I stopped writing these because I am just so limited in what I can say because of confidentiality.

So rather than saying something I shouldn’t, I just stopped writing these posts.

But I am still very much involved with the Crisis Pregnancy Center and loving every minute of it.

I have counseled many women and feel comfortable doing this now. I’ve learned a lot. There are still times when I need to ask the director about certain things, but I feel like I finally “know what I am doing” and I am just so thankful for the opportunity to be involved in this ministry.

I have also learned the computer system so that I can help the director keep our files updated and in the system. It took some time to learn the system but, when I was at the CPC and was doing computer work in between seeing clients, I told the director “I finally feel like I am getting the hang of this system!” and it felt so good to say that.

I love being involved in a ministry who is there to help women make an educated decision about what to do concerning their pregnancies.

It will be interesting to see where God leads me with this ministry because I can totally see myself working/volunteering there once my girls are grown.

Two weeks ago, I completed the training process and the director signed me off to be able to start seeing clients!

I was not able to go in last Tuesday, but the Tuesday I finished my training I had an awesome experience.

Part of my training was to observe counseling sessions with other volunteers.

On that day a client walked in and I immediately thought, She is going to want to talk about adoption.

Turns out, I was correct.

This was my first opportunity to speak with a client with another volunteer present. I didn’t say much because she was emotional and didn’t need to be bombarded with lots of information, but I did share with her that adoption has changed a lot over the past few decades.

And then I told her that I am a mother because of adoption. I shared with her that I am not able to get pregnant and my two daughters are adopted.

She just listened intently.

I got up and went to gather a few adoption brochures for her and came back and told her that she has plenty of time to think this through but if she wants to learn more about adoption, I’d be happy to talk to her more when she is ready.

The following week I was given the task of calling her to follow up and see how she was doing.

It was my very first time speaking with a client on the phone and it was a very positive phone conversation for both of us.

I love being able to share about adoption with those that desire to learn more.

Adoption certainly has changed over the past few decades and it is a great privilege to be able to share what adoption has meant for me over the past five years.

I look forward to the next phase of this process.

A process that began in January when God began tugging on my heart on Sanctity of Life Sunday and I knew He was calling me to volunteer at the Crisis Pregnancy Center.

I am so very thankful for the extensive training I have received and now I am looking forward to jumping in with both feet and allowing God to use what He has done in my life to help others.

I got to sit in on a counseling session last week.

It was heartbreaking to hear the client speak about abortion and use the term “egg” instead of “baby” when talking about what medication taken to abort does. Misguided information.

One of the main services we provide is abortion education.

We do not show gory pictures of aborted fetuses. Or DVDs that condemn abortion. None of that is necessary.

What we do is provide facts about abortion procedures so that the women coming into our Center can make an educated decision about the life of their unborn baby.

If a woman is willing and meets the requirements, we provide a free ultrasound so that she can actually see her baby growing in her womb.

Ninety percent of women who walk into our Center and have an ultrasound, do not abort.

I guess this would be a situation where seeing is believing.

They see that what is on the screen is not just an “egg” or some clumps of tissue but a well-formed, tiny human being.

*****

I also got to do something this week that I simply love!

Organize!!!

The Center is beginning the transition of using one program instead of another. The materials for the new program was in the way-back closet of the Center.

The director mentioned that she was going to have to come in one day and somehow move all the materials and organize them on some shelves in her office so that they will be easily accessible to the counselors.

A job she was dreading, it seemed.

So I asked, “Would you like for me to move everything and organize it all?”

She didn’t delay in accepting my offer!

I went in the back closet and found the biggest box I could find. I put brochures and pamphlets that were on the shelves in her office in the box and then moved them to the bookcase where the new materials had been.

Then I loaded up the box with the new materials and organized everything in their new locations.

It looked quite nice when I left! I love making a “mess” look orderly and neat!

During the training, we watched a video titled “Sex – The Rules Have Changed”.

It was very eye opening to me about a situation that has swept in across the teenagers of America. The horrifying truth is that many teens are living uneducated about the seriousness of contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and many teens are living under the assumption that if they are using condoms, they are safe, and that is just not the case.

While condom use is on the rise, making pregnancy rates on the decline, the number of teens who have contracted a STD is rising at alarming rates. This clearly indicates that condoms do not protect from contracting a STD, yet the majority of teens are living under the assumption that using a condom is “safe sex”.

