Care Net- Empowering Women

Having spent the last 9 hours in an intense workshop for new volunteers, I need to write my feelings and thoughts about my involvement with Care Net Pregnancy Center. (CNPC) I have been teaching birthing classes at the central CNPC office for the past 6 weeks. I had signed on at CNPC with my pre-conceived (no pun intended) notions as to its mission and tactics. I now know that I was wrong in my thinking that Care Net was simply a pro-life, anti-abortion clinic that would in my mind be justified in using whatever tactics it needed to promote life. But I stand corrected. I learned today that this ministry really asks us to first and foremost demonstrate the love of Jesus to all who come through the door. And His perfect love is all about grace and mercy, kindness, patience, and tenderness, and allows for no judgment or condemnation on our part.
 
 God has planted me in this organization so that I could again be humbled in awesome gratitude for all the grace and mercy extended to me by my Father. How easy it has become for me to forget that I was once in crisis, unmarried and pregnant. I am no different than any of these young women who come through the doors of the clinic now.
 
 Care Net strives to empower women to make good decisions for their lives and the lives of their babies and believes that they will make better decisions after receiving full and accurate information on all their options. We do not pressure these women, manipulate their emotions, show gory pictures, lead them toward the decision we think best, scold, chastise, or judge them for past or future decisions. CNPC provides support for any decision they make, be it to continue the pregnancy, parent the child, make adoption plans, or abort. We pray for life for the baby and salvation for the moms. But what we were taught today is that these outcomes are the fruit of our tending to women's immediate need for love, understanding, acceptance, and access to resources for support with their pregnancies.
 
 I will labor on (again not pun intended) in this ministry, now with the express intent of sharing God's love, mercy, and grace to each and every one of my clients. My struggle is in righteousness, and I'll have to ask continually for a spirit of humbleness as I do this work. God has placed within me a burning passion to empower women in labor and birth. I know He wants to use me for Kingdom business.