Nine years ago, April 29, 2010, I suffered a traumatic miscarriage. It was a turning point for me personally in my stand for life. Prior to that event I had been pro-life, but I had never shed a single tear over the issue of abortion. I knew in my heart and mind that abortion was wrong and grieved God’s heart, but I had never personally wept over the injustice of it. At that point I had been leading Bound4LIFE St. Louis with my husband for several years. This event in my life was the thing that finally broke my heart and showed me a glimpse of the Father’s heart for the unborn. It was this experience that opened the flood gates for me and brought the tears. It was also shortly after going through this that I got pregnant. It is always difficult to have hope and faith in God for a different outcome after going through loss and disappointment. I knew I wouldn’t make it through the pregnancy without a word from God, a promise that I could stand on. God brought me to Psalm 126:5-6. These verses have become my life verse and what I cling to.
“Those who sow with tears WILL reap with songs of JOY. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”
These verses would not have been as meaningful to me prior to the miscarriage because I didn’t know what it was to “sow in tears” that concept was completely foreign to me, but now I know. I have stood at my kitchen sink, on the sidewalk outside abortion clinics and courthouses, and in our prayer room and shed tears as I have prayed for LIFE in my state, and asked God to release the harvest of joy. In many ways I was pregnant with this promise of a harvest of joy for nine years! It was the longest pregnancy ever!
In February 2019, I happened to be at our state capitol with another pro-life organization on the very day that House Bill 126 passed the Missouri House of Representatives. It was a momentous occasion. This Bill was a sweeping pro-life piece of legislation that would ban abortions at 8 weeks, among other things. It was touted as the strongest pro-life bill in the nation! All that was great, but what caught my attention was the number. Bills are given a number based simply on when they are filed. This amazing pro-life bill just happened to be the 126th bill filled in this legislative session. God was speaking of my promise and I knew it immediately!
We continued to follow the progress of the bill as it made its way through our Senate. The Missouri legislature only meets from January until May, and it was the middle of April and the bill had not moved. It was in committee but was not making it to the floor for debate and a vote. We knew the time was short and if something didn’t happen to bring the bill to the floor for a vote the session would end before it had a chance and it would be over.
At the end of April I had 3 dreams in the span of a week, and a dear friend had another that we felt were clearly from God. In my dreams I was pregnant and giving birth, in each one there was an obstacle in the way of the baby being born and the process being completed. In my friend’s dream, I was also pregnant and had given birth to a baby we named “Steady Endurance”. We took all these dreams to the Lord in prayer and asked for revelation of what He was speaking so we could pray in line with God’s will for our state. Again God was speaking to me in numbers. I’m not a numbers person so this was very unusual. With each of my dreams I woke up during the 4am hour. We felt this was a strategic time frame and we needed to do something but we didn’t know what at first.
We prayed and felt 4am was the hour we needed to cover in prayer. So we got in touch with our House of Prayer leader and asked the House of Prayer to partner with our Bound4LIFE chapter on an extended 4am prayer strike until the bill passed. We had a small band of prayer warriors sign up to get up and pray at 4am, 2 people each day the Senate was in session. Along the way, God was speaking to us through His word and giving encouragement to keep going! I honestly don’t think I would be here telling this testimony if we had tried to do this alone, or if I had ignored the dreams and not taken them seriously. It’s exhausting to get up at 4am for an extended amount of time! Our prayer strike ended up lasting 3 weeks. As the legislative session was nearing it’s final weeks we watched the Senate calendar to see what day the bill might be scheduled for a vote. Finally, that day arrived. Wednesday May 15th, the bill was scheduled for a vote. Our state Senate has a live feed you can watch when they are in session so we tuned in. All day we watched and prayed. The debate went late into the night, and we began to sense from the Lord that things were happening behind the scenes that were attempts to water down the language of the bill. Senators were talking on the floor of the Senate, but it was just nonsense, asking questions of each other about what they had for lunch that day, or the weather. We knew this was a stalling tactic and that the real work was happening behind closed doors. We couldn’t be in those rooms, but we know someone who has access. We prayed. We stayed up all night watching and waiting for the vote. Finally, on Thursday morning May 16th, the last day of our scheduled prayer strike, at 4:01am it was announced in the Senate chamber that HB 126 had passed by a vote of 24-10. God is ever so faithful to His promises and I give Him all the glory!
God keeps His promises. For Nine years I stood on the promises in Psalm 126 for LIFE in my state. In God’s sovereignty the bill that helped to bring this about was number 126. By the end of the process through the House and Senate things were added and subtracted from the bill before it’s final passage, but one thing that has become the most instrumental is something called a trigger clause. The trigger stated that when the Supreme Court overturned the Landmark Roe Vs. Wade decision abortion would immediately be made illegal in Missouri. On June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court released their decision to overturn Roe vs. wade, Missouri was the first state in the nation to outlaw abortion. Fifteen minutes after that decision was released, Missouri was officially abortion free.
One Reply to “Abortion free Missouri-The HB 126 story”