Why I Chose Child Abuse over Abortion

I didn’t say to someone when I was in my mother’s womb, “I know if I’m born I’ll get abused – I choose abuse over abortion.” I didn’t say that because unborn children can’t speak for themselves.

Had I known every heartbreak in my life before I was born, I would still have chosen life over abortion.

Let’s pretend a moderator had interviewed me in the womb.

Moderator: “If you are born, you will face years of sexual abuse from your father. He will start raping you when you are eleven. He will get you pregnant twice, then heat up your mother’s knitting needles and perform two backwoods, medically unsupervised abortions to hide his crime. You will nearly die both times and it will take you weeks to recover. You will miss a lot of school and fail math. He will beat you up, stomp on you, throw things at you and threaten to kill you if you tell anyone. You can avoid all that by being aborted now.”

Me: “There will be some good days and good times. I want to live.”

Moderator: “It won’t be easy even when you escape abuse. You’ll be homeless with no money. You will live under a bridge in the back of a truck. Even on the coldest days of winter, you will wash yourself and your clothes in the river. You will be miserable.”

Me: “I will find ways to cope and become a stronger person because of hardship. I want to live.”

Moderator: “You will have a son. You will spend more than seven years as a single parent, working two and three jobs to make ends meet. One time you’ll be so tired after working all night, getting your son off to school, then going back to work at 11:30 a.m., that you drive your truck to a shopping center parking lot, let your son go visit the toy shop, lock the doors and sleep in the cab in freezing weather. You hate being cold.”

Me: “I want to live.”

Moderator: “You will be heartbroken because your son is chronically ill and doctors don’t know what’s wrong. Seeking medical help, you will drive over Donner Summit in the winter in a truck with no defroster. As you drive over the mountain, you will be constantly scraping ice off the outside, then the inside of the windshield so you can see. The truck will break down and you will be two years without your own transportation.”

Me: “I will love my son. I want to live.”

Moderator: “You will want to be a writer. You will spend 40 years sending out manuscripts and getting rejections back. Working two and three jobs at a time, you won’t have opportunity to research the market. Many times, you won’t have enough money for postage to send out your books. You will get so frustrated that you feel like slamming your head against a concrete wall.”

Me: “I want to live.”

Moderator: “More tragedies. All on the same day, your mother dies and you can’t plan to attend her funeral because your husband is sent home from the hospital to die; your sheepdog dies, and your truck catches on fire in downtown San Antonio.”

Me: “I want to live.”

Moderator: “You will get scammed out of your property by a drug-addicted con, and a pastor you trusted. You will live in an open-ended garden center with no indoor plumbing and no kitchen or bathroom facilities. You will take cold water showers with the garden hose. In the winter, you will put up hay bales and wrap up your little living area in plastic to keep out the cold – it’s all you can afford. Wildlife will share the garden center with you – even wasps and scorpions. You will eat one meal a day and survive on granola bars the rest of the time. The legal system will fail you, and you will be broke and homeless again.”

Me: “I want to live. I might be broke, I might be homeless – but I will never be poor.”

Because I lived, I taught in Christian schools in two different states and remain in contact with some of my former students who claim I had a positive influence in their lives.

Because I lived, I worked on newspapers in three different states, writing stories that uplifted and helped others.

Because I lived, I was honored by God with the most awesomely wonderful son any mother could ever have, the late Marine Corps Major Luke Gaines Parker. Even after his Nov. 17, 2013 plane crash, Luke continues to bless others with the writing, memories, and Christian example he left behind. Because Luke lived, he leaves behind daughter Dulcinea, who makes the world a better place. All that was possible because – first of all – I lived.

Because I lived, I am now married to a marvelous husband, Reverend Alan T McKean, the author of time travel-adventure books The Scent of Time, The Scent of Home and the soon-to-be-released The Scent of Eternity. Because I lived, we live in the lovely Black Isle of Scotland, working together in his ministry.

Because I was abused, not aborted, I have written six “inspirational,” “life-changing” books, which include the pro-life adventure-romance, Love’s Beating Heart – a book which readers say helped them choose life and adoption for their unborn instead of abortion.

