Because I was 8 weeks (2 months) pregnant when my precious baby passed away, this song reminds me of my child and the suffering my husband and I are now experiencing.  I have always loved this song, but now, it has an entirely new meaning for me.  I dedicate this song to my precious little peanut – though you were only with me for a short time, your memory will live on forever in my heart.  You were loved from the moment we knew you existed; you will forever be a part of our family and we will always love you.

Held by Natalie Grant
(Lyrics in [ ] have been changed)

Two months is too little
[We] let [you] go
[We] had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling
Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We’re asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it’s unfair

This is what it is to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from [our lives]
And [we] survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

This is what it is to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from [our lives]
And [we] survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our Savior

This is what it is to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from [our lives]
And [we] survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held

Thank you to all that offered congratulations on my last post.  Unfortunately we have lost the baby.  When I’m feeling up to it (and can find the time) I will post more details.  If you pray, please keep me and my husband in your prayers.  This is so hard…

Pretty self-explanatory, no? 

I wish you all a very Merry, very belated Christmas and a blessed New Year!  We definitely have LOTS to be thankful for over the past year and LOTS to look forward to in 2009.

Dear Friend,

I’m writing to let you know about a terrible piece of legislation called “The Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA).

FOCA would establish the right to abortion as a fundamental right (like the right to free speech) and wipe away every restriction on abortion nationwide.

It will eradicate state and federal abortion laws that the majority of Americans support and prevent states from enacting similar protective measures in the future.

Please read the expert analysis by Americans United for Life (AUL) and sign the Fight FOCA petition at:
http://www.FightFOCA.com

Thank you!

P.S.  I received the above, word-for-word, in an email from Fight FOCA.  PLEASE sign this petition and pass the above on to your contacts!

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

Americans have made a grave mistake in electing Barack Obama to the presidency. Yet America herself remains great and is not a mistake, which is why so many of her citizens will continue, with even greater energy and determination, to defend her founding principles.

The man elected to the Presidency said during the campaign that he does not know when a human being starts to have human rights. How can one govern from that starting point of ignorance? Governing is about protecting human rights; to do it successfully, you have to know where they come from, and when they begin.

The President-elect has already failed that test miserably.

The American people do not share Barack Obama’s extreme and offensive views on abortion. They never have and they never will. The coming four years will see a widening gap between the people and their President on this fundamental issue. As Americans come to know how extreme his position is, the intensity of the struggle to protect these children will only increase.

The pro-life movement has made significant gains in the courts and in the law in these last eight years. For the next four, the movement will work to prevent the erosion of that progress.

It would be a serious mistake for people to think that this election means the pro-life movement has no political power. All politics is local. Political power is about people. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was once told that given the political realities, civil rights legislation would be impossible to pass. “We’ll just have to see about that,” he replied. And the civil rights movement was born, stirring the hearts of the people to lead the nation to the victory of justice.

So it is with our movement. The vast majority of Americans are pro-life. They will fight abortion on the local level, opening pregnancy centers and closing abortion mills, activating their Churches and educating their children, proclaiming the message in the media and demonstrating in the streets. The pro-life movement is winning this battle in the hearts and minds of the American people, as opinion polls show and as the shrinking number of abortion mills and abortion providers prove.

Political races are always a swinging of the pendulum. As soon as you win, you begin to lose, and as soon as you lose, you begin the ascent again to winning. In the next two election cycles (2010 and 2012) the pro-life movement will make up for political ground lost in this one.

It is all right to be disappointed at the end of an election season, but one must never walk away. Amidst disappointment is abiding hope in America, where everything remains possible, and where a new chapter of the pro-life movement has just begun. The efforts that were made, and the sacrifices endured in this election season made a difference, and we will build on that difference to see another day when the work and the ballots of pro-life people will dismantle the Culture of Death. We will keep marching toward that pro-life America we seek, and won’t stop until we get there.

Priests for Life
PO Box 141172
Staten Island, NY 10314
phone: 718-980-4400
fax: 718-980-6515
mail@priestsforlife.org
www.priestsforlife.org

The following is taken from Mark Mallett’s blog.  Visit www.markmallett.com for the full context.

