A woman regretted two abortions and met God during a retreat.
Rachel MacKenzie’s Childhood
Rachel always wanted to be loved. But that was far from the childhood she experienced and her home was “a sick place to be.”
Her father suffered from schizophrenia and it became the reason why her parents eventually got separated when she was three.
Left with no choice, Rachel lived with her grandparents and uncles even though her grandma hated her. Moving out from her parents house was supposed to be a good move for her, but she learned she entered “a living hell.”
Her two uncles started sexually abusing her when she was six years old.
“I knew I wasn’t loved,” she said.
Because of that, Rachel started looking for love in different and wrong places. When she was 15 years old, she dated an older man. But she was raped.
Again.
It was like an endless cycle of looking for love but she would always end up being bruised and broken even more.
“I was like a glass vase. With the rape and abuse, I broke; and I’d go into every relationship broken, and then break again and again.”
Rachel Had Two Abortions
She became pregnant when she was 17 years old.
Photo Courtesy: YouTube | GBC News
“I was 17, but my emotional age was like a seven-year-old. It was just so messed up,” she said. “I just wanted to be unpregnant and wanted the problem to go away.”
When she was 22, she got pregnant again.
“I had two abortions because I didn’t want to be a mum, but abortion just made me a mum to dead children. That’s what people don’t recognize,” Rachel said.
Even after having two abortions, Rachel didn’t turn to God and continued living with shame and guilt, and her secret hidden from her mother.
Until she learned, during her early 30s, that her partner was having an affair. She broke up with him. But her then partner blackmailed her into signing the house they owned together. If she wouldn’t sign it, he’d tell her mother about her abortions.
It was evident that Rachel was struggling and a colleague noticed it and offered to pray for her.
“I said: ‘Does that mean my mum won’t know?’ And she said: ‘No! But maybe you need to know how much your mum loves you.’ I said: ‘No, she’s going to kill me.’”
Eventually, Rachel finally confided in her mum, and her response was something she didn’t expect. “Mum hugged me and said: ‘You don’t know how much I love you. You need God in your life. You need Rachel’s Vineyard.’”
She Met God During a Retreat
Rachel’s Vineyard is a healing ministry for those who are suffering from the trauma of abortions.
She didn’t immediately heed her mother’s advice as eight years passed, but her mother continually encouraged Rachel to seek God and His healing.
But when another relationship of hers ended, she gave in.
Rachel called her mother. “She said: ‘Rachel, why do you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results?’ In that second, God got me!”
During the retreat, she attended an anger workshop. “I said: ‘I’m not angry. I forgive my uncles for the abuse.’ But what I’d actually done was not work through that,” Rachel said.
“You can’t go over it, you can’t go round it, you’ve got to go through it.’ That’s the thing with grief and forgiveness.”
Rachel describes herself as “a changed person” after Rachel’s Vineyard retreat. “All I wanted to do was start one in England. But I knew I had to wait to be asked.”
Seven years later, after she had been sharing her testimony, the call finally came.
And now, Rachel is on the mission to help others who went through abortions.
God is able!
Reference: Premiere Christianity