Final Review of “Kiss Me Again”

For several days now I have been posting reviews on Barbara Wilson’s new book “Kiss Me Again. restoring lost intimacy in marriage.”

Tonight will be the final installment.

As I pointed out in my last post, the author provides advice on page 107 that I personally disagree with and I think is biblically unsupported. Tonight I would like to provide some additional insight noted in the book.  Barbara Wilson does a wonderful job explaining “Godly Sorrow.”

“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvationand leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow leads to death.” 2 Corinthians 7:10

Very simply she shows us that “worldly sorrow” is about “me” and “Godly” sorrow is about God. Godly sorrow will lead to repentance and renewal. Worldly sorrow is temporal and leads no where.

There are so many worthwhile lessons in the book and it provides you with a ten week study. She relates many testimonies of how this study has been instrumental in restoration and healing in many marriages. 

With the exception of “recalling” past hurts and sin, I find the book to be informative and useful. As with any book you read, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you.

For more about the author and her other books you can link to her website here: http://www.barbarawilson.org/

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Barbara’s Testimony

Here is Barbara’s Personal Story. Though she felt her desire to serve the Lord had been lost. I think you will agree that she serves God in a much needed area and as always our Lord brought beauty out of ashes…

I had great plans for my life. Born and raised in a Christian family, my father a Baptist pastor, I gave my heart to Jesus at 7 years of age. With child-like faith I fell in love with this One who’d done so much for me, and vowed to serve Him with my whole life. I took God’s call on my life seriously as a young person, sharing my faith, leading bible studies, teaching Sunday School, trying to live a life pleasing to Him.

My life was on course until I moved away to a Christian school in my senior year of high school. It was here that for the second time in my life I fell in love, this time with a young man I planned to marry one day. Having been raised in church, I knew that God said to save sex for marriage. But with no one talking about it—not our parents, youth workers or teachers, I was unprepared for the pressure to have sex, and how to save it for marriage.

Where It Went Wrong…

And so at the age of 18 I lost my virginity to someone I thought I was in love with, and who was supposed to love me. It was not what I’d expected. Instead of feeling loved, I felt used and humiliated. Something died inside me that day as my eyes were opened to the truth about sex—it is a big deal, in fact I sensed that it was something holy and divine and I had just carelessly given it away. But it was done, I couldn’t take it back. And now all I could do was stuff those feelings away pretending that it didn’t matter.
 

After that relationship ended and I moved on to others, I found I was giving in to sexual temptation even though I really didn’t want to and didn’t enjoy it. I was heading down a road I didn’t want to take, felt so much shame and regret for, yet for some reason could not stop. Until I heard these words, “You’re pregnant.” By then I had hardened my heart to block out my feelings of pain and shame, and was far away from God, that the only voice I heard said—“Have an abortion.”

This was the bottom for me, the end of the road. Gone were my dreams to serve God, to live my life for Him. He could never use me now. I married Eric (with whom I’m celebrating 28years) and had four children. And although we were going to church and serving God, for the next 25 years I lived in a prison of shame, self-condemnation, pain and regret. I asked God to forgive me many times—but it never seemed to work. I never felt forgiven. What I know now that I didn’t then, was that although God had forgiven me the first time I asked, without healing from my sexual past and abortion, the wounds I’d accumulated kept me suffering in silent shame, keeping me from being able to forgive myself, and experience God’s forgiveness.

For 25 years I spent all my energy on redeeming, hiding, justifying and forgetting my past. Not only did it drain and stagnate me emotionally, physically and spiritually, but it negatively impacted all my relationships—with my friends, my husband, my children and my God.

My Healing Journey…

Until God set me free. When He gently began to show me the wounds I’d suffered because of my past, how they were impacting me now and my need for healing, I chose to trust Him to heal me through a post abortion Bible Study and then through another study on sexual healing. I’d heard a lot about a God of grace sitting in church all those years, but for the first time I experienced this God of grace. God took me through a grieving process for my abortion and sexual past that healed my soul—healing allowed me to receive and experience God’s forgiveness. God’s forgiveness allowed me to forgive myself, which released me from my prison of shame and pain.

