Life is a Joy

Note: Juda Myers agreed to share her story with us on Almost Aborted. For more information or to reach Juda directly, visit her website at Juda4Praise.com. -Steve

My mother was walking home from a movie late one night because the people who dropped her off were drunk and couldn’t drive back to get her. As she walked for several blocks a group of eight young men were on a street corner in a used car lot.

They beat her up and raped her. She told no one but packed up from her nanny job in St Louis and went home. Three months later she discovered she was pregnant.
Her mother wanted me dead.

She didn’t believe her daughter was raped. My mother took her parents to a priest hoping her mother would change her mind. Even after hearing the priest say, “Yes, an abortion would kill that baby,” my grandmother still wanted me dead.

My mother knew I was innocent and was not at fault. She knew she couldn’t destroy me. “I couldn’t kill a puppy or a kitten so I certainly couldn’t kill a baby”, she told me when I met her.

She managed with the help of a priest and a Methodist minister to get to a safe place, Catholic Charities, to give birth to me. She told me I probably wouldn’t have survived had it not been for them.

She placed me for adoption but a social worker secretly let her see me for a few minutes each day for the two week recovery period.

Even after enduring an eight man rape, a 36 hour delivery and 48 years separation, it didn’t diminish this woman’s love for her child. I was welcomed with open arms in December 2005 when we finally met 48 years later. When she told me about my conception the day we met, I just burst into tears. She was in a wheel chair and I was on my knees next to her. I put my head in her lap and she quickly patted me saying, “Honey, stop your cryin’, I’ve forgiven those men and look what God has done. He’s brought you back to me. God is faithful.” That certainly changed my perspective on everything and I too was able to forgive those men.

While the event surrounding my conception was absolutely not of God, I do know that my life is. He is the author of life not man. If man were the author then there would be no barren women.

Life is a joy with my two married sons and a married step daughter. Each of them has a child and my oldest son has another on the way. Five (and more to come) people are alive today because of one woman’s heroic decision.

I speak/sing internationally on life and forgiveness. I watch as God transforms minds and hearts to see life as a gift from God. Even people at Harvard changed their minds about abortion after listening to my testimony.

We can count the seeds in the apple but we can’t count the apples in the seed!