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.

The years of denial had finally come to an end. The lies I had believed had finally been exposed. I was supposed to have five children with me right now. God had intended for me to be a mother. He had given me children, and I had wantonly destroyed them. I had asked Jesus to forgive my sins, but had he really forgiven me of even this? Could I ever forgive myself?

When I could bear my thoughts no longer, I felt the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit wrap around me like a soft cashmere shawl. I watched the waves racing each other to the shore, and suddenly I saw before me an ocean of women— millions of women, stretching all the way to the horizon— and I was speaking to them about abortion. The “still, small voice” of God’s Spirit spoke to my mind in that moment: One day I will place you on a platform where you will speak to these women.

“But I murdered my children,” I whispered. “I gave them up for a man who ruined my life.” I choked back a wail.

Tell the women that. I will give you the platform.

I stared at the ocean. The multitudes of women were gone. I could no longer see their faces.

“Mommy, we love you.” The lilting voice drifted over the waves. My heart skipped a beat.

“We’re with Jesus. And you’ll be with us one day, Mommy. But now you must go and do what the Master says.”

I knew that voice was telling me that I had to fulfill my calling— whatever it was that God had put me on this earth to do. I also knew that the child’s voice was not a figment of my imagination, even though I had listened to a little girl’s voice saying something similar on the radio just moments before. This was a little boy’s voice . . . and it was not the first time I had heard it.

That voice was familiar because I had heard it about a year earlier, before I had ever walked the aisle at church and committed my life to Christ. It was during that “beginning of the end” time when I was living in Flagstaff, not long after I had that final “interlude” with my ex-husband, Jesse.