It changed my life. Rather than stagnating emotionally and spiritually—now I’m growing, thriving. Rather than destroying my relationships, now God is reconciling them and making them new. Rather than feeling drained and old—now I feel energized, revived and renewed. Malachi 4:2 says: But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.”

Can you picture unleashed baby calves leaping with joy? I can because that’s me. Like a baby calf is set free from the smelly confines of his stall, I’ve been set free from the bars of my prison and I’m leaping now—with ecstatic, wild leaping for joy. For 25 years I didn’t leap—in fact I didn’t even know it was possible. The shame of my past took away my voice—I couldn’t praise God, I couldn’t serve Him, I couldn’t speak truth into others lives because I was living a lie. With healing, God gave me back my voice.

What He’s done for me, He can do for you:

It’s not my story anymore—it’s His. It’s now about what God has done in my life. And what’s He’s done for me, He wants to do for you. If you’ll let Him.

He’s just waiting for you to ask.

          Barbara

 

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Copyright © 2009 Barbara Wilson. All rights reserved.

This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.

 

 

 

A Peek into Fetal Memory:Learning in Utero

The following is an article on recent research into the memories of the pre born. Finally vindication for all of we women who have for years talked to our babies while in their own “womb”. Maybe this will help us to help others who have had tragic situations occur before the babies birth, when that little one seems to shy away from things… Pregnant mothers the world over can often be found talking or singing to their babies in the womb. But as tender as those moments may be, is anyone besides Mom and Dad actually remembering them? New research says yes.

A team of medical researchers in the Netherlands combined sonogram technology with sound and vibration stimulation to discover that 30-week-old fetuses demonstrate short-term memory. By 34 weeks, these babies in utero are able to store and retrieve that information up to four weeks later, according to the study published in the medical journal Child Development.

This research follows on the heels of similar studies conducted to determine if a fetus can remember its mother’s voice. One such study had mothers read Dr. Seuss’ famous Cat in the Hat twice a day to their babies six weeks before birth.

Three days after birth, scientists were able to determine that not only did the babies prefer the sound of their own mother’s voice, they also preferred the sound of the story they had heard in utero to a new story.

Still other studies have found that fetuses exposed to theme songs or other music tend to show recognition of those same songs shortly after birth. Other studies show that newborns prefer the sound of the mother’s native tongue to other languages.

The life of twins has also opened some unexpected vistas in the exploration of learning and memory in the womb. In the National Geographic special In the Womb: Twins, Triplets, and Quads, a twin brother and sister were spotted through ultrasound technology playing cheek-to-cheek on either side of the placenta. A year after birth, their favorite game was to take positions on opposite sides of a curtain, laughing and giggling as they touched and played through the divider.

In another case of twins, one baby showed more aggressive behavior in utero. Kicking, pushing, and hitting the other, who would retreat to the far side of the womb. Four years later, whenever a fight breaks out between the twins, the quieter one still retreats to his room and closes the door.

Negative emotional states of the mother may also tell us something about learning and cognition in utero. One Australian study found the babies of pregnant mothers watching a 20-minute video of a disturbing Hollywood movie also experienced emotional upset. When three months after birth, the infants were briefly shown clips of the same film, they showed recognition of prior exposure.

From thumb sucking, to cry-like behavior, to dreaming, and smiling, new four-dimensional ultrasound technology has shown us more than we ever imagined possible about human life in the womb. Now as studies continue to unfold the mysteries of life in the womb, discoveries in learning and memory are changing the way many see the fetus. These are stunning reminders of the capabilities of the unborn-precious souls who are so often denied their right to life.

Share these findings with those you know, and if they support abortion, encourage them to revisit the issue. Each day science shows us more and more to confirm what we already know-that the unborn are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

That’s something all of us should remember.

Written by: Mark Earley and Posted @ Breakpoint.com

Rethinking Abortion — Two Unexpected Witnesses

The following is a recent article by Dr. Albert Mohler. I add no comments, just ask that you read.
Looking across the moral landscape of the last half-century, one issue looms larger than all others — abortion. Considered from a historical perspective, the intensity and duration of the abortion debate came as something of a surprise. Handing down its infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court declared the abortion question settled and closed. They were wrong.

