A Heart for Freedom (40 page)

The next month, Bob Fu came to my home with several associates. After spending three days with us, Joe Torres, the chairman of ChinaAid, felt a strong impression from God that I was called to lead this new endeavor. I was not so sure. I had a clear vision to finish writing this book, but I was not prepared to start a ministry.

After taking these guests to the airport, I found a package sent by Reggie at home. It was a taped message by a well-known Christian leader about making your calling true, from Matthew 16:24-26. While I exercised in our basement gym, I listened to the tape. The speaker said that when God calls you, you had better step out. Don’t be so sure that he will call you again. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25). When God calls, you have to be willing to say good-bye to your home, family, career, etc. As a new Jesus-follower, I listened and obeyed. With fear and trembling, I put away my book plan and my new business plan, and we decided to launch our new ministry, All Girls Allowed, with an announcement on Capitol Hill on June 1, 2010.

Over the past twenty-two years, since the crackdown at Tiananmen, God has breathed life into the Chinese church, creating the largest social movement on earth. An estimated 105 million—almost one in twelve Chinese—are now committed followers of Jesus Christ. When I heard this statistic for the first time, I felt a strong urge to celebrate God’s victory. But a few days before our event, someone reminded me that June 1 is Children’s Day in China, and I realized that God will not be ready to fully celebrate his victory until
all
his children in China are saved and rescued. Again, I was moved by God’s heart of compassion.

* * *

Whenever I talk about All Girls Allowed, I’m careful to share about our
whole
vision, which is more than just seeing an end to forced abortions in China. We also want to restore life, value, and dignity to girls and mothers worldwide. In both China and India, families eliminate girls in hopes of raising boys. This crime, called gendercide, is done through prenatal sex selection, infanticide, and abandonment. China’s one-child policy makes it worse—with only one baby allowed, who wouldn’t choose a boy? Girls cannot carry on the family line and will marry and leave when their parents grow old. For security, every family wants a son. Now in China, six boys are born for every five girls. India, with its dowry system that makes raising a girl expensive, has a similar, terrible gender imbalance problem. A trailer for an upcoming documentary shows an Indian mother who killed eight of her baby girls right after their births.

I knew my father wanted a firstborn son, not a daughter. This knowledge was a painful part of my childhood that began to ease only after I became successful in school and knew he was proud of me. After having three beautiful daughters, I asked my husband if he wanted me to keep trying for a boy. Bob laughed at the idea and said, “Hey, if having all girls is good enough for the presidents, it’s good enough for me!” I was relieved. Here in America, we have examples of successful families raising only girls—the Clintons, George W. Bushes, and Obamas have beautiful daughters who stand strong in their identity as women.

The preference for sons and the one-child policy are a lethal combination. Daily, thousands of baby girls are aborted or killed simply because they are girls. With so many girls now “missing” in China, the surplus of thirty-seven million unmarried young men is bound to cause security and economic problems. With a shortage of available mates for all these eligible bachelors, trafficking of little girls and young women is now out of control in China. All Girls Allowed discovered a city of three million people that has had (over a thirty-year period) as many as six hundred thousand “child brides”—little girls stolen early (so they cannot find their way home), who are then sold to be raised as child brides in strangers’ homes.
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As the only organization we know of addressing gendercide at a grassroots level, we have started in the rural villages, where the gender imbalance is the worst—in some cases, as many as 130 boys for every 100 girls. We give a financial stipend of twenty dollars per month (which amounts to a substantial subsidy where family incomes are often less than $1,000 per year) to mothers who decide to keep their girls. This allows them to purchase food and clothing for their new babies, and it brings dignity to mothers to help them withstand the pressure to have a son. According to our survey research, women who have participated in our program are most likely to keep their baby (if pregnant again) regardless of gender. This is great progress toward reversing a five-thousand-year tradition. Economist Avraham Ebenstein believes that financial compensation to families in China that give birth to girls can drastically reduce the gendercide.
13

The movement to end the gendercide of girls is growing. On June 1, 2011, on Capitol Hill, All Girls Allowed launched a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans, pro-life and pro-choice members of Congress who agree on one thing: killing girls for their gender is wrong and is a crime that has to be stopped. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, we consider William Wilberforce, who ended the slave trade through his years of prayer and advocacy; and we remember the end of the nine-hundred-year foot-binding movement in China, which was ended in one generation. My grandmother had bound feet. My mother and I did not.

This is where my story joins yours. I encourage you to visit our website—www.allgirlsallowed.org—and ask yourself where you belong in this historic movement. We can end the abortion, infanticide, and abandonment of baby girls in our lifetime.

* * *

Shortly after Joe Torres encouraged me to start All Girls Allowed, I lost contact with him for about five months. During that time, I was constantly under attack from unseen forces and constantly questioning my calling.

At one point, Li Lu’s name was in the headlines as a possible successor to investment guru Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway. Knowing how hard I had tried to become financially successful, the enemy of my soul whispered in my ear, “Don’t you want another chance to prove yourself? Don’t you want to go back to the start-up world to execute your new business plan and become successful so you can have the money and resources to do what you want? Do you know what you’re doing now? What do you know about running a nonprofit? You’ve never been good at fund-raising. You haven’t trained or prepared for this kind of work.” It reminded me of the time when Jesus was tested in the desert and Satan waved the kingdoms of the world in front of him. I had to say, “Go away, Satan. I’m following Jesus!”

