A Sci-Fi Story - A Safe Place - The Role of Fathers

I would like to add to the previous blog regarding Safe Places for mothers to entrust their newborn infants, in the event they themselves are not able or prepared to care for them. I would like to speak today, of another Safe Place.

Recently at our Lake County's Annual Benefit Banquet, we heard David Bereit, co-founder of 40 Days for Life, give a very inspirational talk concerning mothers and their babies. He likened the expectant mother in trouble, to a lady with a baby on the deck of a ship in a storm. His intention was to provoke in our minds, the very vulnerable position of a mother with child, which differs greatly from a person on their own. Painting this very vivid image of the vulnerability of a woman with child ... he challenged us to question our own role in how we might rescue women and their children from the jaws of abortion.

Today I will bring a personal note to my blog, as I fully believe that everything we espouse must ultimately come from a personal perspective, as well as an intellectual and philosophical one .. something our pro-abortion opponents always challenge us to do. As a woman and mother myself, I can personally attest to this vulnerability, which all women feel upon first discovering they are with child. Even a married woman like myself, upon discovering my first pregnancy, suddenly felt frighteningly vulnerable and in need of protection. Before my pregnancy with my first child, I was a very independent young woman, who felt very self-sufficient and empowered ... with or without my husband ... or anyone else for that matter. To that day, I saw my husband, as a lover, companion and friend, to accompany me along life's journey ... and our roles seemed very equal in this.

On the day I discovered I was with child, all that changed ... and suddenly ... I was forced to look quite differently at my husband. I recall leaning my head on his shoulder, and telling him how vulnerable I felt, and how this feeling of vulnerability was forcing me into a rather scary and humbling position of dependence, which to that date I had not sought from anyone. As a young woman from a broken home and tragic childhood, I had learned survival by relying upon my own wits and strengths. But now, there was another on board. Now, once again as when I was a child, I would have to entrust myself to another .. which for a kid who grew up the way I did, held not a small amount of dread. So, I looked with great expectation, and not a little fear and trembling, to my husband. In short, I looked to my husband for a Safe Place ... something I had not even known as a child myself. Not to worry though .. he did not fail me.

And so, with Mother's Day behind us, and Father's Day soon to be upon us, I will write about the roles of each, particularly because of the very life changing effect that a pregnancy will have upon a couple. How they will suddenly see one another through very different eyes, and how especially, the woman with child will now look to her man/spouse for a Safe Place. That Safe Place being the one God had ordained from the beginning of time for the woman and her child.

As soon to be empty-nesters of 5 children, my husband and I had an empty-nester date the other night, with a movie he had rented. He made some pop-corn, and we settled in on the couch to watch a Sci-Fi flick .. not necessarily my favorite .. but I prepared to enjoy my husband's company anyway. I was soon totally struck by what a pro-life message, whether intentionally or not, the story plot of this movie projected ... and it helped to inspire my subject matter here today.

The movie depicts a typical modern young couple, enjoying a superficial carefree life of pleasure and self-indulgence with the world and with one another, when all of this suddenly changes upon the woman discovering she is pregnant. At this point the young father recoils with typical reproaches of not being ready etc., lending greater stress to the young woman, who is already struggling with her own sense of unpreparedness for motherhood. Now, coinciding with the young couple's discovery of their newly conceived offspring, is a ghastly invasion of aliens from some other world, which threatens the entire earth and all human life upon it.

As the story unfolds, and the inhabitants of earth are embroiled in an intense struggle for survival, the young man goes through a sort of metamorphosis in his mind and heart, along with an obviously fantastical physical transformation (sorta like the Hulk), due to contact with the aliens. The young reluctant father is forced to come to the realization of the fragility of life on earth, and how very precious that life truly is. Along with this, as he witnesses so many of his own human race around him, being obliterated by the aliens, he is brought to a deeper appreciation for his girlfriend and the child she is carrying, calling them, "His Family". As such, he is spurred on to a greater determination to fight for their survival, as well as his own. The movie ends with his complete transformation into some sort of sci-fi comic book alien type character, who is now physically, mentally and in every other way, able to defend and protect his beloved and the child she carries.

I do not know if the writer of this script realized what a pro-life message he was creating with his story. But it was definitely a message of how a man needs to become something much more than a weak, childish and selfish pleasure seeking individual, once he is faced with fatherhood. And how he needs to completely transform himself, mind heart soul, and possibly even physically, into a Safe Place for the woman and her child. How even the future of mankind itself depends upon his transformation from selfish boy, to a manhood that is capable of fatherhood.

This is the greatest Safe Place a woman will ever know. It is the Safe Place of the man who has implanted in her the seed of life. Once a man plants a seed, he must tend the ground in which he has planted that seed. If he neglects the ground in which the seed is planted, drought and thistles will overtake it; and the earth itself in which that seed was planted will not be able to nourish and bring it to fruition. So too, an impregnated and abandoned woman risks many dangers to herself and the precious seed of life she carries within her own vulnerable person .. and the abortionist is right around the corner ... like a thistle plant waiting to strangle the life out of her. Who will be her Safe Place?

So, while we work to provide those Safe Places with our laws, and within our communities, let me remind all you men out there today, that you are the first Safe Place of the woman who carries your child. With Father's Day upon us, I pray that all fathers impress upon their own hearts, as well as the hearts of their young sons, this very sacred trust which God has so privileged you .. and it is no small privilege. It is a privilege which God has not even given to the angels!

The Book of Genesis is not yet complete, as the engendering of new life is still a work in progress. And it is to we mere mortals that this work has been assigned. We share in God's own creative power .. no small matter. It is an awesome privilege to which both men and women have been called .. and we women cannot do it alone ... we need you men! We need you to be Safe Places for us and the new life we carry. We need you to be FATHERS .. as well as lovers and friends. To be continued ....