Almost four decades after Roe v. Wade, Americans are still torn over the issue of abortion. Indeed, the intensity of the abortion debate in 2009 exceeds that of 1973. The controversy over abortion is not only unsettled and unresolved — it is still developing before our eyes. To the great consternation of abortion-rights proponents, Americans have not accepted abortion on demand as a permanent reality. As a nation, we have debated any number of issues beyond abortion in recent years, but abortion remains the controversy that is most central, unavoidable, and deeply personal.

The personal dimension of the abortion controversy came to light this week from two unexpected witnesses. The first is Sarah Kliff, a reporter for Newsweek magazine. In a very personal column, Kliff describes her experience visiting Omaha, Nebraska and the abortion clinic of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, now perhaps the nation’s sole specialist in late-trimester abortions. As Kliff writes, her experience covering abortion for the magazine over the past two years has led her into contact and conversation with a range of persons on both sides of the abortion debate. She recognizes that, “both sides feel abortion is an issue worth waging war over.”

Given her journalistic experience, Kliff describes herself as “well-versed in abortion policy, the pro-choice and pro-life arguments, the latest legislation.” Her next sentence delivers the surprise: “But I’d never actually seen an abortion; I’d never watched the procedure that activists vehemently defend or deplore.”

But that is exactly what happened when Kliff went to Omaha to research her article on Dr. Carhart. Even as she anticipated observing the abortion, Kliff confessed to hesitancy and reluctance. She observed a first-trimester abortion, even though Dr. Carhart does perform late-term abortions. Why was she so ambivalent?

In her words:

Why was I reluctant to watch? To be fair, I’d never observed a surgery and knew myself to frequently flinch at ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ But abortion isn’t like the complex, bloody operations you see on television: medically speaking, it’s a simple and common procedure. About 1.2 million were performed in 2005, the same, numberwise, as outpatient cancer surgeries. I was nervous, I think, to watch something so controversial; no one protests outside cancer clinics. I didn’t know how I’d react. Would I find the surgery repulsive? Encounter women whose choices troubled me? Whom I disagreed with? I was uneasy about coming in such close contact with such substantial decisions.

Observing the abortion, Kliff writes of seeing a woman prepared for the procedure and then of the suction tube that was inserted within her. Her report is both chilling and honest. “Carhart used a suction tube to empty the contents of the uterus; it took no longer than three minutes. The suction machine made a slight rumbling sound, a pinkish fluid flowed through the tube, and, faster than I’d expected, it was over.”

As Kliff recounts, she felt no physical discomfort observing the procedure. Nevertheless, she did experience a very strong emotional reaction. After describing this emotional reaction and her encounters with patients in the abortion clinic, Kliff tells of returning home only to discover that her friends who supported abortion rights “bristled slightly when I told them where I’d been and what I’d watched.”

In a profound statement, Sarah Kliff acknowledges that Americans just do not talk about abortion as they talk about other surgical or medical procedures. “Abortion may be a simple procedure medically,” she explains, “but it is not cancer surgery.”

Sarah Kliff does not condemn abortion in her article and she does not articulate a pro-life understanding of the abortion issue. Indeed, she speaks of abortion as involving a weighty choice that, “depending on how you view it, involves a life, or the potential for life.” This is a very weak way of describing the moral question of abortion, but it is at least a start. Sarah Kliff’s honest reflections on her experience of observing an abortion are, perhaps more than she knows or recognizes, a witness to the horror of abortion. Her description of “pinkish fluid” flowing through the suction tube is almost impossible to force out of one’s mind.

Another unexpected witness this week is actress Kourtney Kardashian. Her recently announced unplanned pregnancy became part of Hollywood’s scandal and publicity circus. But what caught the attention of the media this week was her decision to keep the baby and the straightforward logic behind her decision.

Kardashian has not adopted a pro-life position on the abortion question. Indeed, she told People magazine: “I do think every woman should have the right to do what they want, but I don’t think it’s talked through enough.” The actress told of many friends who just assured her that abortion was the easy way out. “Like it’s not a big deal,” the actress recalled.

Interestingly, Kardashian’s decision to keep her baby was at least partially prompted by her experience of reading the testimonies of women who regretted their abortions. “I looked online, and I was sitting on the bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty for having an abortion,” she explained.

“I was just sitting there crying, thinking, ‘I can’t do that,’ . . . And I felt in my body, this is meant to be. God does things for a reason, and I just felt like it was the right thing that was happening in my life.”

