The Third Prayer

God our Father, your Son Jesus spoke to us a message of peace and taught us to live as brothers and sister.

His message took form in the vision of our Founding Fathers, as they fashioned a nation where all people might live as one.

This message lives on in our midst as a task for us today and a promise for tomorrow.

We thank you, Father, for your blessings in the past, and for all that, with your help, we must yet achieve.

Bless our nation and bless each of us.  As we celebrate our independence, may we extend its blessings to our youngest brothers and sisters, the children in the womb.

Hasten the day when our nation will be a nation with liberty and justice, not just for some, but for all, through Christ our Lord.

Happy 4th of July to you and your family!

One night in Piedmont, my dad and I stayed up and while I was crocheting he was watching tv.  A commercial came on about neglected animals.  Visuals were shown of beaten, dirty and underfed animals as a voice over said, “some of these animals will never know love.”  My dad commented on how sad the commercial was and yeah, I agreed.  I love animals but the commercial sort of made me angry too.  In my head I thought, ’some babies will never know love.’  And that just made me more sad. 

Why is it that animal right’s groups can have advertisements on tv about animal brutality but a pro-life group has to fight to have an advertisement shown on tv? I still find it absolutely ridiculous that there was such an uproar over that Tebow Superbowl ad.  Which by the way, didn’t even mention abortion.  It was all about life; the complete opposite of death.

Like I said, I love animals, but when have animals become more important than human beings?

Awhile back I was reading a status update on facebook and noticed a comment from an old friend.  Seeing her name made me recall a very vague memory from the past.  I have this memory of riding in her white car while she drove to Six Flags.  She was driving with her shoes off and she mentioned that if she got pulled over by a cop they could write her a ticket because it was illegal to drive without shoes.  Such a random conversation but whenever I think of her I think of that conversation.  I don’t even know if it was a real conversation or a dream.  Mainly because I don’t remember hanging out with this person when we were old enough to drive.  And Six Flags?  Why were we going to Six Flags at that age? 

I have lots of tiny memories like that where it seems so real but I can’t tell if it was real or just a dream.  Which makes me think of another memory that has been haunting me for the last year.  The memory seems so real but I just don’t know if it is.  I have a memory of talking on the phone to a friend and she is telling me that she will be unable to talk the next few days because her friend had an abortion and she needed to be there for her friend.  At the time, abortion meant nothing to me so it was just a random conversation.  Although it was the only conversation I ever had like that.  There are other pieces of the conversation I remember which make it seem more real but I just don’t know.

But now this vague memory haunts me because, so many years later, I know this girl personally.  She is someone whom I respect and have grown to love.  So now I wonder, was this a real conversation or just a dream?

Even though I am pro-life and believe that abortion is wrong, I know people make terrible mistakes.  In our youth and mis-knowledge and even as scared adults thinking we have no where to turn.  We can be pressured into making rash decisions that at the time seem like nothing but later seem like a mountain.

We are after all human and it was the wonderful gift of free will that gave us the freedom to do as we want and sin.  Because of this, I know for a fact, that God forgives.  No matter what you do in your life, He loves you and will accept you; flaws and all.  When we accept our shortcomings and failures, God recognizes it and will forgive. 

Ask and it will be given to you;

seek and you will find;

knock and the door will be opened to you.

-Matthew 7:7

As a side note, for anyone who may be reading this and has gone through an abortion and is still feeling the pain, there is help.  Project Rachel is a program at our church that helps counsel men and women who have gone through with an abortion.  Seek and you shall find.

At the big 20 week ultrasound, the doctor or ultrasound technician will go over every body part of your unborn baby to make sure that everything is on track.  One thing they always check is to see if your baby has a cleft lip or palate.  A cleft lip is treatable through a surgery but for some reason they like to know this before the baby is born.  I really don’t know why but it is something they check. 

Which leads me to this.

A woman in Italy aborted her 22 week old son because she was told at an ultrasound that he had a disability.  His disability? A cleft lip.  But interestingly, he didn’t die during the abortion.  He was left alone, maybe on a hospital shelf, to die.  The next day a priest came to pray for the “dead” baby and found that he was still alive.  The sweet little boy still had his umbilical cord attached and was breathing, 20 hours after the abortion.  The priest called for help and the baby was rushed to a hospital.  The baby died the next day.

One could easily think that this would only happen in another country.  But in fact, it happens here, in the United States.  Sure the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was passed but that doesn’t mean it has stopped.  Do you really think people who abort babies daily would try and help a baby who survived an abortion?  What, and get the publicity?  Doubtful.

As a mother, I am outraged that this goes on, legally.  The gift of freedom in this country has been used and abused.  How far will we let it go?

Because I have absolutely no time to write, but wanted to share something…

I read the below post on the blog, Reflections of a Paralytic (thanks Meredith!)  Check out her website sometime.  She is a beautiful, Catholic woman, who is 100% pro-life.

After reading her post today, I am just disgusted in the world we live in today.  That we have resorted to these measures to protect.  

[DailyMail] Extra small condoms for boys as young as 12 could soon be on our shelves.

