"Cast Down Your Cares"

Note: We are reposting this reflection from Dec. 11 with an introduction from JFA's Executive Director. For Kristine's original post for her readers, click here.

Introduction

I’m so thankful for our outstanding trainers. During our college campus outreach events, they both mentor volunteers and personally help passersby “stop and think” (see jfaweb.org/nov-2024). In this Outreach Reflection, one of our newest staff members, Kristine, discusses a challenge we regularly face: so many people share such heavy stories. Kristine helps us think more deeply about the true solution we can offer to others and also utilize to stay healthy ourselves.

Don’t forget to visit jfaweb.org/blog for recent stories of changed hearts and minds, including “Connecting the Dots,” “Joseph Changes His Mind,” and “Never Underestimate a Picture.”

There’s still time to give a year-end gift! To receive a tax-deductible receipt for 2024, give your gift today at jfaweb.org/donate or postmark it by December 31.

-Steve Wagner, Executive Director

Outreach Reflection

by Kristine Hunerwadel, Regional Training Intern (Denver, CO)

While conducting workshops and outreach events with the JFA team over five days in September (at Colorado State University and University of Northern Colorado), I heard all of the following statements:

• “If I got pregnant tomorrow, I would get an abortion.” 

• “My mom was in an abusive situation, and she should have been able to have an abortion.”

• “My dad was adopted, and his biological mom struggled with the reality that she placed him for adoption all her life. She should have been able to have an abortion.”

• “My friend was raped, and her parents wanted her to keep the baby, but she didn’t want to, so I drove her to the abortion clinic.”

• “I had an abortion when I was 17, and I don’t regret it. I think about it a lot, but I don’t regret it.”

• “I went in to have an abortion, but then I changed my mind about it and asked them to stop, but they didn’t. They said it was too late.”

• “One of my family members didn’t find out she was pregnant until she was seven months along, and she had a third-trimester abortion then, here in a Colorado hospital.”

• “It would have been okay with me if I had been aborted.”

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A comment left on JFA’s free speech board at a MiraCosta College outreach event in October

The amount of pain and need reflected in these statements felt enormous to me, and I’m thinking now of the many human beings who were willing to share their thoughts and stories with me, a stranger. Each of these human beings was made in God’s image, and God cares about each one deeply. As I listened, all of their stories felt heavy, and they each seemed to express an underlying question: Doesn’t anyone care?

Feedback submitted on a response card after a workshop Kristine conducted in November

One was in tears wanting to experience healing from a sexual assault she experienced at 14. Doesn’t anyone care about women who are raped? One told me about his partner who spent years in foster care. Don’t you care about kids who are suffering? Another dealt with mental illness that required significant treatment, which led him to empathize with the need for women to have affordable healthcare. Don’t you care about women who might die if they can’t get adequate medical care? Another had recently lost her mom, and she was concerned that she might become suicidal if anything were to be added to her plate. I’m struggling so hard to just get by right now, and I’m close to being suicidal myself. How can you expect someone like me to care for a child right now? Several appeared to feel like they were a burden to the people who had raised them, too, instead of a blessing. Don’t you care about me?

As I was processing a conversation I had just had with a particularly hurting student, a JFA team member noted that the Christian worldview includes “the freedom of being able to not think about ourselves.” I was struck by his comment, because in it he alluded to something that is available in Jesus that so many people we talk to haven’t been able to experience yet, and that I take for granted far too often: the freedom to not be shackled by my concerns. It made me stop and think. The staff member was not inferring that people should deny that they have concerns, or that they should stop wanting to have their needs met. He wasn’t saying the cares of the people we meet at our outreach events aren’t real, or heart-felt, or that they haven’t gone through the difficult experiences they have gone through. He also was not suggesting that we shouldn’t care in the same way that Jesus does about their experiences, or that we shouldn’t step in to meet their needs as we are able. He was simply describing the gift it is to be able to lay our burdens down and take a break from them – the gift of being able to “cast down our cares.”

As Christians, we have a worldview that tells us that we are seen, known, and loved by the God who made us, and that we can see, know, and love others freely in His name. This is true even if we weren’t told it as children, even if we didn’t experience it firsthand until we met Him, and even when we have been hurt by others in devastating ways, as many of us have been. We get to bring our cares and concerns to Him (see I Peter 5:7), set them down before Him, trust Him with them, and then experience His love, care, and healing deeply, fully, and personally. We also then get to freely focus away from our cares (which can be so liberating!) and care for others around us in a self-forgetful way. This time of year gives us a special reminder that God saw our enormous need, and humbly gave of Himself freely and fully to meet that need. It reminds us, too, of people like Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men, who humbly gave of themselves to honor Jesus and care for those around them. The following lyrics from “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” put it this way:

Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!