The rules have changed. Safe sex isn’t safe.

The Center tries to inform any teenager that walks through the doors of this information so that they will hopefully make life-changes that could possibly one day save their life or the life of their unborn children.

The video shared the story of a teenage couple who gave birth to a baby who ended up in the NICU shortly after birth because she was having unexplainable seizures. Later it was discovered that her father had contracted herpes from a previous girlfriend. The mother of this baby had contracted herpes from this father and the baby contracted herpes from the mother.

This young couple was told that their baby may not survive and if she did, she would be severely mentally handicapped. She did survive and is mentally retarded — all because of a STD her father contracted by sleeping with his girlfriend.

STDs have become an epidemic in the USA. This year 15 million Americans will contract a STD. Two-thirds of that population will be under the age of 25 years old. That is 10 million people…or the equivalent of 200 football stadiums filled to capacity.

Those are staggering numbers that loudly declare this problem has become epidemic in the USA.

And yet, many teens are completely unaware of this! Why is this video and information not included in sex education class in schools??

Twenty-five percent of teenagers have a STD and 80% of that percentage have no symptoms because, depending on the STD, it can take 5-10 years for symptoms to show.

HPV is the most common STD and accounts for 25-30% of all cervical cancer cases. Early cervical cancer symptoms are being seen in teenagers – teenagers!! Forty-six percent catch HPVV after one episode of intercourse. The cervical cells in teenagers are weaker and less able to fight off diseases.

The only way to have safe sex is to postpone sex until marriage. That is certainly not something teens want to hear.

But teens are not considering the emotional side of sex. There is a very strong correlation between teen sex, depression and suicide.

Girls are three times more likely to attempt suicide if sexually active and boys are eight times more likely. Thirty-three percent of teens have attempted suicide.

Teenagers need to hear this. They need to know there is another way. A way that leads them to genuine love  between one man and one woman for life. The way God intended marriage and the sexual relationship to be.

Girls need to be taught that they are worth saving their bodies for the man they will one day marry. And they are worth more than one teenage boy after another coming along and taking a piece of them away after each sexual encounter that they can never get back.

After several sexual partners, they don’t care about themselves anymore. They feel like an old, worn out, used shoe.

Girls, from early on, need to be taught that they are not an old, used shoe – they are the Glass Slipper and they have something precious that they can save for their future husband.

Virginity is not “old school”. It is God’s way and His ways are perfect. Always.

Not sure how many teens come across this blog, but I encourage anyone reading this to take this post and information and get it out there so that teens can know the dangers they are facing!

*All information and statistics were taken from the video, “Sex – The Rules Have Changed”.

This past weekend I attended the two-day training to be a counselor at the Crisis Pregnancy Center!

The training was phenomenal and I enjoyed every minute of sitting in class. I had not sat in a class, as the student, in over five years and it was fun to be learning new information that I will apply soon at the Center.

The director had given me a copy of the Manuel weeks ago and had asked me to read two of the chapters. I didn’t stop with those two chapters and at the training last weekend, I was so glad I had already familiarized myself with the majority of the material because a lot of material was covered in those two days.

Now, I am so excited to actually get started as a counselor! I feel I have all the head knowledge I could possibly need and it is time to jump in and apply what I have learned to actual counseling sessions with clients.

It is a little nerve-wracking to think about talking to a client on my own, but I know I won’t ever feel comfortable doing this unless I just start doing it!

I will now go through Orientation at the specific Center I will be volunteering at and then once that is complete, I can start to counsel women one-on-one.

There is a program for clients who choose adoption. Once a woman decides she wants to make an adoption plan for her baby, she is paired with a counselor who walks that journey with her. The counselor is involved in every aspect of her adoption process – from doctor appointments to delivery – and I would absolutely love to eventually get into volunteering in that program.

One aspect of the training over the weekend that I enjoyed most was really gaining a better understanding of the overall focus of the Center: it is to show God’s love to others.

The Center is there to meet women who may find themselves in a crisis pregnancy and in loving, compassionate ways, educate them on their options so that they can make a decision they can hopefully live with for the rest of their lives.

We are not there to judge them or to persuade them to make a particular choice for their baby.

We are there to demonstrate God’s love to them while educating them on a decision that will affect the rest of their lives.

