A Heart for Freedom (41 page)

“What will people think of our children?”

“What will they say about your character?”

“Will our daughters be attacked by mean kids the way you’ve been attacked about Tiananmen?”

“After this book is published, can you ever go to another meeting at school and look the other parents in the eye?”

“How are you going to feel when heads turn to look at you?”

I’d seen an article in the
Washington Times
about the increasing number of abortions in China and how the demographics are shifting from one-child couples to young, single women.
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The photo accompanying the article showed a young Chinese woman in the recovery room of an abortion clinic in China. Though only the bottom half of her face was visible in the photo, I could see the sadness and remorse in her expression, and my heart was broken for her. I knew what this woman was going through and what kind of abusive and broken relationships she would continue to face in that society. I hoped that by telling my story, women like her would somehow be led to Jesus, the only one who can give them true hope, freedom, love, and happiness.

“Honey, think about it,” I said to Bob. “If we can save even one person by sharing this . . .”

“There might be another way,” he said.

Bob is the most loving, kind, compassionate husband I could ever hope for. He has loved me, supported me, and protected me in every way a husband can. When a reporter slammed me with false accusations about Tiananmen, Bob stood up to put forth the truth. This time, though, even he was at the end of his rope.

“I’m only saying these things to protect you and our family,” he said.

The same pain I felt when splitting up with Feng washed over me.
Is this the price of freedom? If I tell the truth about what happened to me, will it always lead to friction and fractures with the people I love the most? If I step out to do the work of All Girls Allowed—if I tell the truth about my own abortions so that other women might find hope and healing, will it all come crashing down on my family: my loving, supportive husband and my precious girls?

What bothered me the most was hearing the same tone from my husband that I recognized from my father, from Feng, and from critics of the Tiananmen movement.

“How could you let it happen?”

It was like the voices I’d heard in the sound of the train on my way home to Rizhao after the incident with the watch:
crush, crush, crush
. I prayed for Jesus to help me and went to bed in anguish.

* * *

Early the next morning, I received an e-mail from a woman in my small group at church about the Sacred Spaces the church had set up for people to come and meet with God during the days leading up to Easter. She had personally had a powerful experience there. Before I finished reading the e-mail, I called the office to cancel my morning meeting, took a shower, and drove to the church. If there was ever a time when I needed to meet the Lord, it was now.

The Sacred Spaces were a series of stops around the church campus, each with a particular theme and focus to draw our attention to God. I followed the process to prepare my heart to be quiet and open.

The second stop, in the church basement, was called Confession, based on 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

In a beautifully prepared pamphlet, I read the following description:

In any relationship, unresolved sin will have an impact on the closeness of the relationship. The same is true in our relationship with God. We can’t have intimacy with Christ as long as there is ongoing sin in our lives. Confession is necessary for the restoration of the relationship.

As our intimacy with Christ grows, our sins become less like breaking a command and more like betraying a loved one. When you adopt this attitude, confession becomes more like apologizing to a loved one rather than saying a simple prayer. It is not that God wants us to perform some elaborate ritual or jump through some religious hoop. It is that our hearts are broken and we truly desire to make things right.

We are compelled by Christ’s forgiveness to forgive others. Sometimes the sin we have in our lives is holding on to hurt or resentment or an unforgiving spirit. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you not only what sins you need to confess, but also whom you need to forgive.
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I followed the suggested action, which was to pray Psalm 139:23-24 quietly in my heart: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” As I read the psalm again, my heart was broken.

Each part of my past was brought up for examination in the presence of Jesus. With tears streaming down my face, I confronted the sex that had led to my abortions.

“Jesus, I am so sorry for doing something offensive to you. I am ashamed that I was not able to be the perfect daughter you wanted me to be, to be blameless in your sight. What does that say about my character? What does that say about my willpower, which was always so strong when it came to scholastic achievement? Now I have a blot on my record that makes me look so weak. Though I didn’t know about you for all those years, you know how much my heart was searching for you. I’m so grateful that you found me. But as I move forward to share these stories, the parts I have never shared with anyone, I feel so ashamed. All my life I thought I was pursuing justice to free my people—like Moses and Esther in the Bible; but now I am so broken before you. I feel more like Mary Magdalene, at risk of being stoned for my sins. How can I finish the work you have called me to with All Girls Allowed? How can anyone have any respect for me? Lord, show me your way. I know you are good. Help me to know the truth!”

As I was soaked in tears and despair, a distinct thought came into my heart:
Child, why are you so filled with fear and despair? In addition to the various circumstances and pressures that led you each time to the moment of consent, there is a part that you were afraid to admit to your husband—that is, the longing in your heart to be connected to and comforted by another being. But those desires and longings are ones that I placed in your heart. To be in awe of another being that I created in my image, the desire to give yourself to another, to be in love—I made you this way before the foundation of the world. I made you in my image to be able to connect and love. I am delighted in you. You are my treasured possession. There is no shame in what I have created in you. What you were searching for was connection to me. But there is a better way to find me and to achieve that everlasting love, which you now know through Jesus . . .