As she thought about her decision, Kardashian concluded that “all the reasons why I wouldn’t keep the baby were so selfish.” She also received encouragement from her doctor. “My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, ‘You may regret not having the baby.’ And I was like: That is so true.”

The Culture of Death looms as a massive threat, but its foundations are crumbling. Unexpected witnesses such as Sarah Kliff and Kourtney Kardashian help us to see how moral insight can emerge from unexpected experiences, reflections, and witnesses. Some of the most profound witnesses to the horror of abortion and the sanctity of human life do not even know that they are so. The evil of abortion cannot be hidden once it is seen, and a voice for life cannot be forgotten once it is heard.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Hidden Reality of Abortion — Empowering Men

Over and over throughout the past thirty years or so I have questioned…feminism. Was there ever a time when as “woman’s movement” was justified. Yes, I will say that there have been many issues in which woman needed advocates and change. Much like the beginning of labor unions. These were movements to address “gross” injustices to women and workers. But what have they become?

The labor unions are filled with as much corruption as hades itself. The feminist movement, as noted by the comments in the article below…even a VERY RADICAL feminist can see that since the beginning is has been objectifying woman.

Where woman in the past were the “more moral” of the two genders now they both seem to be equally sinful. What progress has been made and at what cost?

Are women’s unique health concerns more credible and less “fictious” as they were seen to be up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Yes… Are woman paid more equitably then they were in the past? Yes.

Are womens bodies and souls treated with respect? NO! Are woman offered the same level of protection and provision as they were in the past? NO! Can men now enter into unprotected sexual liasons almost at will, with no repurcussions? Yes!

The following is an excellent article by Dr. Albert Mohler that addresses the hidden reality of abortion. Empowering Men… Wait a minute I thought this was a feminist issue???? Read and comtemplate.

America’s long war over abortion has classically been defined as a struggle between competing rights — depicted as the right of a woman to have an abortion versus the right of an unborn child to the protection of life. This long-familiar framing of the issue suggests, at the very least, that the rights of women and their unborn children are, or it least it can be, presented as an irresolvable conflict.

From the very beginning, this has been an unsatisfactory approach to the abortion controversy. Those who contend for the sanctity of human life at every stage of development are, by virtue of moral necessity, also concerned with the health, welfare, and well-being of women. The reduction of the abortion question to a matter of “rights” is itself a symptom of our moral confusion.

One of the most insidious aspects of the abortion controversy has been the success of the feminist movement in presenting abortion on demand as a matter central to the liberation of women. The feminist logic suggests that women can never be seen as equal to men in terms of career so long as the “risk” and reality of pregnancy and motherhood are present. As the feminists argue, abortion becomes a mechanism for leveling the playing field and for liberating women.

As far back as the 1970s, at least some feminists saw through this logic. Catherine MacKinnon, a radical feminist legal scholar, argued that legal abortion would merely facilitate the “heterosexual availability” of women. In other words, abortion would be a benefit to men, who would be liberated to take sexual advantage of women, knowing that the availability of legal abortion would effectively remove their risk of the entanglements that would come with pregnancy and parenthood.

MacKinnon is a radical legal theorist whose arguments on both abortion and pornography have been of considerable interest to conservatives for some time. Even as her ideology puts her on the far left of contemporary feminism, her argument that the availability of abortion and pornography is deeply injurious to women offers something of an awkward common ground with conservatives. At the very least, she is noteworthy for seeing what so many of her fellow feminists simply refused to see.

Writing in the August/September 2009 issue of First Things, Richard Stith argues that the legalization of abortion “was supposed to grant enormous freedom to women, but it has had the perverse result of freeing men and attracting women.”

Over 30 years after Roe v. Wade, we now know that abortion “has increased the expectation and frequency of sexual intercourse (including unprotected intercourse) among young people,” Stith observes. As he explains, the post-Roe expectation is that a woman now has less justification for refusing the sexual advances of a male. By and large, abortion has liberated men from the fear of parenthood, if not of pregnancy. Beyond this, if the woman with whom they are having sex becomes pregnant, the availability of abortion serves, in the mind of men, to reduce if not to remove their responsibility for fatherhood.