The Hotshot condoms are going on sale in Switzerland after research found that not enough 12 to 14-year-old boys were having protected sex.

The condoms are likely to end up on sale in Britain, said their manufacturer Lamprecht AG.

A spokesman said the UK would be ‘top priority’ if the company expanded abroad, considering it had the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.

Nysse Norballe said: ‘At the moment we are only producing the Hotshot in Switzerland.

‘But the UK is certainly a very attractive market since there is a very high rate of underage conception.’

Seriously?  How scary is that?  Just thinking about a 12 year old “needing” condoms freaks me out.  So young to understand the act of making love, so young to understand what can happen if the pure act of making love will make a baby.  So young.  Where are the parents?

Frank thinks that when I read something I instantly jump on it and believe it is true.  Well, that is not true.  When I first read of the disturbing ingredients used to make some of the vaccines I couldn’t accept it.  There was no way that the source was accurate.  So I dug deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and unfortunately, every place I looked pointed in the same direction.  I am so disturbed to know that Mary Rene may have received up to six separate vaccines that included human tissues from an aborted baby.  Yes, from an aborted baby.  I really could not believe that when I first read it because it seemed too far out there.  I mean, really, a vaccine from an aborted baby?  If embryonic stem cell research caused such an uproar then how have vaccines slide under the rug?  I just couldn’t make sense of it.  But it is true.

Along with Stephanie Cave’s book, “What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Vaccinations,” there are many websites that have pointed out this fact.  I even found a list of all the vaccines that did contain the aborted baby online.  That is when I realized Mary Rene could have gotten six of the vaccines.  Ignorance is bliss.

So I dug even deeper to see what my church had to say about this.  I mean, if we are so against abortion and embryonic stem cell research then where do we stand with vaccinations?  The Vatican released a statement in June 2005 addressing this issue in Medicina e Morale by the Center fro Bioethics of Catholic University in Rome, titled: Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared From Cells Derived From Aborted Human Foetuses.  It is an eight page document regarding vaccinations using aborted babies and this is how they summarize it:

• There is a grave responsibility to use alternative vaccines and to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems;
• As regards the vaccines without an alternative, the need to contest so that others may be prepared must be reaffirmed, as should be the lawfulness of using the former in the meantime insomuch as is necessary in order to avoid a serious risk not only for one’s own children but also, and perhaps more specifically, for the health conditions of the population as a whole-especially for pregnant women;
• The lawfulness of the use of these vaccines should not be misinterpreted as a declaration of the lawfulness of their production, marketing and use, but is to be understood as being a passive material cooperation and, in its mildest and remotest sense, also active, morally justified as an extrema ratio due to the necessity to provide for the good of one’s children and of the people who come in contact with the children (pregnant women);
• Such cooperation occurs in a context of moral coercion of the conscience of parents, who are forced to choose to act against their conscience or otherwise, to put the health of their children and of the population as a whole at risk.  This is an unjust alternative choice, which must be eliminated as soon as possible

I did some more research and it turns out that every vaccinations that Mary Rene received with aborted babies had an alternative option but the MMR.  Measles and Mumps separately are available without the aborted babies but Rubella is not.  Since the MMR is only offered as a trio, then we will not be giving this vaccinations to Sweet Pea.  As far as Polio, Chickenpox, and Hep. A are concerned, we will only be giving Sweet Pea these vaccinations if the alternative is available.  We feel that it is our moral duty to do this.

Interestingly, the CDC website does not list aborted baby on their website as an ingredients.  They actually only address a few ingredients and then vaguely mentioned that other combinations of ingredients are used.

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 Besides tissues from an aborted baby, there are more offensive ingredients in vaccinations.  You can go to this website and read the entire list of crazy ingredients or just scan the list below that I took from their website.

Formaldehyde. “Pungent gas: a colorless gas with a distinctive smell. Use: manufacture of resins and fertilizers, preservation of organic specimens.”

Mercury. “Liquid metallic element: a poisonous heavy silver-white metallic element that is liquid at room temperature.”

Antifreeze  “A liquid causing low freezing point: a substance added to a liquid to lower its freezing point.  An antifreeze such as ethylene glycol is added to or substituted for the water in a vehicle’s radiator to stop it from freezing in winter.”

Yuck.  And that’s all I have to say for now until I read the Dr. Sears book.

I got this pamphlet in the mail and would like to share some interesting facts:

Number of Days/Weeks After Conception

18 Days: A baby’s heart begins to beat

43 Days: Brain coordinates movement

8 Weeks: All organs are functioning

9 Weeks: Has permanent, individual fingerprints

10 Weeks: Sense of touch (comfort/pain)

12 Weeks: A baby can smile, suck his/her thumb, and make a fist

So right now, my little Sweet Pea has his/her own unique fingerprints!  WOW!  Already, and only the size of a blueberry.  Right now, my little Sweet Pea, can feel my love and can feel pain. 

If it is legal to abort a baby, and a woman aborts a baby at 10 weeks or later, that little baby can feel it happen.  That little baby can feel the pain that is inflicted on him or her.  The baby can feel.

But that is only believed if you believe it is a baby.  So when do you believe that life begins?

