Healing
Healing Your Past
Healing Year by Year
Hurts in the Womb
Early Childhood
The Teenage Years
Early Adult Years
Middle Adulthood
The Twilight Years
Healing the Generations
Healing Prayers
Pray It Forward
Pray it Forward Prayers

A contented mother generally produces a contented baby. We know that an addicted mother produces an addicted baby. And research is showing that a fearful or unhappy mother produces a fractious and weepy child. Unwanted pregnancies bring with them all sorts of emotions - fears, revulsion, rejection and often injuries by intent. Those working in the area of counselling and the Healing Ministries confirm that the emotions of the mother pass to the child, both negative and positive. The mother may be happy with the news of her pregnancy but the father may not and his feelings impede on the mother causing her to be fearful of losing him or how he will react to their new family member. The mother may feel that a new baby will interupt her career plans or spoil her body image, may cause financial hardship or maybe her advancing age might affect the new child.

For many mothers pregnancy was a conveyor belt with a new baby almost every year. Were all these mothers saints welcoming each new life within? If truth be told many felt they just couldn't cope, or feared an inability to provide for yet another 'mouth to feed'. More often than not it wasn't the child they resented but rather the pregnancy itself, and there is a vast difference. Once they got used to the idea of being pregnant the focus turned to loving the little one within. However, many women wished miscarriages on their new inner life or deliberately did things to themselves to induce a spontaneous abortion (miscarriage).

Dr. Kenneth McAll, a Scottish Psychologist and author of 'Healing the Family Tree', writes of the effect these negative emotions have on the new arrival and even on the siblings born afterwards. Where a miscarriage or induced abortion occured a mother can carry feelings of guilt for the rest of her life thus affecting any other children born subsequent to the loss of that child.

The mother may be pregnant as a result of rape, incest, unloved use and abuse, drunkeness or drug induced incompetance, loneliness and insecurities, a need to be shown love where none is forthcoming within the family unit - a million and one reasons. BUT not one of these reasons justifies hurting the little one who did not ask to be born and who is a beautiful creation of God in His own image.

A report in one of the papers just this week states that Embryologists in the UK have discovered that on conception, when the sperm first fertilizes the ovum, and that when the first division of that tiny cell takes place, the genetic map of that new life is already formed. The blueprint for the child is in place within just hours of conception. The UK team, from the Wellcome Trust/ Cancer Research, found that on fertilization a bias towards certain roles of each cell begins and the foundation stones (the new cells) of the formation of the new life is already in place. Their own study is backed up by the work of another scientist from Oxford whose similar research was published five years earlier but ridiculed by peers at the time.

Kinda knocks the pro-choice argument of 'featureless bundles of cells' in the first trimester on its rear end eh? What will this mean to scientific research on the young embryo? Not much I suspect as science continues to goes beyond the boundaries and the natural order of things.

The womb has always been a dangerous place to 'live' but since the infamous Roe versus Wade case in Texas on January 22, 1973 the womb right now has to be the most dangerous place on earth for a child. Over a short period of just over 29 years more children have been killed in the womb than in every world war since time began, every death from starvation, plague, AIDS, epidemics, earthquakes, flooding, road traffic accidents all over the earth, etc. etc. And the figures rise by the minute!

Abortion leaves emotional scars for both the mother and the father as well as any subsequent children, make no mistake about that. So, our reflection this week is to ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten us to those times within the womb when we may have been rejected or hurt. Ask the Lord to heal us of those rejections and hurts and offer a prayer of forgiveness for our parents if they caused those fears and rejections because of our pregnancy.

We should pray for healing of ourselves if we in any way experienced any of these feelings as the parent of the unborn child, and ask for forgiveness from our children affected by these emotions while they were in utero, or any subsequent children carrying the emotional scars from our own feelings of guilt or anger, rejection or revulsion.

We should reflect on the millions of children being murdered within their own 'safe haven' every hour all over the world. Perhaps even 'adopt one' on a daily basis, name the child and visualise him or her as the beautiful creation God intended, for that is indeed what it is now.

We should pray for all mothers who have endured abortion, for their peace of mind and own healing. And especially for all mothers considering an abortion this very minute. Perhaps too, we could 'adopt a mother' daily and pray each one through the pregnancy rather than through the abortion clinic doors.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5 (Some translations read "Before I formed you in the womb I chose you....". Jesus loved us right back then and still loves us. A good way to shed these hurts in the womb is to picture Jesus holding us closely and lovingly, because He is always constant in His love for us.