The availability of abortion means, in the minds of many men, that the entire responsibility for pregnancy and parenthood now falls to women. If a woman refuses to have an abortion, having the baby is simply her “choice.” As Stith realizes, this gives many men even more leverage as they demand an abortion as the cost of continuing the relationship. Stith cites a report from the Medical Science Monitor indicating that 64% of American women who have had abortions felt pressure from others to do so.

As Stith explains:

Prior to the legalization of abortion in the United States, it was commonly understood that a man should offer a woman marriage in case of pregnancy, and many did so. Though with the legalization of abortion, men started to feel that they were not responsible for the birth of children and consequently not under any obligation to marry. In gaining the option of abortion, many women have lost the option of marriage.

The Culture of Death often presents itself in terms of liberation. Yet, at every turn, this liberation is actually an enslavement. The availability of legalized abortion has led to the deaths of over 40 million unborn children in the United States alone. Beyond this, it has produced a social catastrophe evident in patterns of female poverty and the abandonment of both women and children by irresponsible males. Furthermore, it has severely weakened the moral protections and obligations that bound men to women and children, effectively allowing men to demand abortion as a means of escaping their responsibility to marry and to take responsibility for their children.

As Richard Stith rightly summarizes, “Elective abortion changes everything.” As he explains, “A woman’s choice for or against abortion breaks the causal link between conception and birth. It matters little what or who caused conception or whether the male insisted on having unprotected intercourse. It is she alone who finally decides whether the child comes into the world. She is the responsible one. For the first time in history, the father and the doctor and the health-insurance actuary can point a finger at her as the person who allowed an inconvenient human being to come into the world.”

The obvious question is this — how is it that feminists, the abortion industry, and the advocates of abortion rights get away with their claim that abortion liberates women? In truth, the availability of abortion has served to liberate irresponsible men from duty, morality, and responsibility. Of course, the even greater tragedy is the death of unborn children by the millions. Only the Culture of Death would present the slaughter of the innocents as liberation.

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog.php

The Baby Leaped in My Womb

Yesterday I stated that I will be posting tetimonies to the blog on a regular basis. My reasoning is stated by Jesus in this verse…The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. John 19:35

Well today as I was opening my mail I came across a newsletter from The Low Country Crisis Pregnancy Center, a wonderful ministry. In the letter was the story of Jessica. Jessica had come to the clinic for a pregnancy test. She already had children and was having a tough time making ends meet. Very shortly she found that she was indeed pregnant. Her decision… abortion! Or atleast that was her intention. As the satellite office director began to explain the abortion process, she also shared her testimony of sitting in the chair in which Jessica sat. While she shared the Lord began to soften Jessica’s heart. Hearing of the freedom and healing the Lord had brought to the director and how she continued to be the recipient of God’s grace and mercy. She agreed to have an ultra sound. She did not think she would see much as she did not think she was very far along. To her surprise she saw a very active 17 week old baby.(the small photo w/ this post is a 16 week old baby) Our Abba Father had used the Director’s testimony and medical technology to turn Jessica from an abortion.

This was the wonderful and joyous news. The bad news, during the first 6 months of 2008 the center had performed 240 pregnancy tests and ultra sounds. For the same time period in 2009….494!!!!! I would like to believe that this is a case of more women questioning abortion and not an increase of crisis pregnancies. Sadly, this is not the case.

This testimony I am sure hurts many of you out there. Women who yearned with all their heart for a child and today have none. Women young and old who have never forgotten the feeling inside them as they first felt the quickening early in pregnancy, only later to have exercised their right to reproductive choice. The mother who pleaded with her daughter not to have an abortion and now mourns for the granchild she never knew.

And the men… There are MANY men who pleade with their wives or partners not to have abortions…and she still does. Abortion is not a victimless occurence, nor do I believe it is a RIGHT. I have several friends who have had abortions and I am sure I have many friends who have never shared this with me. I do not hate them, I do not think less of them. I cry for them and I pray for them to receive the healing that only God can provide.

For all of you I offer the following:

May God take you broken spirit and produce joy….

Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit. {Then} I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation; {Then} my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, That my mouth may declare Your praise. For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. Psalm 51:10-17.

God offers you restoration

I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the LORD. Psalm 40:1-3