Hail the Sun of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

Risen with healing in His wings;

Mild He lays His glory by,

Born that man no more may die

Born to raise the sons of earth,

Born to give them second birth

Hark! The herald angels sing,

“Glory to the newborn King”

This Christmas season I hope you are encouraged by this reminder of the God who took on human flesh and cares for you, heals you, and frees you to care for others in a world that so desperately needs it.

I’ve been so encouraged and impacted, too, by those of you who have come alongside me in this new season of my life to care for me and sacrificially provide for the work that God has given me to do. Thank you! Through your prayers, housing, meals, and financial support this fall, you’ve helped my JFA colleagues and me to:

• offer comfort to hurting people, while pointing them to the God who cares deeply for them,

• train Christians to have conversations that can build bridges and provide hope and healing to a hurting world, and

• advocate on behalf of babies, mothers, and fathers who are impacted by abortion.

Thank you so much for your support and encouragement. Merry Christmas!

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

— I Peter 5:7

Click here for printable version.

“I had never spoken to my friend about abortion…”

Dear Friend of JFA,

JFA Training Specialist Kaitlyn Donihue is shown during a “7 Conversations in 7 Hours” Zoom workshop, teaching participants from all over the country to make a clear case for the equality of the unborn. See the end of this blog post for newly-added workshop dates - Register here.

More than 70 people have participated in our “7 Conversations in 7 Hours” workshops since we began offering them six weeks ago. (New dates have been added. See below!)

At the conclusion of each hour-long Zoom session, we challenge participants to start a conversation using what they’ve learned during that hour. Elizabeth, a participant from Florida, wrote to us after Session Four:

I had never spoken to my friend, T, about abortion, so when I asked her stance she immediately went into her personal story. As a pregnant 16 year old she’d had an initial consultation and scheduled [an] appointment for a saline abortion at 6 months pregnant. She said everyone assumed that’s what she should do and in response to their reactions, she [scheduled the appointment] but had not yet told her mother. The baby’s father came to her house one day saying his sister wanted to speak with her. They spoke on the phone and the sister told her not to abort the baby, that it was a “living baby” and not to worry, that things would work out and offered her help such as babysitting and a place to live.

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The panel shown above, part of JFA’s “Stop and Think” exhibit, features a fetus at 18 weeks old (from fertilization). This is the age of the unborn around the beginning of the 6 month of pregnancy (the same stage of pregnancy when Elizabeth’s friend, T, had first scheduled an abortion appointment).

T told me then “that was the first time it had ever occurred to me that it was a baby. His sister talked about it in a way that showed she cared.” The sister also urged her that if she had an abortion it would be a big regret. She decided then and there against the abortion and had the courage to tell her mom that she was pregnant. Her mother was upset about the pregnancy and even more about her unwillingness to abort but after some time she came around to the idea and gladly helped prepare for the baby’s arrival. That baby is now 30 years old and a successful, independent young man.

So, following that story I asked about her general views on abortion. She stated she’s firmly pro-life. I went through the science of the unborn, establishing the biological citizenship of the growing baby to the human family. She agreed with the various statements as I laid out those points as well as the points of the baby having equal rights. When asked if there was any situation in which she would believe an abortion is warranted, she stated the rape exception.

Since we have yet to cover that topic, I found common ground in agreeing that it would be a horrible situation for the mother and she deserves care and justice. I also went back to the previous points asking if the baby conceived in rape is any less human or any less deserving of equal human rights. She acquiesced that indeed, it is not any less.

Notice how Elizabeth was able to help T even though T’s specific concern about rape was not to be covered until the next week of the online workshop series. Elizabeth used the skills she had learned already to help T think through the case of rape. (Indeed, because T is Elizabeth’s friend, Elizabeth can also go back to her to discuss some of what we covered in Session Five.)

Elizabeth’s friend T needed help when she became pregnant, and even though some in the family disagreed, T’s boyfriend’s sister spoke up. She offered reasons to think the unborn was a human being, and she offered practical help. This illustrates why we are emphasizing with each of the participants in our online workshops the importance of creating conversations.

Note also, though, how even in her passion for unborn children, T hadn’t yet connected the dots for unborn children produced through rape. Once Elizabeth was willing to do the uncomfortable work of creating a conversation with T, it became clear quickly that they had only a small disagreement, and Elizabeth was able to help T think more clearly. Reading Elizabeth’s account, I’m struck by how the conversation seems so natural, even as the friends discussed their disagreements. Let’s pray for Elizabeth as she continues the conversation with T, and let’s pray that T will have opportunities to speak to others. Perhaps T will even join us for our next “7 Conversations in 7 Hours” series, beginning on July 20! You can, too, and you can invite a friend!

Thank you for partnering with us to train more advocates to create a different kind of conversation, one that ministers to hearts and changes minds.

- Steve Wagner, Executive Director

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“I am not an articulate person and definitely avoid anxiety-producing situations of talking to someone who might disagree with me. But because of the course and the website I now have a resource...to help me to know what to say, and most importantly how to say it.
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— Donna, Online Workshop Participant

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