Child abuse is unforgivable. It should never happen. Abortion is ultimate child abuse – it tortures the child, then murders him or her.

What about you? Life hasn’t been easy. Would you have chosen abortion over life?

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Death, Dying and Shadows

Having just said goodbye to my 37-year-old son, U.S. Marine Corps Major Luke Gaines Parker, (Aug. 19, 1976 – Nov. 17, 2013), I feel qualified to write about death, dying and shadows. Death because a memorial service was held for Luke; shadows because they are illusions.

Luke was born hyperactive before it became a buzz word and was diagnosed with learning disabilities, all of which he overcame. When Luke wanted to learn something, he did. He learned to whitewater raft, rock climb, scuba dive, play a trumpet and piano, fly an airplane. When he wanted his own plane, he found and purchased one of 19 remaining Focke Wulfs in the world. He worked his way up from learner, to instructor, to an instrument rating. He performed aerobatic maneuvers at air shows and wrote smoke messages in the sky.

As a Marine, Luke worked his way up from enlisted to Major. He served six tours of duty in war zones – saw many of his Marine Corps buddies die – and returned home from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which he overcame. But this isn’t about Luke – it’s about shadows.

Shadows are illusions. Shadows aren’t real. They can’t hurt you. People can make shadow animals on the wall – even sharks and wolves – but the shadow critters are harmless. They can’t bite.

Death is unpopular. It gets bad PR. People think of death as an end. It’s scary. They see death as the worst thing that can happen. Death is not the end of life; it’s the beginning of eternal life. Death is what we label the passage from this earth into Heaven where there is no more death, dying, sorrow, illness, pain or sorrow. Death stands between this restless world and eternal joy.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen. Today at a nursing home, I saw the worst; lonely people with no one to visit them or care; people whose bodies and minds have worn out ahead of death’s arrival. Some screamed and cried for help because imaginary fiends – real to them – bit and crawled under their clothing. Some slumped over in their chairs, lacking strength to straighten up. Some sat, head lolling, drooling, useless arms ending in claw-like appendages that had once been functional hands.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen. Today at a prison, I saw hopelessness in eyes once bright with wonder; human bodies held captive in cold metal cages, trapped in a dreamless land of no hope, no future.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen. Today I saw a drug addict with bleeding gums and pussy sores on his face sitting in the cold rain, shivering, and talking to invisible companions as he held a paper cup and begged for money for his next fix.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen. Today I saw an alcoholic mother in an uncontrollable spate of weeping because her young daughter had run away from home and she had sobered up enough to realize that it was her neglect and abuse that sent the young girl rushing out into a dangerous, uncertain future.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen. Today I saw an abused child with cigarette burns and bruises on his thin arms and face and shattered trust written across his face because the parents who should have loved and protected him had turned on him with anger and hate.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen. Jesus asked, “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” If this life is all there is to life – then death is indeed an enemy and the worst thing that can happen.

Luke lived his 37 years to the fullest because he walked with God. Even when other people around him did, Luke never drank alcohol or used profanity. He attended church, read his Bible, and was a great father to his young daughter. Within three days of his death, I received 850 messages expressing sorrow and commending his life – because it was a life lived with God. He flew his beloved Focke Wulf through the shadow of death into the arms of Jesus.

Do I miss my son? Dreadfully. Am I incapacitated by grief? No. Death is a shadow. Shadows are harmless, powerless illusions. Death doesn’t deserve such a bum rap. There are many things in this life worse than death.

Link to six Christian mystery-romance-suspense novels: http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Fog Vision

Since childhood, I have loved fog. It shrink wraps the world into a manageable space and draws mysterious misty stage curtains across the landscape hiding imperfections. For the writer, it falls gently down into the world like fresh inspiration for a stalled novel. Background for dreams – new fire for romance.

Non-writers hate fog. For drivers and pilots, the opaque, morphing water droplets translate into a nightmare. Limited vision endangers travelers, slows down roadway traffic and clogs up the skies.

