There Is Joy In The Morning

Recently we enjoyed our Fourth of July Celebration during seven amazing days of praise and coming together!  Each anointed speaker that was on our show gave us insight into our world like nobody else could!  In their words we cannot help but know that God is working, ALWAYS working out of his love for us!  Jim and I felt so blessed each and every day as we saw so many wonderful people leaving their burdens in Jesus’ hands and remembering that God has great blessings for them!   Continue reading

Lori’s House Update

I am so excited about Lori’s House! We are approaching the time when we can finally open it and welcome our first girls in! We’re not quite there yet, but it’s soon… very soon. We have the right people in place now, and we are moving rapidly to finish the building and create a safe place where ministry, love, rest, learning, fellowship and caring will take place with its main goal of saving babies and caring for their mothers.

There will be no charge to a young woman who wants to live at Lori’s House through her pregnancy. The ministry, through generous donations, will provide assistance for food, clothing and medical care. Education and job training will be provided and an individual program will be tailored depending on each girl’s special needs.

Through it all, she will be comfortable, safe and “at home.” Continue reading

My Great Motivation

On one of our recent shows that Jim was taping without me (because I was just too ill to come to the set) he mentioned that I had to get well so that I could run Lori’s House.  I just want you all to know that there is no greater motivation for me than to know that Lori’s House will be operating soon and we will be saving tiny, innocent lives. Can you imagine anything that would touch the heart of God more?  Jesus said pure and undefiled religion is taking care of the widows and orphans (James 1:27) and with the help of our partners and friends, we will do it very soon here at Morningside!  We can do many ‘good works’ that we think please God, but with this effort, we can know it does!

Statistics have confirmed that in this country, 40% of all women have had abortions –  almost half!  Until recently, that statistic was 25% or 1 out of every 4, supporting the fact that abortion is becoming more and more prevalent.  In this country alone, we have aborted over 55 million (and counting) babies.  Abortion does more than stop an innocent heart from beating.  The long-term effects of having an abortion are proven to be debilitating for women of all ages. Continue reading

A Little Boy’s Voice (Pt. 5)

I had rented a beautiful little cabin in the mountains and really enjoyed the solitude it afforded. One night I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and turned on the television. I flipped through the channels until I found a Christian program. It was The 700 Club. Pat Robertson was talking about abortion. The topic made me a little uneasy, but I didn’t change the station.

That night The 700 Club aired a video called The Silent Scream. This pro-life documentary was narrated by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist, and included live film footage of a suction abortion. For the first time I saw pictures of exactly what I had done. I was horrified, but I could not tear my eyes away from the screen. Continue reading

A Little Boy’s Voice (Pt. 4)

Sunglasses could not hide the tears streaming down my face, and I was glad the beach was not crowded that day. I walked toward the water, oblivious to the warm ocean breeze or the strident call of the seagulls. My shoulders slumped under the weight of the reality that now settled on me. Dear God, what have I done? My feet were leaden, my legs would no longer hold me. I sank to my knees in the hot sand, completely devastated. I murdered my children!

A man and a woman passed by me and discarded the remains of their picnic lunch into one of the large trash bins dotting the beach. It occurred to me that I had thrown my children away, almost as unthinkingly as they tossed their soda cans in the garbage. I had killed my babies to keep my husband. A husband I wound up losing anyway. A husband who had betrayed me and abused me, again and again. Continue reading

A Little Boy’s Voice (Pt. 3)

Babies? I had steeled myself not to think of them that way. Planned Parenthood had said they were blobs of tissue. I knew better, of course—at least on some level. But that’s the only way I could live with myself, to think of them as “problem pregnancies,” the flotsam and jetsam of an untimely conception, not as babies.

Heaven? Until that moment, I had vaguely thought of them as formless blobs out there in the universe somewhere. Were they really babies, really in heaven, as Melissa had just said? Continue reading

A Little Boy’s Voice (Pt. 2)

The broadcast that day by Focus on the Family was called “Tilly.” The skillful blend of voices and music and sound effects captivated me, and I was quickly lost in the story.

I identified with the character named Kathy, a depressed woman who has a dream populated with lots of children. She discovers something different about these children: they have no names and no parents, and they don’t know where they came from. The ethereal background music clued the listener that these children were actually in heaven. I gripped the steering wheel tightly as I tried to keep my emotions in check. Continue reading

A Little Boy’s Voice (Pt. 1)

Jim and I are almost ready to begin a ministry that is a part of my destiny in serving the Lord Jesus.  “Lori’s House” is being built to help save babies who might otherwise be aborted if young women could not see a way to navigate through the circumstances of life dealing with an untimely pregnancy.  We are also focusing on ministry to post-abortive women.

I was just 17 years old when I had my first abortion, and just 21 when the last of 5 consecutive abortions left me unable to ever have a child. Continue reading

Joy Came in the Morning (pt 3)

Early August 1998

We had a beautiful suite with a separate bedroom and a kitchenette off the full-size living room. From the moment we walked in, I felt the presence of God, and I began to realize that something truly supernatural was in store for me that night.

Because I knew it would be an emotional time, I went to the bathroom, took my contacts out, and washed my face. While I was putting my pajamas on, Chris and Jolene prepared the living room. They placed boxes of tissues in various spots around the room, and they decorated one of the tables with a white linen tablecloth with lace trim. Continue reading

A Little Boy’s Voice (Pt. 6)

I had rented a beautiful little cabin in the mountains and really enjoyed the solitude it afforded. One night I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and turned on the television. I flipped through the channels until I found a Christian program. It was The 700 Club. Pat Robertson was talking about abortion. The topic made me a little uneasy, but I didn’t change the station.

That night The 700 Club aired a video called The Silent Scream. This pro-life documentary was narrated by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist, and included live film footage of a suction abortion. For the first time I saw pictures of exactly what I had done. I was horrified, but I could not tear my eyes away from the screen.

“We are now looking at a sector scan of a real-time ultrasound imaging of a twelve-week, unborn child,” Dr. Nathanson said in his professorial voice.2Then he pointed out the child’s head and hand, the ribs and the spine. Twelve weeks. I had been a good sixteen weeks for one of my abortions, I remembered.

“The heart is beating at the rate of approximately 140 beats a minute. And we can see the child moving rather serenely in the uterus.”3The black-and-white images were grainy, but there was no mistaking the perfectly shaped fetus. I began to feel sick to my stomach. Ultrasound was not available when I had my abortions. If I had seen pictures like this . . .

“You will note as the suction tip, which is now over here, moves towards the child, the child will rear away from it and undergo much more violent and much more agitated movements . . . The child has now moved back to the profile view and the suction tip is flashing across the screen. The child’s mouth is now open . . . but this suction tip which you can see moving violently back and forth on the bottom of the screen is the lethal instrument which will ultimately tear apart and destroy the child.”

When I saw that baby, with its mouth open in a silent scream, pushing against the walls of its mother’s womb, my world completely shattered. I fell out of my chair and onto the hardwood floor, crying hysterically. The full fury of my sin, which I had stuffed so deep inside of me, erupted in such searing pain that I didn’t know if I could live through it—wasn’t sure I wanted to live through it. I lay on the floor and sobbed until I heaved.

And that’s when I heard the voice.

“Mommy, everything’s okay. We love you.”

That’s all. Just a few words uttered in a little boy’s voice. A voice so sweet and pure that it melted my heart.