The following excerpt is from a recent letter by Lori Kalner who lived during Hitler’s regime. When she heard the above children’s song, it evoked powerful memories which moved her to write this powerful warning…

In Germany, when Hitler came to power, it was a time of terrible financial depression. Money was worth nothing. In Germany people lost homes and jobs, just like in the American Depression in the 1930s…

In those days, in my homeland, Adolph Hitler was elected to power by promising “Change.” …So Hitler was elected to power by only 1/3 the popular vote. A coalition of other political parties in parliament made him supreme leader. Then, when he was leader, he disgraced and expelled everyone in parliament who did not go along with him.

Yes. Change came to my homeland as the new leader promised it would.

The teachers in German schools began to teach the children to sing songs in praise of Hitler. This was the beginning of the Hitler Youth movement. It began with praise of the Fuhrer’s programs on the lips of innocent children. Hymns in praise of Hitler and his programs were being sung in the schoolrooms and in the play yard. Little girls and boys joined hands and sang these songs as they walked home from school.

My brother came home and told Papa what was happening at school. The political hymns of children proclaimed Change was coming to our homeland and the Fuhrer was a leader we could trust. I will never forget my father’s face. Grief and fear. He knew that the best propaganda of the Nazis was song on the lips of little children. Soon the children’s songs praising the Fuhrer were heard everywhere on the streets and over the radio. “With our Fuhrer to lead us, we can do it! We can change the world!”

Soon after that Papa, a pastor, was turned away from visiting elderly parishioners in hospitals. The people he had come to bring comfort of God’s Word, were “no longer there.” Where had they vanished to while under nationalized health care? It became an open secret. The elderly and sick began to disappear from hospitals feet first as “mercy killing” became the policy. Children with disabilities and those who had Down syndrome were euthanized. People whispered, “Maybe it is better for them now. Put them out of misery. They are no longer suffering… And, of course, their death is better for the treasury of our nation. Our taxes no longer must be spent to care for such a burden.”

And so murder was called mercy.

The government took over private business. Industry and health care were “nationalized.” (NA-ZI means National Socialist Party) The businesses of all Jews were seized…. The world and God’s word were turned upside down. Hitler promised the people economic Change? Not change. It was, rather, Lucifer’s very ancient Delusion leading to Destruction.

What began with the propaganda of children singing a catchy tune ended in the deaths of millions of children. The reality of what came upon us is so horrible that you in this present generation cannot imagine it …Unless your course of the church in America is spiritually changed now, returning to the Lord, there are new horrors yet to come. I trembled last night when I heard the voices of American children raised in song, praising the name of Obama, the charismatic fellow who claims he is the American Messiah. Yet I have heard what this man Obama says about abortion and the “mercy killing” of tiny babies who are not wanted.

There are so few of us left to warn you. I have heard that there are 69 million Catholics in America and 70 million Evangelical Christians. Where are your voices? Where is your outrage? Where is passion and your vote? Do you vote based on an abortionist’s empty promises and economics? Or do you vote according to the Bible?

Thus says the Lord about every living child still in the womb… “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…”

…I have experienced the signs of the politics of Death in my youth. I see them again now…. —wicatholicmusings.blogspot.com  

Exaggerated fear? Or are we indeed on the threshold of “Change”? When one considers that economic experts are saying that America’s currency is headed for a complete collapse under unsustainable debt, the man in charge in the ensuing chaos becomes rather important at this time.

How will he handle martial law? How will he use his power to bring peace and security, tolerance and unity? We should perhaps heed present and past warnings, as we pray for our leaders…

…in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (2 Tim 3:1-7)

When people are saying, “Peace and security,” then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman,and they will not escape. (1 Thess 5:30) 

Please vote today if you are able. 

But, watch this video first (or after if you’ve already voted): http://vimeo.com/2128086

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!”  — Luke 24:1-5

Reflection by Fr. Frank Pavone:

This meditation, based on a sermon I once heard, is adapted for pro-life concerns.

It’s Friday. Jesus is on the cross. He has been killed by his enemies; he is off the scene. But that’s because it’s Friday. Sunday’s comin’!

It’s Friday. Abortionists continue their work 3,300 times a day, tearing off the arms and legs of little babies and crushing their heads. But that’s because it’s Friday. Sunday’s comin’! It’s Friday. Pro-abortion groups receive blood money from billionaires who are as deceived as they are. But that’s because it’s Friday. Sunday’s comin’!

It’s Friday. Liars attempt to speak for all women and hide the pain of abortion, and ignore the evidence of how it harms women, and call abortion a blessing. But that’s because it’s Friday. Sunday’s comin’! It’s Friday. People of hardened hearts guard the clinics and usher desperate women in to have their abortions, while keeping them from the pro-life people who want to give them hope. But that’s because it’s Friday. Sunday’s comin’!