Ignorance is bliss.  I know there are many women who opt for an abortion who don’t have the knowledge that it is a baby, and not “fatty tissue.”  It would be so nice if we could arm every woman with this incredible truth before they make such a life changing decision.

This is Part III in the series on Natural Family Planning.  You can see Part II by clicking here.

The Pill

The wonderful birth control pill.  The pill that was invented to make so many women feel liberated.  So many women have the freedom to do what they want.  The pill to fix physical problems.  The magic pill.  Oh little did we know.

Two weeks ago I mentioned how: Days before ovulation occurs, the woman’s body produces mucus.  The basic purpose of mucus is to line the walls of the uterus so a fertilize egg can attach and grow into a baby!  Isn’t that incredible??? Talk about God designing the woman’s body for the purpose of carrying a child. 

 Regardless of your faith, if you are pro-life and using the pill, you should know how the pill really works.  When we learned NFP years ago, I mentioned  to the nurse how I used to take the pill. (I will focus on my pill use in another week’s post.)  At that point she described to me how it worked.  Basically, the hormones in the pill dries a woman out so she doesn’t produce mucus.  Mucus is needed so an embryo can attach to the uterus wall and grow into a baby.  When there is no mucus, where does the baby go?  You guessed it, see you later, bye-bye.  Basically, when you are on the pill, you can still ovulate and produce an egg.  That egg can still be fertilized by sperm.  That egg and sperm, creating a baby, can still move down your fallopian tubes and descent to your uterus.  Unfortunately that baby has no where to grow so it just dispenses from your body.  So really, the pill allows you to get pregnant.  It just keeps you from staying pregnant.  And in the United States, that is legal.

If you didn’t read that last paragraph, you can just watch this video instead.  It states the fact better than I can ever articulate.  I found this great video on the Natural Family Planning blog.  If you are interested in learning more about NFP from people who are more experienced than I’ll ever be, check out their blog.

There are many women that are told by their physicians that the pill will help fix their female problems.  But really, the pill just acts like a band-aid.  The pill doesn’t fix any female problems at all.  It just stops up your system.  And when you later decide to get off the pill, you still have the problem to fix.  Most times, a combination of diet and exercise can help ease the problem.  Which is so much cheaper, and safer, then the pill.

This amazingly, beautiful, well-crafted pro-life ad will appear on American Idol tonight.

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This past Saturday, Frank, Mary Rene and I went to a little petting zoo with our Parents as Teachers program.  Mary Rene was too young to do most of the activities so we only stayed for about 10 minutes.  But there were baby chicks and our PAT educator was holding one and let Mary Rene pet it.  Mary Rene was very focused as she stared at the chick and started touching it.  Of course you know that babies don’t know how to be gentle and pet yet.  So she grabbed the chick and wouldn’t let go.  I was so scared she was going to kill it.

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Monday I was down in the City of St. Louis applying for a building permit and on the way home I had to drive by Planned Parenthood.  I noticed there was an area fenced off with a sign that said “DO NOT STAND ON GRASS.”  You can tell they just laid fresh grass over the entire front area.  This area happened to be the same place where the 40 Days For Life protesters stood.  So it was a good feeling to know that we not only saved 9 babies in the St. Louis area but we killed their grass along the way.  I went back to the office and was telling my co-worker Tabitha about it.  But she clearly pointed out that it was a shame they care more about their new grass then babies.

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Something I haven’t mentioned on here yet but will eventually is that Frank & I started clipping coupons.  I’ve been saving a lot of money (again I will talk about this in another post.)  But this week has been coupon crazy week at K-Mart.  Coupons under .75 are tripled and anything under $4 is doubled, automatically.  I’ve stocked up on so many items for the house and plan on going for another trip to K-Mart this weekend.  But my favorite deal was on diapers.  I had five coupons for the Little Swimmer diapers so I went and bought five bags.  I ended up getting 60 diapers for $25.  I saved $15!!! What a deal.  The sale ends the 25th so you still have time!

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I finished making my first taggie blanket.  But when I went to sew the final stitch my sewing machine broke.  My mom brought her machine over so I could finish it.  But I didn’t know how to do a reverse stitch on her machine so I had to overlap an edge. 

This one goes to Natalie who I will see tomorrow.  Don’t worry Jenn C & Michelle, I still am making your girls blankets.  But yours are purple which requires purple thread and right now I am in the middle of making a pink dress and a pink shopping cart cover.  Once I am done I will switch the thread and make your blankets.

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I am so very happy that spring has finally sprung.  Amen for nice weather!

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My co-worker Tabitha just bought a house and there was a Mary statue in the front yard.  Her husband is not a Mary fan so he wanted to get rid of it.  So I inherited a new, beautiful Mary statue for my front yard.  Of course I had to put my Marys together for a photo-op.

Our other Mary is in the back yard for now.  If anyone in my area doesn’t have a Mary statue and wants one let me know.

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Last but not least, Mary Rene is going on her first trip to the zoo today!  I can’t wait to see her reaction to all the animals!  She loves dogs and cats so I can’t imagine what she will do when she sees a big giraffe or the penguins.  I’ll post pictures, don’t worry!