Marie Lourdes

By Beth McHoul

A lady came to our Women's Program several months ago pregnant. Her husband had died and she was raising her two children and found herself pregnant not planning to be. She was despondent and decided to abort. She was many weeks pregnant at the time.

When she came to us and we talked her into carrying the baby with the promise we would take the child into the adoption program once the baby was born. She could come every week for prenatal care and encouragement. She was a faithful member of our program until the earthquake and then we never saw her again. We wondered many times if she would still place her baby for adoption.

I figured she had the baby elsewhere or perhaps even died in the quake. I thought we might never know what became of her. She was a lovely lady attentive to the lessons of the program and had a gentleness about her.

She arrived today just before class started with a 3 month old baby in her arms! She held her baby so lovingly in her arms while she told me she lost her other two children, boys ages 9 and 11 in the earthquake. Crushed under the cement of their classrooms.

She proudly showed me her little one, the light of her life in a dark time. The baby she did not want had become her reason for getting up in the morning. Her unwanted baby had become her gift in a time of sorrow.

We will never understand the sorrows the earthquake has brought but we rejoice in the hope of a life saved. A life that now brings joy and peace. Such joy.