There’s part of Olivia’s story that not many people know about, I’ll do my best to do it justice. More as time goes on, I associate much hope with Olivia’s story. I knew it wouldn’t end where it did in the hospital that day.
We left Hawaii (our 5th anniversary celebration) without our third baby. I can’t even begin to describe what it felt like to leave such a huge part of my heart as we flew out that day. Things happened so fast that it really felt like a dream. I kept staring down at my stomach in disbelief that our baby wasn’t there anymore.
Over time, my heart has healed some, and every day I’m a day closer to being “whole” again. In the following weeks and months after our trip, the Lord started to highlight some very significant things in my past that I feel in no way could be “coincidence”.
Ever since I was young, I’ve known that if I would spend my life “campaigning” for something, it would be for unborn babies’ right to life. I love babies, since I was two years old if there was a baby in the room it was like a magnetic force, I couldn’t keep my hands off of them.
I lived in Hawaii for a few of my teen years while my parents served with YWAM. I loved every second of it. I loved the lifestyle, the people, the culture…everything. Nothing spoke of God’s power to me like the ocean. I could stand in awe at its edge for hours. I loved being surrounded by God’s magnificence.
A few years after we moved back to the mainland, I returned to Kona to do an Intro to Children’s Social Services school with YWAM. Each of us students were there because God had put a burning passion for an area of children at risk in our hearts. For me it was unborn babies and unwed mothers. I knew that I wanted to spend some time of my life serving in these areas. At the end of the semester our main grade project was to study and do a presentation for the class on our area of children at risk. I spent weeks studying and gathering statistics on abortion in Kona. It is astonishing how much we don’t see until we really look.
Fast forward to 2005, the Lord strategically removed me from (a) situation I was in and placed me in my favorite place in the world, Kona, Hawaii, to draw closer to the Lord and “get back on track” with Him. To make a very long story short, my forever dream of “getting married, barefoot in the sand” came to pass within a few short months. Bruce and I got married on June 17th, 2005. (Who knew that we’d be burying our third child there just 5 years later??)
A couple weeks after we lost Olivia, I was having an especially hard day. It was complete turmoil and it was deeper than any sadness I have ever felt. I spent hours wailing on my face, many people were praying for me, and it was very obvious that something deeper was going on. At the end of the day, we got a phone call from a family friend who had spoken to a friend in Kona. She had found out that the doctor that was “on-call” the night I went into pre term labor was the #1 abortion doctor on the island, who was also an OB. He performs abortions in that hospital on a regular basis. What? How can you do both? How can you practice such extremities? I will never be able to describe the anguish I felt the moment I found out that the doctor that refused to help me was an abortion doctor. I felt so dirty that he even touched me or my baby.
We’ve since found out that there are no pro life doctors in Kona. We’ve also found out that we were not the only ones who have suffered this sort of tragedy under the care of this particular doctor.
After the Lord has brought these things to remembrance, I can’t help but to think that Lord will use Olivia’s life to fuel a fire that has always burned deep in my heart. I’m not sure how yet, but I feel like the Lord is already beginning something in Hawaii, while he’s stirred my heart to fight for unborn babies and bring awareness to this area of darkness on the islands.
I just wanted to get this on paper because there’s a sort of personal accountability in writing things down. I don’t want to just drop this and say, “oh well, my baby died in the hands of an abortion doctor in Kona, that’s really too bad”. There’s got to be more to this. So I pray that the Lord will continue to cement this in our hearts and connect us with locals in Hawaii so that we can help bring change to these amazing people. I look forward to fighting for them. I have no idea what, when or how, but I fully believe that as Bruce and I make ourselves available, the Lord will use us to make himself known in this area.
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