I also particularly enjoyed the last two sessions of the training because the instructor taught us step-by-step how to counsel a woman on her first visit to the Center.

It is very important that the counselor be sensitive to her immediate needs and address those immediate needs before diving into deeper issues at hand.

If the client is open and in an emotional state to be able to take in and begin processing information about abortion and adoption, we can begin to educate her on these topics through our words and brochures.

What happens after that visit is the Lord’s work. We are just the vessels He uses to hopefully make these women aware of abortion procedures and that adoption is completely different than what it was two and three decades ago.

After the initial visit, we hope the client will return again for an ultrasound to be able to see her baby (90% of women do not choose abortion once they have seen the baby on ultrasound) and for further counseling sessions as the woman processes information and makes a decision about what she wants to do concerning her pregnancy.

I feel tremendously blessed that God has called me to this place. I am somewhat nervous getting started, but I know that is just a matter of needing to get my feet wet and start actually counseling women as they come into the Center.

I know the Lord goes before me in this work. He has been preparing me to do this work for the past five years as I walked through my own crisis in life.

I am now as ready as I’ll ever be to just get started!

I would like to write about and share my experiences at the Crisis Pregnancy Center here on my blog, however, I obviously cannot share about clients and talk specifically about their situations. So, when I write I will title these posts “CPCTales” and share specifics as they relate to me and my own journey through adoption and now as a crisis pregnancy center counselor in training.

This week at the Crisis Pregnancy Center, I was a little disappointed. I was about to head into another counseling session with an experienced counselor but at the very last minute, they decided it would be best that I not be in there because the situation was “drama filled”.

While I totally understand this, I was disappointed because I know the best way for me to learn is to see other counselors in action.

That is the way I learned to be a successful teacher. I would go to my friend’s classroom (sometimes skipping school to go to her classroom on those “do nothing” days in high school) and sit and soak in everything. I watched how she interacted with the students, I watched as she dealt with behavior issues and I watched how she taught the students.

At the time, I did not realize how much I was learning, but when it came time for me to play the role of “teacher” during my internship (in her classroom!) and then when I had my very own first class in the fall of 2003 (which was my internship class!), everything that I had learned while observing my friend in action poured out of me.

I was a successful teacher because of everything that I watched my friend do as a teacher.

Sure you can learn by reading materials and going to college to get an education, but when it came to being a successful teacher, I needed to get into a real classroom, with real students and a real teacher and see scenarios happen before my eyes and observe how my friend handled things. I soaked everything up like a sponge.

I felt like not being allowed to be in the room that day with the counselor took away a valuable learning experience for me. But, like I said, I totally understood and it is always important to do what is best for our clients.

Later though, I was asked if I would be willing to share my adoption experiences with that client because, given her circumstances, they felt talking to me might educate her on some options that she wasn’t currently aware of.

Of course I agreed to talk to her if she wanted to.

Immediately, I started thinking about what in the world I would say! I thought, But I haven’t gone through the official training yet! What if I say the wrong thing?!

And so I stopped right there and just prayed that if God opened the door for me to speak with this client, that He would give me the words to say.

And suddenly I realized I didn’t need to have a script on what to say in this situation. I simply needed to let the contents of my heart overflow so that this client’s eyes would be opened to the beautiful option of adoption, should that be a choice she would like to consider for her unborn baby.

Turns out the client needed to be on her way and did not want to talk to me.

That was another disappointment, but I realized that was just a glimmer of things to come.

I look forward to the day when I can talk to my very first client (although I know I will be shaking like a leaf on the inside!) and provide information to her on her options now that she finds herself in a crisis pregnancy.

My two-day training seminar to be a counselor at the Crisis Pregnancy Center is coming up in June!

I have been going to the center on Tuesdays for a few weeks now to do various training activities.

This Tuesday, I got to sit in on a counseling session with one of the counselors who has been with this center for many years. It was my first time to see a counseling session first-hand and I was thrilled for the opportunity.

It was the client’s first visit. A pregnancy test is usually administered on the first visit.

The client brought her little cup into the counseling room and then all three of us walked over to the table so that the client could put some drops of her urine onto the test.

Standing at the table, with the pregnancy test laid out before us, I realized that my heart was literally pounding.

I had to stifle laughter.