Now when I look back at the early days of All Girls Allowed, I am completely at peace. When we resist Satan, it’s true that he will eventually flee. As I’ve continued to grow in my faith and be transformed by the grace of God, my vision for the ministry has come into sharper focus.

With more than four hundred million lives taken in the past thirty years, ending China’s one-child policy, the forced and coerced abortion and gendercide of girls, is the most profound social justice cause in the world today. It is one that should unite people on both sides of the abortion issue. Chinese women have no choice, and their babies have no life.

Today about 20 percent of the world’s population lives in China under the terror and torment of the one-child policy. The victims are the weakest of society: babies, girls, and women. Every 2.5 seconds, a baby’s life is taken by abortion in China. Every day, hundreds of baby girls are abandoned and five hundred women commit suicide. Most of the world does not know about this tragedy. But God knows, and he is working mightily to deliver this nation once and for all into his glorious Kingdom.

When I started All Girls Allowed, I thought of it only as a justice ministry, reflecting God’s grieving heart for the more than four hundred million lost children and girls in China, the thirty-five thousand forced abortions taking place every day, and the one million baby girls abandoned each year. As the ministry has grown and I have continued to grow in Christ, I now see that All Girls Allowed is a ministry of hope, a vital step in God’s ultimate plan to save China.

The All Girls Allowed movement seeks to restore life, value, and dignity to the most vulnerable members of society—girls and mothers—so that the weak, the orphans, and the widows will truly know and experience the grace of God and the goodness brought by his love. Even though the one-child policy is intended for evil, God is using it for good by mobilizing his church to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the rest of the nation.

In the first year after our inception as a ministry, we spent more time praying and studying the Bible than anything else. As a result we’ve been blessed with miracle after miracle, one amazing encounter after another. God is faithful, and his words are true. There is no doubt this ministry is close to the heart of God, and through his power, grace, and wisdom we will bring this terrible crime against humanity to an end.

* * *

God has also transformed me through my work at All Girls Allowed. Growing up in China, I had no concept of when life begins. In December 2010, the first time I saw an ultrasound of an eight-week-old fetus, I was shocked by the human likeness of its form. Then a leader who teaches Chinese churches about human development showed me a link on the Endowment for Human Development website to a
National Geographic
DVD called
The Biology of Prenatal Development
.
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When I saw the tiny but clearly formed hands and legs, tears started pouring down my face. Only then did I realize that this was how the four little babies of mine had looked before they were sucked away into the pink foam.

Oh, my babies, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. If I had been taught the truth, I would have done everything I could to save you. . . . My God, please forgive me too.

My heart goes out to every young woman or mother who feels ashamed and saddened after her abortion experience. I know the pain and regret. I know the rocky road that lies ahead. How much I desire for you to know the hope and joy I now have and to know that God stands ready to offer forgiveness, healing, and a new life of peace and joy. All you have to do is accept the sacrifice of Jesus on your behalf. He will do the rest. In March 2011, when I read the book
Heaven Is for Real
, my heart leaped for joy when the little boy said he had seen his sister (who had been miscarried) in heaven.

So that’s where my four unborn children are
, I thought.
That’s where the four hundred million murdered Chinese children are—in heaven with Jesus
.

For the first time, I understand why I was kept alive and how God has prepared me each step of the way for this moment of history, for All Girls Allowed and more. Through my journey with God, he has removed my blindfold, showing me a world I never knew existed. I now have a deeper sense of God’s passion to save his children and creation, his love for humanity, and his forgiveness for me and for everyone. Not only has he healed me and forgiven me, he has also blessed me with a wonderful husband and three beautiful children. This journey has led me to understand more and more of God’s grace and forgiveness. If he can forgive
my
sins, whose sins can he not forgive? Whose sins can
I
not forgive?

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Sacred Spaces

In writing this book, I struggled for weeks to confront this part of my story. Though my journey to faith in Jesus and the founding of All Girls Allowed had brought me a measure of peace about my abortion experience, I still wasn’t fully free. At issue was the question of whether this part of my life should remain hidden and private or be shared publically in the hope that other women would come to be set free from the pain and regrets of the past. What I didn’t realize was that God had several more steps to take me through to fully heal my heart from the brokenness and shame. With his compassionate care, God was gradually peeling back layers to get to the core of my fear.

At first, I was tentative. The manuscript I submitted to my publisher mentioned the abortion with Feng in Paris and made passing reference to the time when I was eighteen and my father took me. But nobody knew about the others; the secret was still too painful and personal.

As I worked with my editor to develop the final manuscript, we went back and forth, trying to find the best way to include the abortion stories if I decided to share these personal details openly.

On April 15, 2011, I received the edited manuscript to review. Over the weekend, Bob and I read it and made our notes for corrections and revisions. Finally, on April 18, after we put the kids to bed, we had our first opportunity to sit down together and discuss the book. As Bob and I came to the chapters that talked about the abortions, everything we had been wrestling with over the past few weeks came to the surface.

Bob worried I would be judged harshly by people on both sides of the abortion debate and that the context of my decisions more than twenty years ago in a repressive country like China would be misunderstood in twenty-first-century America. He asked me some questions to prepare me for the responses I might face.

“How could you have so many abortions, especially after the first one was so painful?”

“How could you ever let yourself get pregnant again?”

“What possible benefit could there be of sharing this with the public?”