Like sunshine displacing a dark cloud, I sensed a light had gone on in my heart. It was true; I had been afraid to admit what had led to my consent in those relationships.

* * *

Continuing to follow the instructions for the Confession step, I wrote a long list of people I needed to forgive. But my heart was still heavy. I prayed for the Holy Spirit to show me whom else I needed to forgive. The answer brought another torrent of tears. In my heart, I sensed God saying,
The one you really need to forgive is yourself. I have forgiven you and am delighted in you. You should forgive yourself, too.

In that moment, for the first time in forty years, I felt truly free to just be a child. I felt released from the pressure of all the years when I was expected to be the perfect grown-up, though I was still a young girl, when any small mistake led to severe scolding or punishment. For most of my life—beginning with my father’s disappointment when I came home from the foster home; to the pressure I felt to maintain outstanding scores in school; to the embarrassment of not making it into the physics department at Beida; to the shame and regret I felt for all the abortions; to the attack on my character that grew on a simple twisting and manipulation of one little paragraph in my “last will and testament”; to the misunderstandings I’ve had over the years, even with Bob, the most loving husband I can imagine, who was now asking me these tough questions—I’ve felt as if I had to live up to an impossibly high standard if I wanted to be accepted and loved. But now I felt the love of God, who accepts me just as I am and who allows me simply to be his child. As I embraced the freedom that comes with God’s forgiveness, I found myself able to let go of the past and forgive others as well.

* * *

The next station in the Sacred Spaces was Listening, and a key verse was Hebrews 12:1: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

I wanted to embrace this new freedom and continue the race, but my heart was still burdened and my head was bent down. As I closed my eyes to listen and wait for the Lord, a rush came over my body, as if I had just drunk a cup of hot chocolate from heaven—not too sweet, but filled with warmth and a joy beyond my state of sorrow. I felt my head gently lifted, from left to right, and my gaze directed upward. I felt so special, as if the heavenly Father was saying, “
Wipe away your tears; look at me now
.” I felt embraced by light and sunshine. “You, L
ORD
, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high” (Psalm 3:3).

The guidelines for the station instructed me to listen to God and identify anything that was hindering me from following him. Then I was to write that thing on a smooth stone and take the stone with me to a bridge leading out of the Listening station. Before I crossed the bridge—which symbolized determination to follow God with no turning back—I was to drop the stone by the wayside, leaving all hindrance behind me.

As I listened for God’s voice and wisdom, I knew what to write on my stone:
fear of what others may think of me
. That’s what was stopping me from following God with my whole heart. I was afraid of other people’s opinions. With a desire for freedom welling in my heart, I wrote my fear on the stone, dropped it along the way, and crossed the bridge.

After a while, I went on to the last station—Meditation—where I found many Scripture verses displayed on banners. One verse in particular jumped out at me:

Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. . . . I will be their God and they will be my children. (Revelation 21:3-4, 7)

Later that afternoon, when I told my friend Tammy what I had experienced at the Listening station, she exclaimed, “Wow, you met the Lord today! That was who was speaking to you, Ling. God has accepted you and embraced you for who you are. And he was doing something very powerful this morning. He was peeling away all the layers of shame that are wrapped around those events. He’s breaking them off and setting you free.”

Her words were so powerful that I didn’t know quite how to digest them.

That night, when I was putting my middle daughter to bed, she wanted me to stay in her room and wait for her to fall asleep. In the quiet darkness, I ran through the events of the day in my mind, asking, “Lord, was that really you? You came, bent down, and lifted my face up from shame to praise.” I felt my head lifted up again, this time from left to right and from right to left. I felt the Lord was taking me out through the walls and windows into the open sky, and he was taking me with him, dancing, twirling, and flying. I saw many lights in the darkness—of cities, mountains, and stars. With delight, I experienced beautiful feelings of love and joy, flying freely in the evening sky.

* * *

When I shared this experience with Bob and told him what Tammy had said, he was glad but still had reservations about including the abortion stories in the book. I talked to several Christian friends, and they suggested I continue to pray about it. In the meantime, I kept going up and down on the emotional roller coaster.

The day before Easter, Bob and I took our children to the Sacred Spaces stations before they were taken down for the season. There, in the Journaling station, as I read from the book of Ephesians—“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”—I felt the Lord speaking to my heart: “
Look at my apostle Paul, who persecuted the church. What do you have to be worried about? I know your desire is to be holy and perfect. But none of my saints has ever been perfect: Abraham, Moses, David, Saul, Peter. There is only one who is holy and blameless; that is my son, Jesus. Don’t try to be God. Just be my child
.”

As I read, words and phrases jumped off the page at me, reassuring me of God’s love and forgiveness and of his purpose for my life.

He chose us in him before the creation of the world
to be holy and blameless
in his sight.
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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with
the riches of God’s grace
that he
lavished
on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
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