I cannot remember the last time I took a pregnancy test. It has been years. YEARS!

But just the sight of that pregnancy test made my heart start pounding – just like it did all those years ago when it was time to test.

But this wasn’t even MY test!

I literally had to tell myself while standing there, “Elaine, calm down!!! This isn’t YOUR test!”

I was the time keeper.

We went back to the couches and I was to let them know when four minutes had passed.

Oh, the memories.

Memories of my heart pounding out of my chest as I stood in the bathroom for an eternity waiting for four minutes to pass so I could look at the little window and hope with everything within me that I would see two lines staring back at me.

Four minutes passed and we went back to the table.

There were two very obvious, dark lines on the window of that pregnancy test. It was the first positive pregnancy test I had ever seen.

One might think that experiencing something like that would bring back all the emotional baggage of infertility for me, but it did not – at all.

There was only relief.

Relief that chapter of my life story is in the past.

I know there was a time during my walk through infertility when witnessing a positive pregnancy test from a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant would have been something that I wouldn’t have been able to handle.

But I stand ready now.

Because of my infertility, I have a message to share with women who clearly do not want to parent but also might be a little uncertain about the option of adoption.

I am so blessed that God has brought me to this place. I hope God will use my story to help someone who is in a crisis pregnancy see that adoption is a beautiful option.

I wrote a couple weeks ago that this year is the first year in five years where family planning won’t be on the forefront of my mind.

Coming to this point in my life left me thinking about what my purpose in life is now.

The fact that I suddenly felt like something was missing and I needed to figure out what it was really surprised me because I firmly believe my calling in my life right now is to be a stay a home mother to my daughters.

And I am completely satisfied in that role.

There is nothing in this life I would rather do, but I still felt that pull that perhaps God was calling me to do something else, too.

As I began to sort this out in my mind by prayer and listening to what God was trying to tell me, I realized it had something to do with a Crisis Pregnancy Center.

When I have been asked what I can see myself doing after my children are grown (and by grown I don’t necessarily mean ‘going off to college’) I automatically say I do not ever see myself stepping back into the public school system, but instead I see myself working or even just volunteering my time to a local Crisis Pregnancy Center or an adoption agency.

So when the thought of volunteering now entered my mind, I had to really figure out how this was going to work because I do not want anything to pull me away from this precious time with my daughters.

In my “figuring” I just kinda pushed it all to the back burner because I didn’t know how it would all fit into my role as SAHM.

Then January 22nd was Sanctity of Life Sunday. I opened the bulletin and found a brochure in there about our local Crisis Pregnancy Center!

I don’t know if you have ever experienced a kick in the booty from God, but opening my bulletin and seeing that brochure sure was my kick.

It was as if God was saying, Elaine, check the box that says “Please contact me for volunteering opportunities”. You can put your girls down for a nap at your mom’s house, go volunteer and then be back soon after naptime is over.

I have no idea what God’s plan is for me with this organization. All I know is He is calling me now to go.

One afternoon last week I dropped by the Pregnancy Crisis Center and went in to hopefully speak with the director and get some information on volunteer opportunities.

As I walked to the doorstep, I was nervous. I communicate best through written language and yet here I was walking up to this building about to tell the director I would be happy to talk to women who are in a crisis pregnancy. I imagined myself fumbling for words to say and saying all the wrong things!

But then I remembered Moses.

Moses told God, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

The Lord said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” (Exodus 4:11-12)

I walked in to the Pregnancy Crisis Center, explained why I had come and then was asked to sit and wait for the director to come talk to me. I sat in the same exact spot I last saw Tracy 13 months ago. After a flood of memories washed over me, the director stepped out and brought me back to her office where we spent the next 15 minutes talking.

Standing here at the end of this road I know that my experiences might possibly be able to be used by God to help sway a woman who is contemplating abortion to choose adoption.

Yes, speaking to a woman face-to-face about these matters makes me shake like a leaf because I feel I won’t know what to say or will say the wrong thing.

But I know all that is simply fear – fear planted in my heart from the Enemy who desires to see these women choose abortion.

So I will go in faith, with boldness from Him giving me exactly what I need to do this new work He has called me to do.

My volunteer application is currently sitting in the mailbox outside ready to make its way to the Crisis Pregnancy Center. And now I wait for the director’s phone call to tell me my next step.