Me? I love fog. It reminds me of all the times in my life when the future has been as invisible and uncertain as ground to sky clouds that hide and confuse. Like a dog looking for a comfy place to nestle in grass, I’ve turned endless circles around present circumstances in an effort to find a storm-cleared path past present trials and hurts. I’ve looked for a warm, level, sunbathed path to an idyllic future.

If that describes your search – give it up. This is earth, not heaven, and there are no easy paths. Everyone has trials, testings, troubles, heartbreaks, failures, disappointments and hurts in their lives. You wouldn’t want to exchange sets of problems with another person. Their circumstances might be worse!

Having survived child abuse, living under a bridge, single-parenting, having my property stolen out from under me while I lived in an open-ended garden shed with no running water, bathroom or kitchen facilities and no heat in the winter – I consider myself an expert on hard times and survival. It helps to live in the fog.

When you learn to trust two Bible verses – in everything give thanks and all things work together to them that love the LORD – you travel through life in a spiritual fog that protects you from pain and injury. You still have to work hard. You still have to face problems, trials, temptations and grief. But you can ride through these like rainbow reflections on soap bubbles.

It’s not necessary to see where you’re going in the fog just so you make it safely to your destination. With Jesus in control, safe travel is guaranteed!

Lighthouse in the fog, Fortrose, Scotland

Seagull parents & baby battery

Unlike the U.S. where most schools have running tracks, the sports field here in Fortrose, Scotland, is a grassy field. When I went running today, I got dive bombed by two seagulls. The birds repeatedly swooped down at head level and split the air with high-pitched shrieks and constant chortles, clearly angry. About halfway around the field, I discovered the source of their anger. Three babies were sunbathing in the grass and attempting short, floppy bursts of flight. The parents were defending their babies.

Oh, for human parents with the love, compassion and action to defend their children with the courage of those gulls. I must have outsized and outweighed those parents 50 to one, yet they were fearless when confronted by what they perceived as a threat to their young. Every human parent should follow the example of those gulls.

Miz Mike, in my Sunpenny-published Christian mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere, is Texan to the core – and kind. Her kindness evaporates when a kidnapper snatches her youngest grandson. When the kidnapper is finally captured, Miz Mike is on the culprit like ticks on a wild deer. A human version of protective seagulls.

If seagulls, deemed “nuisance birds” by some, can be such loyal parents, why can’t humans? The label of “child abuse” shouldn’t exist because there should be no child abuse.

Abortion is the ultimate form of child abuse. Action-centered, caring individuals flock to good causes: saving marine life; supporting no-kill shelters for dogs and cats; running retirement centers for horses; protesting the slaughter of wild animals to feed the fur industry; saving whales, trees and spotted owls. But where are those same compassionate activists when unborn children with beating hearts are impaled, sliced and diced and tossed into garbage cans like debris? Why aren’t some of these animal-loving humans speaking for unborn children who can’t speak for themselves? Why aren’t they demanding that unborn children be given the choice of life?

Love’s Beating Heart, a parallel adventure, paints a pro-life choice that allows readers to decide the abortion VS pro-life issue. Teen Natasha North is pregnant. Her stepfather threatens to kill her if she doesn’t get an abortion. Not sure that abortion is right, Tash and her best friend Dena run away. Hiding sends the teens on a wild river ride on a flooded Texas Hill Country river. Meanwhile, Dena’s older sister Cat escapes from an abusive boyfriend and is rescued by a Christian family. The more Cat helps Dallas homeschool the children, the more Cat decides the Creekmore family suffers from religious insanity…and yet…she would like to replace Dallas as Sky Creekmore’s wife. Love’s Beating Heart is non-stop action, adventure and suspense, with the sweet spice of romance tossed into the redolent mix. Called “inspirational” and “life-changing” by readers, Love’s Beating Heart was written to paint the possibility of adoption as a loving option. The regret and guilt that frequently stalks women who have had abortions are twin giant joy killers. The inspiration for Love’s Beating Heart? As the Bible says, “ask the birds of the air, they will tell you.”

As human parents, the choice is ours. Are we seagulls or baby batterers?