Hope does not mean that we ignore or minimize the evils around us. It means, rather, that we see the whole picture, which is that evil is conquered because of what happened one Sunday morning. The power of sin and death has been broken by the Resurrection of Christ. We are called to proclaim, celebrate, and serve that victory, waiting in joyful hope for Christ’s return and the full flowering of the Culture of Life! Indeed, Sunday’s comin’!

Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.  –2 Corinthians 3:17

Reflection from Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life:

Norma McCorvey (the former Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade) used to work at an abortion mill named “A Choice for Women.” She now realizes what a cruel irony that title was.

She saw first hand, just as pregnancy resource center counselors see, that women don’t get abortions because of freedom of choice, but rather because they feel they have no freedom and no choice.

They feel trapped, abandoned, desperate and afraid, and have been led to believe that abortion is their only option.

As Frederica Mathewes-Green has written, no one wants an abortion like she wants a Porsche or an ice cream; rather, she wants it like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” That doesn’t mean that the Spirit allows us to do whatever we want or to decide for ourselves what’s right and wrong.

Rather, it means that the Spirit gives us the freedom to do what is right, the power to choose what is good, when we see it before us and yet feel pulled in the opposite direction. Liberty means that we no longer have to feel doomed to do what we know is wrong.

We are the people of the Spirit of the Lord, and when we take action on behalf of life, especially by being present at abortion mills, we are acting on behalf of true freedom, and imparting to those who are in bondage the power to do what is right.

Come, Holy Spirit. You are the Spirit of freedom, the source of all that is good, the power to do what is right. Fill us, and fill those who are in bondage today, feeling doomed to do what is wrong. Set them free, and help us to hasten them on the road to freedom, where your grace overcomes every temptation.  We ask this through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters,

In these days you are seeking the votes of your fellow Americans for public office. At the same time, you take the position that abortion, however regrettable it may be, should remain legal.

I write to express the convictions of tens of millions of citizens. Your position is a blatant contradiction to the very meaning of public service, the first requirement of which is to be able to tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public!

We ask, first of all, Have you ever seen an abortion? So many who defend abortion’s legality cannot even bring themselves to look at the horrifying pictures of children torn apart by the procedure (www.unborn.info). But if we cannot look at it, why should we tolerate it?

We likewise ask, Are you willing to publicly describe what you think should be legal? Abortionist Dr. Martin Haskell, in sworn testimony, described the “D and E” abortion procedure, still legal throughout our nation, by saying, “Typically the skull is brought out in fragments rather than as a unified piece…” (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No. 98-C-0305-S). In the same case, abortionist Dr. Hylan Raymond Giles, when asked, “Can the heart of a fetus or embryo still be beating during a suction curettage abortion as the fetus or embryo comes down the cannula?” answered, “For a few seconds to a minute, yes.”

When you say the word “abortion,” is this what you mean? When you say it should be legal, are you willing to quote those who explain what it is?

Your position is undermining the fabric of our nation. We repeat to you again the question posed by Mother Teresa in her speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on February 3, 1994. “And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”

We have not yet heard a “pro-choice” candidate answer any of these questions.

That’s why people cannot vote for you, and you shouldn’t be asking for their vote. If you can’t respect and protect the life of a little baby, how are you supposed to respect and protect our lives, or any other right we possess?

When you ask someone for your vote, you are actually asking them to share in your failure to protect these children. You’re asking them to share in the deception by which you justify that failure. You’re asking them, too, to contradict the meaning of public service. They are not morally permitted to say yes to what you are asking.

We in the pro-life movement do not need any reminders about the plight of young mothers. We serve them every day, providing real alternatives to abortion.

Nor do we accept the accusation that we are narrowly focused on a “single issue.” We are not ashamed of the fact that we recognize a holocaust when we see one, and that we understand the foundation, heart, and core of our concern for all the other issues – life itself.

We’re not a vote for you to court or an interest group for you to appease. Rather, our movement represents the heart and core of every movement for justice. That is why, whether you end up elected to public office or not, we will be there – in the halls of government, in the media, and on the streets of every city, town, and countryside across America – pressing the cause of justice for a group of human beings whose rights you have forgotten.

We will neither cease to remind you, nor will we wait for you to remember. Our cause is as great as America itself, and it will prevail. May you have the wisdom to join us.

Sincerely,

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life