms of our Creator. That already and always belonged to you.

If only I had known. If only I had known how much it hurts and how it affected your wonderful mother. If only I had known that it hurts so much, son. I recall the bible passages of the slaughter of the holy innocence by King Herod. I write these words after the distance the decades that have past, but it seems as if my sin had been committed yesterday, even though it has been confessed. Your loss is ever present in my mind. It is a constant and eternal goodbye in my life.  St. Thomas Aquinas said, all of us will be reborn at the age of Christ. Today, somewhere in heaven, you exist at the age of 33. You have a name, a face, and a voice that are unknown to me. Sometimes I wonder who you would have been: a doctor, an engineer, a musician, a mathematician, a philosopher, a professor, a priest, a worker, a carpenter? On the day we meet, my son, after leaving behind the sorrow of this shallow existence, I will hold your hands in mine, and hug you with all that is in my soul. And you already know what my first words will be: Forgive me.

 Son, sometimes I pray that you exist in the next life for the sole purpose of forgiving me. That is one of the ways I am able to get through the remainder of my days and hope that I too will see the face of God as you now do.

Love, your father

Next Entering Canaan Men's Day or Prayer & Healing

Paterson, New Jersey
October 17, 2020
Day of Prayer and Healing for Men
Hosted by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal
For more information or confidential reservations, call Lumina at 877-586-4621